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Bettyville: A Memoir George Hodgman Penguin Publishing Group, 2015; 288pp In the sub-genre of literature about the poisoned relationships between mothers and their gay sons, George Hodgman‘s Bettyville is an instant classic. Constantly funny, occasionally pointed, it is distinguished particularly by its warmth and its author’s uncommon empathy. At its heart, Bettyville is a carefully calibrated understanding of (rather […]
Read MoreTrue Believers Kurt Andersen Random House, 2012; 464pp “My publishers signed me up a year ago to write a book, but not this book,” writes Karen Hollander at the start of Kurt Andersen‘s gripping True Believers. “Let me cut to the chase,” she goes on: “I once set out to commit a spectacular murder, and people died.” This “secret […]
Read MoreDead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania Erik Larson Crown Publishing, 2015; 448pp In six heart-stopping pages in the middle of Dead Wake, Erik Larson appears to suspend time in order to watch the deadly torpedo launched from German submarine U-20 shoot through the sea toward the doomed ocean liner Lusitania. In fact, the torpedo was only […]
Read MoreWinter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped Garry Kasparov PublicAffairs, 2015; 320pp “Garry Kasparov, Russian human rights activist and former world chess champion” is how the author of this new and ferocious critique of the Putin regime would like to be introduced. Certainly not “Garry Kasparov, […]
Read MoreA Decent Ride Irvine Welsh Doubleday, 2016; 368pp “Drivin a taxi is the best joab ah’ve hud in ma puff,” remarks “Juice” Terry Lawson early on in Irvine Welsh‘s new novel, A Decent Ride. But this is not an ode to honest labor: “It’s best in August,” he continues, “wi aw the snobby tourist rides […]
Read MoreTwo Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights Salman Rushdie Random House, 2015; 304pp Salman Rushdie‘s twelfth novel is a New Yorker’s Arabian Nights, a wryly witty, promiscuously intertextual work that offers delirious pleasures and fantastical beings in equal measure. Our world — New York in the present day — has been beset by “strangenesses”. A gardener […]
Read More“Best books” lists are a perennial inducer of anxiety. So this isn’t quite that; rather, a short tour of impressions from a year of reading — haphazard, sometimes misguided, always pleasurable. Starting with fiction, I’m perhaps ashamed to discover, while tallying, that I read mostly the Great White Males. I both enjoyed and was frustrated by the firestorm […]
Read MoreParadise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawai’i Susanna Moore Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015; 320pp “There is no little irony in recognizing that the speed with which occurred,” writes Susanna Moore in her engrossing new book, “serves as testimony to the generosity of spirit, patience, and adaptability of the […]
Read MoreThe Emperor of Water Clocks: Poems Yusef Komunyakaa Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015; 128pp Yusef Komunyakaa’s poems are governed by a deeply anthropological sensibility. This allows the slips of time and geography that occur in his latest majestic collection, The Emperor of Water Clocks, to reveal how human rituals and behavior repeat themselves across time and […]
Read MoreI See You Made An Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories From the Edge of 50 Annabelle Gurwitch Blue Rider Press/Penguin Random House, 2014; 256pp “Maintaining a sense of humor is the final frontier or at least our saving grace as we age.” Every seven and a half seconds, an American turns fifty. In her […]
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