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Debut novelist finds her place
Interview by Amy ScribnerWhen Kate Racculia finished her master’s in fine arts from Emerson College, her first thought was, wow, this is great, now I can be a writer and write fulltime!
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Hiaasen at his outlandish, outrageous best
Review by Becky OhlsenThe key line in Carl Hiaasen's latest exercise in wackiness, Star Island, is uttered by a state trooper investigating a hijacked busload of development investors. He's found one of them tied to a poisonwood tree with a sea urchin crammed into his underpants. As the trooper puts it,…
Featured ReviewRich boy, poor girlAt 528 pages, Rich Boy is a Space Age version of a Victorian family saga, with the great difference being that the family is not upper-class English but Philadelphia Jewish. Perhaps it is more apt to call this novel an inflated Great Gatsby, with Robert Vishniak climbing the socio-capitalist ladder all the way up and into the Bernie Madoff Manhattan era. Sharon Pomerantz is no Fitzgerald, nor is she a Dickens, but devoted readers of lengthy novels tend not to quibble. Read More… |
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Summer readingTwilight precedes darknessFew epic celebrations have predated more dire events than the 1939 New York World’s Fair, nicknamed “The World of Tomorrow.” Its futuristic exhibits and architecture were designed to divert global attention from the Great Depression’s economic devastation and the sense of impending doom signaled by the rise of Nazi Germany. Instead, as James Mauro’s invigorating…
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Web exclusives!The lessons of a fifth-grade sabbaticalWeb exclusive
Love in a Time of Homeschooling is the story of one mom’s ambitious decision to give her 10-year-old daughter a school sabbatical during fifth grade. Author Laura Brodie decided to banish boring worksheets and tedious hours of homework for a year of homeschooling focused on her child’s passions, lots of writing, field trips to museums and parks and French…
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Tops for teensCoping with the ugly truthSixteen-year-old Evie is lonely, friendless and adept at lying—so when the dead body of Elizabeth “Zabet” McCabe is found in the woods, Evie manages to insert herself into the tragedy. Even though Evie hasn’t been friends with Zabet in years, she lies to the girl’s father and says they were best friends. She realizes the severity of her lie when Mr. McCabe invites… Read More… |
New in nonfictionKiller lurks in the family treeWomen in Amy Boesky’s family die young, and they die specifically. The threat of ovarian cancer has hung over the heads of Amy and her two sisters for as long as they can remember. It killed their grandmother, their aunts, their great-aunts. The hallway of their childhood home was filled with the sepia photos of dead relatives, what Boesky calls her “ill-fated,… Read More… |
Can't miss readsThe ugly side of marital strifeMr. Peanut, Adam Ross’ stunningly dark debut, is, on its surface, a compelling thriller, and at its core, a grisly psychological and postmodern probe, a story that takes as its forebears both Scott Turow and Italo Calvino.
Through three men’s interlocking though asymmetrical narratives, Mr. Peanut tells the story of all…
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Best betsBright stories from a lost talentWeb exclusiveThe second half of the word “hardscrabble” comes from the Dutch schrabbelen, "to scratch," as in “to scratch out a living” and other familiar phrases. This is just what Idella and Avis, the titular sisters in Beverly Jensen’s beautiful work The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay, accomplish: they work, scratch, laugh and scramble their way…
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