About a year ago, I was reading Christina Stead’s For Love Alone (1945) and it was such a gush of words that it was almost intoxicating; I found myself ordering a copy of The Man Who Loved Children (an earlier novel, perhaps her best-known overseas, in which I’d stalled
Joe Sacco’s Journalism (2012) is a longtime resident of my TBR; I was reminded of it because of his Footnotes in Gaza and Palestine. This, however, is a fabulous introduction to his work, divided into six sections: The Hague, The Palestinian Territories, The Caucasus, Iraq, Migration, and India. Most
Just when my thoughts were etching a loop as I struggled to describe Madeleine Thien’s new novel, The Book of Records, I came across this Joy Williams quotation*: “What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes.” That is, indeed,
Many people think of following the news as a responsibility, but this contrasting idea gave me pause, expressed in Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide (2025). Because priorities shift, during wartime, when your daily life is what other people are consuming as news—on their phones while waiting in line
In which I read two books with #NovNov in mind, hosted by Rebecca and Cathy: one novella that feels like an expanded short story, and the other that swells with links of main character and themes across three segments. First published in Rio de Janeiro’s newspaper from 1881-1882 and
