Magnificent Book Captures The Beauty And Tragedy Of The Battleship Yamato
For over 40 years, Jan Morris' admiring readers have followed her wherever she's chosen to go. Perhaps best known for her grand descriptive powers as a travel writer, Morris, now 91, has also written...
View ArticleMeg Wolitzer Traces The Arc Of The Feminist Movement In 'The Female Persuasion'
One of the two women at the center of Meg Wolitzer's absorbing new novel, The Female Persuasion , is a legendary feminist named Faith Frank. Faith, who's in her 60s when the story begins, seems to be...
View Article'Art Of The Wasted Day' Makes A Case For Letting The Mind Wander
Patricia Hampl, you had me at your title: The Art of the Wasted Day. Imagine a book that celebrates daydreaming, that sees it not as a moral failing, but as an activity to be valued as an end in...
View ArticleA Weird-But-True Story Takes Flight In 'The Feather Thief'
This is one weird-but-true story. It's a story that leads readers from 19 th century scientific expeditions into the jungles of Malaysia to the "feather fever" of the turn of the last century, when...
View Article'Barracoon' Offers A Vivid, First-Hand Account Of Slavery In America
"I want to know who you are and how you came to be a slave." That was one of the first questions that Zora Neale Hurston asked 86-year-old Cudjo Lewis when she traveled from New York to Mobile, Ala.,...
View ArticleSexuality, Mortality, Failure — 'My Ex-Life' Has Fun Asking Big Questions
I didn't know how much I needed a laugh until I began reading Stephen McCauley's new novel, My Ex-Life. This is the kind of witty, sparkling, sharp novel for which the verb "chortle" was invented. I...
View ArticleSouthern Gothic 'Florida' Spins Tales Of Hurricanes, Humidity And Humanity
On the acknowledgments page of her new short story collection, Florida, Lauren Groff thanks Florida, where she lives and which she calls the "sunniest and strangest of states." Strange this collection...
View Article2 First-Rate Suspense Novels Deliver Chills, Thrills — And Stunning Endgames
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. For our book critic Maureen Corrigan, suspense and summer go together like gin and tonic. Here's her...
View ArticlePithy And Pointed 'There There' Puts Native American Voices Front And Center
Here's the thing about There There , the debut novel by Native American author Tommy Orange: Even if the rest of its story were just so-so — and it's much more than that — the novel's prologue would...
View Article2 Books Find Fuel In The American Landscape
One summer's day a few years ago, my daughter and her friends piled into a car that one of them had recently gotten a license to drive. "Where are you going?" I asked with false calm. "We're driving up...
View ArticleConfused In Midlife? You're In Good Company With 'The Cost Of Living'
Deborah Levy opens her new memoir, The Cost of Living, by telling us one of those small stories whose size, like an ant or a virus, stands in inverse proportion to its power. As Levy recalls, one...
View ArticleDaring New Novel Fetishizes A Desperate Desire For Sleep
Over the years I've called many a novel a snoozer, but this is the first time I'm using that term in tribute. Ottessa Moshfegh's new novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a real snoozer, a daring...
View ArticleNostalgia (And Norovirus) Make For A Novel 'Last Cruise'
It's a rusty old bucket of a plot contrivance: throw a bunch of strangers together on a boat and roil the waters with a big storm or a white whale. But, in her latest novel, The Last Cruise, Kate...
View ArticleIn 'Give Me Your Hand,' A Bond Forged By Secrets Can't Be Broken
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Megan Abbott has made a name for herself as a suspense writer who likes to make a study of closed...
View Article'The Incendiaries' Is An Angsty Back-To-School Novel About Believing In God
R. O. Kwon's pensive debut novel, The Incendiaries, arrives just in time to stoke up "back-to-school" anxieties, especially those of entering college students and their nervous parents. The...
View ArticleWith Wit And Sadness, 'Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine' Has Echoes Of Salinger
I've been a fan of Kevin Wilson's writing since 2011, when I read his debut novel The Family Fang . That novel delved into the life of a husband and wife pair of performance artists who worked their...
View Article'Severance' Is A Sardonic Wake-Up Call For All Of Us Stuck In Routine
There's a sentence at the beginning of Ling Ma's standout debut novel, Severance, that stopped me cold: "When you wake up in a fictitious world," one character tells another, "your only frame of...
View Article'Lake Success' Is A Roadside View Of America On The Verge Of Trump
There's life in the old road trip saga yet. That's just one of the many things that Gary Shteyngart's spectacular, sprawling new novel, Lake Success , affirms. Throughout his career, Shteyngart has...
View ArticleDid A Real-Life Kidnapping Inspire Nabokov's 'Lolita'?
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Lolita" is a staple of the American Library Association's Banned or Challenged...
View ArticleSmart, Unsentimental 'Heartland' Pays Tribute To America's Working Class
Sarah Smarsh is a daughter of the white working class. Born in rural Kansas, Smarsh traces her lineage back through five generations of family farmers. She also traces herself back through generations...
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