The Vixen I always pick up a Francine Prose novel with trepidation, only because of the commandments in her wonderful 2011 guide, How to Read Like a Writer. Her rules include: read very slowly, assume the author chose every word for a reason, know that every mention of a book or a piece of music […]
Nothing is what it seems. Remember that as you romp through Fredrik Backman’s latest gem of a novel, Anxious People. The bank robbery that begins the book isn’t actually a bank robbery, and the resulting hostage situation that follows in an apartment across the street isn’t really a hostage situation, not to mention the rabbit […]
It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you cry, but most important, it will help you understand. I enjoyed reading This is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel more than any other book this year; it’s that good. Frankel has a perfect ear for dialogue, a great sense of humor, a considerable amount of insight […]
Imagine you and your cat live comfortably in a Manhattan apartment that measures 500 square feet. Then imagine a close friend dies and leaves you his harlequin Great Dane to take care of. Add a minor detail—you have to hide the 180-pound dog because the lease on your rent-controlled, can’t-ever-leave apartment forbids dogs of any size.
Fiction is at its most powerful when it lets us walk in someone else’s shoes, teaching us to empathize with the kind of people who might otherwise never cross our paths. In An American Marriage, Tayari Jones does this while exploring one of the most disturbing and seemingly intractable issues in America: the incFiction is at its most powerful when it lets us walk in someone else’s shoes, teaching us to empathize arceration of innocent people, especially people of color, by a justice system with inherent biases.
