Francine Prose has a new novel out this week, while Elizabeth McCracken has a new story collection on shelves. Also out: Chestnut Street by the late Maeve Binchy; In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman; Terms and Conditions by Robert Glancy; The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan; and new paperback editions of The Color Master by Aimee Bender and The Infatuations by Javier Marias.
Tuesday New Release Day: Prose; McCracken; Binchy; Rahman; Glancy; Bender; Marias
“Strings unleashing”
“I have tried them all,
The cotton, the nylon,
absorbing water, rolling in sand,
sticky flakes of broken glass.
We all drown in the end.”
Anne Sexton’s summer bikini tips.
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The Great White Hope
Ever since The Rumpus began reviewing albums, you knew the day would come when they’d review Vanilla Ice. (If you’re wondering, the writer tackled his major label debut.)
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A Witch Hunt Revisited
“If Schiff is right to accuse us of nurturing an unrequited infatuation with what amounts to America’s first tabloid scandal, then she’s done the literary equivalent of force us into a cold shower.” The New Republic reviews Stacy Schiff’s new book, The Witches: Salem, 1692.
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O Health Coach! My Health Coach!
“To you, clerk, literary man, sedentary person, man of fortune, idler, the same advice. Up!" Walt Whitman, health nut and paleo dieter–resist carbs, obey red meat!
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The Art of Fiction with Imre Kertész
The Paris Review’s interview with Hungarian author (and recent retiree) Imre Kertész is up on their website now, and to celebrate the occasion the magazine is offering a $10 discount on subscriptions. The promo code is good all week long.
Strike Back
"What women do in the books mentioned here doesn’t consist of survival so much as sabotage. They throw bricks and rocks and flaming bottles into the chinks of the masculine world machine, then pick up a gun and fire into the turning gears. If rape and other sexual violence, religious servitude, and the politically determined inaccessibility of contraception can be seen as acts of war, stories like these may not just be a means of escapism. In the mind’s eye, they might be weapons, to be picked up, opened, and deployed." At the Boston Review, Elizabeth Hand looks at women who fight back in fiction, from Gone Girl to Medea.
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