“Werner isn’t surprised to pass the entrance exams easily. He’s more nonplused to find his head measured with calipers and his hair whiter than any of the 60-odd shades of blond on the examiners’ charts. It goes without saying that his eyes are also rated for their shade of blue.” Janet Maslin reviews Anthony Doerr’s new novel.
Two Strangers
“For the sake of having something to celebrate”
As part of their collaboration with the fiction editors at Five Chapters, the folks at Salon posted a story from A Guide to Being Born, the new collection by Millions contributor Ramona Ausubel.
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Let’s Get a Novelist to Write a Birth Scene Transmitted via Skype
This week, Allison K. Gibson looked into the “awkward but necessary role of technology in fiction,” and what it means to include it or overlook it in a given work of fiction. Similarly, what’s with the absence of birth scenes in literature?
Romance Incarnate
The best way to celebrate May Day? Read Tennyson‘s “The May Queen,” become “Romance Incarnate.”
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Unfashionable Genius
“There is a unity to all of Robinson’s work, and this is part of what makes her so great. Her writing expresses a consistent and compelling vision of the world—a vision that sees the real as revelatory, the everyday as wondrous, Spokane as leading to Galilee.” Anthony Domestico profiles Marilynne Robinson and her new novel Lila, which we’ve mentioned here and here and here, for Commonweal.
Paging through the end of summer
Now that summer’s nearly over (I know, I know, but I’m looking forward to fall. As if you can blame me) there’s a history of summer reading in the Boston Globe. And if you’re looking to squeeze in a good summery book this weekend, we’ve still got you covered, with our list of literary sizzlers. Get ’em while it’s hot.