“Literature can use secrecy as a device to ensnare readers, to pull the wool over their eyes or to reveal to them things that the characters can’t see. Whether large – businessman by day, serial killer by night; or small – where a character silently yearns for an ex-lover.” Eli Goldstone compiles a list for The Guardian of 10 novels whose characters are concealing big secrets, including a few lesser-knowns like Shirley Jackson‘s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani.
Big Little Lies
A Gut-Wrenching Account and an Ethical Nightmare
A dissection of Jonathan Franzen's recent New Yorker essay on David Foster Wallace finds Franzen's wires showing.
Clickbait Lit
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Life After Boobie
Grantland's got a nice excerpt from Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights follow-up, After Friday Night Lights. The book was released last week by Byliner.
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The Doctor Zhivago Plot
The CIA was known for unorthodox espionage techniques during the Cold War, but using Doctor Zhivago to undermine the U.S.S.R. is one of the strangest. The CIA helped print and distribute the banned book because it would make Soviets wonder "what is wrong with their government, when a fine literary work by the man acknowledged to be the greatest living Russian writer is not even available in his own country in his own language for his own people to read."
P.D. James Passes Away
Author P.D. James, "the Queen of crime writing" and subject of one of our Post-4o Bloomers essays, has passed away, reports the BBC.
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