Beverly Jenkins on the Importance of Black 19th Century Romance

The second issue of Chicago’s crackerjack The Point, having thrown caution to the wind, tackles the prickly genius of Michel Houellebecq: “Houellebecq has published four novels, all of them bitter and miserable.”

Over at The Atlantic, Terrence Rafferty claims that women are writing the best crime novels. “Their books are light on gunplay, heavy on emotional violence. Murder is de rigueur in the genre, so people die at the hands of others—lovers, neighbors, obsessive strangers—but the body counts tend to be on the low side,” he writes. Pair with this Millions piece on novels where women are true detectives.

What was it like to grow up with Wordsworth or Coleridge as your dad? Hint: it was weird. (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)

“When she began the cancer memoir, it was the fact of the writing, more than what was to be written, that mattered.” On Jenny Diski’s way of seeing beyond the story.