Play and Rules: On Megan Fernandes and the Poetics of Kink
The poems of 'I Do Everything I’m Told' pursue an ever more perfect mode of submission.
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The Searing Clarity of Hilary Mantel
Mantel the essayist was eager for ideas, light on her feet, yet sharp as a raptor.
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Éric Vuillard Is Rewriting the Writing of History
Vuillard doesn’t attempt to hide the fact that his quest for murky truths sometimes forces him to speculate.
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Alissa Hattman’s ‘Sift’ Is a Post-Apocalyptic Prophecy
'Sift' is a remarkable entry in the rich climate-change canon that already exists within the genre of speculative fiction.
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Marie Darrieussecq Plumbs the Depths of ‘Sleepless’ Nights
'Sleepless' might be one of the few original interventions on the topic of insomnia in the past 15 years.
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In Louisa Hall’s ‘Reproduction,’ Motherhood Is Otherworldy
For Hall, the trouble is not that writers can’t find the words to describe their reproductive experiences but that their stories will always be inadequate.
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‘Mobility’ Is a New Kind of Climate-Change Novel
As its polyvalent title suggests, Mobility is both a classically-proportioned novel of social climbing and a harsh interrogation of the logic of our petroleum society.
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‘Oh God, The Sun Goes’ Is Strange, Surreal, and Utterly Sincere
Tremendously weird stuff. It’s wonderful.
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The Orthodoxy of Paradox
In 'The Rigor of Angels,' William Eggington posits that paradoxes are inextricable from knowledge.
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Chloe Aridjis’s Night-Sea Journey
'Dialogue with a Somnambulist' reveals a new anxiety: that enchantment, however necessary, will not be sufficient.
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The Ambitious Anachronism of ‘The Fraud’
We are to understand that a story with such disclosures could not be published in its time, but we might also feel it could not have been written then.
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Scenes from a Literary Marriage
'Wifedom' is less a biography of Eileen—or even a portrait of two halves of a marriage—than an indictment of a writer that Funder has ceased to venerate.
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The Real Lambs Know: On ‘Why Mariah Carey Matters’
I love her precisely because she has improvised ways to thrive in the face of derision.
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Academic Angst Goes Abroad in ‘The English Experience’
For all of its fun, Julie Schumacher's 'The English Experience' is a bracingly accurate tour of the pedagogical experience.
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Christine Kenneally Reimagines the Pursuit of Justice
The path to justice requires vision, indefatigable commitment, and the refusal of easy compromises. 'Ghosts of the Orphanage' charts that path.
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Elder Care: On Alexandra Chang’s ‘Tomb Sweeping’
The most affecting thematic thread in 'Tomb Sweeping' is that of intergenerational bonds.
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