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Book Review

  1. book review
    What Is Missing From Rachel Kushner’s New The Mars Room? Besides Plot.It’s fair to want more from a novel than the sensation of nodding your head in agreement.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  2. books
    Alan Hollinghurst’s New, Deviously Anti-Sensationalist Gay-Generation-Gap NovelThe way life opens up to one character in a way that it never could for his father is the novel’s real subject.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  3. Lisa Halliday’s Tremendous New Experiment of a NovelThe book is split in two. Which half is “more interesting,” a young woman’s unlikely romance or a young man’s encounter with world affairs?
    By Christian Lorentzen
  4. books
    Will Zadie Smith Ever Feel Free?Her new collection of essays brings to an end a 15-year psychodrama period for her writing.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  5. books
    Denis Johnson Left Us With One Final — and Terrific — BookWith a new, posthumous short-story collection, the author of Jesus’ Son still haunts the culture, for good reason.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  6. How Does Susan Sontag’s Fiction Stack Up Against All Her Other Stuff?I hesitate to call these stories essential, but they are full of optional delights.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  7. Jennifer Egan’s Strained New World War II NovelVeering into the past, she applies a surfeit of artifice in Manhattan Beach that erases the authenticity effects she intends.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  8. book review
    Nicole Krauss’s Forest Dark: What Is Kafka Doing in a Most Un-Kafkaesque Novel?It’s odd to see Philip Roth marshaled, too, to shore up a novel that reads like self-help.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  9. John le Carré’s Spook Cynicism: George Smiley, 56 Years OnLe Carré has always attributed his popularity to the fact that “I was writing for a public that was hooked on Bond and wanted an antidote.”
    By Christian Lorentzen
  10. 10 Nonfiction Books to Read at the Beach, As Chosen by AuthorsThe best beach-worthy nonfiction books other writers recommend.
    By Miles Klee
  11. book review
    In Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends, the Narrator Strives to MatterThe first novel by the 26-year-old Irish writer wears its influences on its sleeve.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  12. book review
    Review: Eugene Lim’s Dear Cyborgs Engages the Post-Occupy MomentIt’s a novel of ideas, small, elegant ideas about art and protest, and one of the most striking literary works to emerge from the Occupy movement.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  13. book review
    Review: Francesco Pacifico’s Sharp New Novel Takes on Post-Hipster WilliamsburgThe Italian author’s new book does a lot of things you don’t see American novels do much of these days.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  14. book review
    Review: Percival Everett’s So Much Blue Is Winding and BeguilingAt age 61, Everett may have the lowest profile of any major American novelist now in his or her prime.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  15. book review
    How Much Juice Can One Writer Squeeze Out of Male Ugliness?Joshua Ferris’s The Dinner Party is a parade of jerks who march by one by one.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  16. In Priestdaddy, Patricia Lockwood Goes Home to a House ‘Made for Screaming’The memoir is part origin story, part narrative of the Twitter-poet-goddess’s time in the wilderness.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  17. book review
    What Happens When Critics Grow Up, and Look BackMemoirists Daphne Merkin and Lee Siegel built their lives around books. Why?
    By Christian Lorentzen
  18. Ottessa Moshfegh’s Book Homesick for Another World Revels in Flawed CharactersHer short-story collection Homesick for Another World draws you in by highlighting humankind’s grotesqueness.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  19. book review
    Book Review: Alexandra Kleeman’s IntimationsShe has a gothic imagination and a wit keen to the absurdities of American culture — particularly its dietary vices and media horror shows.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  20. book review
    Jay McInerney’s Yuppie Trilogy Comes to a CloseThe third volume recapitulates the strongest and weakest aspects of Brightness Falls and The Good Life.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  21. book review
    Emma Cline’s Masterful (and Quite Traditional) Manson-Family Debut NovelPastoral, marriage plot, crime story.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  22. book review
    Book Review: What Is Not Yours Is Not YoursThe wunderkind author is a prodigious and idiosyncratic talent finding her form in public.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  23. O.J.’s ‘Exact Opposite of Classic,’ If I Did ItRevisiting the most deliciously sleazy publishing story of the 21st century.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  24. book review
    Diane Williams: Avant-Garde Master of Miniature FictionIt’s hard to summarize any of her stories, and it may be beside the point.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  25. book review
    City on Fire Is Trying to Have It Too Many WaysThe year’s biggest debut says a lot about what sort of story New York publishers and Hollywood think they can sell.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  26. How Jonathan Franzen Became America’s Leading Public MoralistOur foremost novelist as pundit.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  27. book review
    Nell Zink’s Brilliant Mislaid Is a Parody of a Satire of RaceIt uses southern racism as fuel for devious comic flights.
    By Christian Lorentzen
  28. books
    The Very Public Saga of Karl Ove Knausgaard Writing About HimselfHis latest Volume 4: Dancing in the Dark is a lesser work than the first two books (though better than the third).
    By Christian Lorentzen
  29. book review
    Kathryn Schulz on the Harmonious Contradictions of Geoff DyerHis strange books shouldn’t work as beautifully as they do.
    By Kathryn Schulz
  30. books
    Book Review: Schulz on The Sixth ExtinctionA book that is both serious-­minded and invites exclamation points into its margins.
    By Kathryn Schulz
  31. book review
    Kathryn Schulz on Doctor SleepOnce it stops being bad, how good is it?
    By Kathryn Schulz
  32. book review
    Schulz on J.M. Ledgard’s Submergence: The Best Novel I’ve Read This YearThe best novel our book critic has read this year.
    By Kathryn Schulz
  33. book review
    Schulz on Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieAmerica’s awkward dance around race, through the eyes of a Nigerian novelist and her characters.
    By Kathryn Schulz
  34. book review
    Book Review: The Riddle of the LabyrinthIt’s about, among other things, history, mythology, ancient civilizations, linguistics, puzzles, code-breaking, Homer, Arthur Conan Doyle, and brainy female academics.
    By Kathryn Schulz
  35. kathryn schulz
    Schulz on Anne Carson’s Time-Traveling, Mind-Bending Red Doc>This sequel, of sorts, to Autobiography of Red is sadder than its predecessor, and stranger, too.
    By Kathryn Schulz
  36. book review
    Kathryn Schulz on Amity Gaige’s Novel Schroder“It’s a mark of how good Schroder is that, upon finishing it, I immediately went out and read the rest of her work.”
    By Kathryn Schulz
  37. book review
    Schulz on Andrew Solomon’s New Book Far From the TreeThe author explores raising kids—and consciousness.
    By Kathryn Schulz
  38. book review
    Book Review: Schulz on Zadie Smith’s NWShe’s pointing her literary compass in a new direction.
    By Kathryn Schulz
  39. books
    Book Review: Schulz on Jim Holt’s Why Does the World Exist?He asks the big question.
    By Kathryn Schulz