An Unnecessary Woman, by Rabih Alameddine “I like outsiders,” Aaliya Sohbi tells us, “phantoms wandering the cobwebbed halls of the doomed castle where life must be lived.” The narrator of Rabih Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman, is herself an outsider, a reclusive, seventy-two-year-old bibliophile who lives alone in the Beirut apartment she’s inhabited since the fifties. [….]
This Boy’s Life: A Memoir, by Tobias Wolff First published in 1989, Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life has become a classic of the contemporary memoir, the kind of book you can finish, like I did, in nearly one sitting. Wolff, the author of numerous works of fiction, including short stories, novels, and a second memoir, has [….]
Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray The early nineteenth century didn’t have reality television, but it did have William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair—and if you’re in need of a novel to escape into, this is the one. Vanity Fair is a classic of social-climbing, backbiting, profligate behavior, and true love. Subtitled A Novel Without a [….]
As Car Trouble opens, it’s one a.m., and the novel’s young protagonist, Nicky Flynn, is driving backwards through the streets of Brooklyn in a Chevy Impala. The car, nicknamed the Blue Max, operates only in reverse, due to a jammed gearshift, and belongs to his impulsive father, Patrick. Patrick, who Nicky wryly refers as “Himself,” [….]
Arranged Marriage: Stories, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni The eleven stories in Arranged Marriage reveal Chitra Banerjee Divrakaruni’s gift for chronicling female cultural dislocation and the compound identities that come with leaving one place, and its engrained customs and beliefs, for another. An acclaimed poet, novelist, Divakaruni portrays Indian-born women and girls, characters who encounter jarring, [….]
Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward With this week’s news that impeachment of the president looks to be on the table, some nostalgic reading may be in order. Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward has been called a bookend to the Nixon story, a tale of hubris, an account [….]
The Vexations, by Caitlin Horrocks The lives of artists, when depicted in novels, must portray artmaking for what it is: work—anything else is an outsider’s view—and Caitlin Horrock’s debut novel, The Vexations, occupies that inner view; it’s an intricate portrayal of the life of modernist composer Erik Satie—and his artmaking—that mines his most nuanced sensibilities: [….]
WTAW Press has just released its 2019 titles, Chimerica, the debut novel from Anita Fellicelli, and Like Water and Other Stories, the English-language debut of Olga Zilberbourg. In Chimerica, by Anita Felicelli (Love Songs of a Lost Continent), down-on-her-luck Tamil American trial lawyer Maya Ramesh fights to save a painted lemur come to life and [….]
Epilogue: A Memoir, by Will Boast Both a remembrance and a elegiac account of the loss of a family, Boast’s 2014 memoir (a recipient of The Rome Prize) tracks the tragic early death of his mother Nancy, the untimely death of his younger brother Rory, and the family secret left behind after his father Andrew’s [….]
Barack Obama’s Summer Reading List The #SummerReads of President Barack Obama are always an eclectic and smart collection of books that span genre and subject, from the classic to the just-released, proving once more that the 44th commander-in-chief is one of our most literary and well-read. On the list for Summer 2019 are many books [….]
