Very near the end of Lucy by the Sea, Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout’s unforgettable character, implores her older daughter not to have an extramarital affair. Her two cents is a sophisticated and highly effective analysis of her daughter’s—Crissy’s—psychological state. The fact that Lucy can be so insightful and so persuasive after all the self-doubt and mortification she feels, surprises us. Flabbergasts us. She has spent very nearly the whole story recounting her disappointment, her dread of the...
November 19, 2022
"Nights of Plague" by Orhan Pamuk
Translated from the Turkish by Ekin OklapNobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk constructs 79 chapters—plus preface and 50-page epilogue—recounting an outbreak of plague in a fictional Mediterranean island in 1901. Along the way he portrays authoritarian government tactics in suppressing its population; backward religious scruples proscribing life-saving modern medicine; and the jingoistic tendency of inferior historians to hew their stories to align with beloved legends, and thereby to get...
November 08, 2022
"On the Savage Side" by Tiffany McDaniel
In On the Savage Side Tiffany McDaniel sets herself the challenging task of building a novel out of the gruesome and notorious Chillicothe Six murders of 2013-2014. The Chillicothe Six were women marginalized by the town and the town’s authorities, whose approach to the growing body count is a yawn and a shrug: they were either tricked or coerced or forced into drug addiction and prostitution, or their families simply bequeathed these conditions to them. This is a stunning, challenging work, a full...
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