Patricia Lockwood’s latest novel transcends genres
Many books mix fiction and memoir. Successfully incorporating criticism into a novel is more unusual
Books
Tuesday
Patrick Ryan’s second novel doesn’t pretend to be perfect
Buckeye is a fine illustration of how drawing-room tensions can fester and become matters of historical significance.
The Life of Violet catches a side of Virginia Woolf that has been obscured
A new Woolf typescript is cause for celebration. Two cheers for Seshagiri. But this new edition is a weak casket
Tuesday
Frank S. Meyer was a political paradox
Noel Parmentel’s quote, ‘The right wing was fun back then,’ is one of the takeaways from Daniel J. Flynn’s new book
The thrill of ghostwriting
Julia Clark’s new novel succeeds both as a gripping mystery and a sly commentary on the art of storytelling itself
A more rounded picture of James Baldwin
Nicholas Boggs has written the first major biography of the writer in more than 30 years
Sunday
Camus comes to America
His travel journals reveal him to be a hopeful, humane thinker – unlike Sartre
Wednesday
Inside Mahler’s mind
Stephen Downes’s Gustav Mahler (Critical Lives) penetrates the composer’s psyche
Wednesday
How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel
It wasn’t so elementary, Watson
Tuesday
Mark Twain’s finest invention was himself
Over more than a thousand pages, Ron Chernow identifies the emotional root system that fed the writer’s art
Glennon Doyle’s latest offering marks a change in direction
We Can Do Hard Things allows a chorus of voices into the Glennosphere
The mechanics of cancel culture
I was struck by the way the Blake Bailey combines the poignancy of decay with his gift for dryly comic observation
How to make America read again
Christopher J. Scalia knows his audience and his light, avuncular style proves engaging throughout
The enduring brilliance of C.S. Lewis
More than 60 years after his death, the Oxford literature professor and writer is everywhere
A walk through Geoff Dyer’s childhood
Homework is openly billed as an antidote to memoirs full of derring-do but it does exactly what the essayist’s fans will want
Tuesday
Has Trump’s return defanged Ezra Klein?
Abundance is the old juicebox mafia’s definitive statement to the world in the second Trump era
Unpacking John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s complex relationship
You end John & Paul in understanding of their essential humanity
Joan Didion’s unedited record of therapy is morbidly fascinating
It is the great failure of Notes to John that it lacks the writer’s distinctive voice altogether
Erik Satie was an inadvertent innovator
Ian Penman’s brief book takes us around the French composer’s life three times
Seventy-five years of Strangers on a Train
At its dark, complex heart, the novel represents Patricia Highsmith at her most contradictory – and greatest