Is the hype for The Bee Sting justified?
Over the course of 600-odd pages, Paul Murray marshals elements of tragedy, black comedy and drama with consummate skill
Books
Monday
Kevin Barry’s latest novel is bursting with energy, brutality and poetry
The Heart in Winter is a rambunctious galumph of a story
Suburbia’s irredeemable reputation in the American canon
As it stands, its place as a literary locus in the American canon is a fraught one
This month in culture: July 2024
What should be on your radar this July
Friday
Have you ever heard of the St. Brice’s Day Massacre?
Crypt is a collection of seven essays that unearth details about how certain people lived and died in the past
Wednesday
An incisive memoir of life in the cloisters
Catherine Coldstream refuses to be bitter and Cloistered is all the more beautiful, and holy, as a result
Nellie Bowles critiques progressivism and the media that covers it
One of many fascinating things to be learned from Morning After the Revolution is the process by which someone gets canceled
A history of the LGBTQ+ aspects of the Boy Scout movement
Mike De Socio’s Morally Straight details how forty years of gay activism diversified the group for the better
Salman Rushdie’s memoir is a devastating and powerful account of near-death
The writer remains strong, his determination to write a beacon for anyone who cares about freedom of thought and speech
A skillful retelling of one of World War Two’s most dramatic stories
Nahlah Ayed transports the reader to World War Two as experienced by the brave SOE agents who landed behind enemy lines
Christopher Priest was a grievously underrated novelist
His career represented a sequence of missed opportunities for the world beyond his chosen genre to recognize his skill and quiet profundity
This month in culture: June 2024
Our guide to what should be on your radar
Friday
The problem with westerners seeking enlightenment in Asia
Christopher Harding is more tolerant than I am and has a greater affinity with the seekers. But he has written a very interesting book as a result
Wednesday
Remembering the postmodern Paul Auster
His personal life was eventful, as any good writer’s should be
Tuesday
The wild times on the late, great John Belushi’s most famous film
Daniel de Visé’s entertaining — if that is the right word — canter through Belushi and Aykroyd’s lives and times covers a fair number of bases
The ups and downs of the long road toward workplace parity
Josie Cox has persuasively documented the steady but halting progress that women have made in the workplace
The talented Evan S. Connell
He might be the greatest American novelist you’ve never heard of
Gabriel García Márquez’s posthumously published novel is unconvincing
Until August has a curiously half-baked feel, as if it’s a souvenir of a great man’s legacy rather than a work in itself
A revelatory account of the post-war exploits of the House of Windsor
Alexander Larman’s Power and Glory is a tale of survival
Sunday
Where is the clarity in modern center-right foreign policy?
Matthew Kroenig and Dan Negrea suggest a response to the new isolationism that is essential for understanding contemporary foreign policy debates on the right
