Tom Crewe’s The New Life is sophisticated, intelligent and gripping
This book doesn’t pretend that its subjects are twenty-first century people in different clothes
Books and Arts
Monday
The enigmatic rise of Colleen Hoover
Meet the world’s bestselling author, a self-made forty-three-year-old mom you probably haven’t heard of
The magnetism of His Dark Materials
Pullman’s color palette is of vibrant grays. He rejects absolute goods and evils
Greg Lansky: the artist with a scandalous past
As an adult film magnate, he profited off the broken aspects of our society for years
Mary Blair, doyenne of Disneyland
To preserve an outsider artist such as her, you have to preserve the messy reality of life
& Juliet and Titanique: two newly minted cult classics
Let me tell you a secret: the theater world still adores Shakespeare, even in 2023
Wednesday
Hoover damned
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage reviewed
The art of the royal memoir
Britain’s royal family sells books like nobody’s business
From Russia with love
Iron Curtain: A Love Story by Vesna Goldsworthy reviewed
Behind closed doors
The Cloisters by Katy Hays reviewed
Bret Easton Ellis’s comeback is a bloody masterpiece
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis reviewed
Quentin Tarantino’s iconoclastic obsessions
How can an established artist, especially one this famous, pivot to criticism?
The struggle of the female musician
Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World by Leah Broad reviewed
The Some Like It Hot revival is cream-puff theater
It reduces a charged premise to something more mundane
The death of the movie star
Hollywood used to run on talent. Today, intellectual property is king
Playing God with Paramore
What happens when someone who was cool because they were hated is suddenly accepted?
In Claude Monet’s postmodern garden
I began to find the uncanny experience transporting
The shock and awe-inspiring art of Iraq
After decades of disorder, the country has a budding art scene
Friday
The return of Bret Easton Ellis
The American Psycho and Less Than Zero author discusses his first novel in thirteen years
Friday
Ebony and ivories
The Piano Lesson puts its characters first
