The Gone-Away World
By Nick Harkaway
Alfred A. Knopf, 512 pages, $25.95
The world consists of matter, energy and information.
Energy can be displaced, but it cannot be destroyed. Matter can be destroyed, but it’s messy. But if a weapon were invented that could suck all the information out of matter—the treeness out of a Read More
THE MAYTREES
By Annie Dillard
HarperCollins, 224 pages, $24.95
Annie Dillard gets it right twice in her second novel. As well as being the compelling story of a couple who marry just after World War II, The Maytrees is an ode to the unique, open-skied beauty of Provincetown, “the Read More
When Danny was a kid, he and his cousin Howie—an awkward, overweight, nerdy sort of boy who didn’t really fit in—used to play together at family gatherings. But one day, Danny, following his older cousin Rafe (“not the oldest cousin but the one they all listened to”), led Howie down into a mazelike cave somewhere Read More
When Danny was a kid, he and his cousin Howie—an awkward, overweight, nerdy sort of boy who didn’t really fit in—used to play together at family gatherings. But one day, Danny, following his older cousin Rafe (“not the oldest cousin but the one they all listened to”), led Howie down into a mazelike cave somewhere Read More
Can you ever really know your parents? I don’t think so. There’s just too much information that’s unavailable, not to mention experiences you childishly misinterpret or simply misremember.
And yet Janna Malamud Smith, Bernard Malamud’s daughter, a therapist with a master’s degree in social work, indulges in the kind of facile speculation about her father’s Read More
Can you ever really know your parents? I don’t think so. There’s just too much information that’s unavailable, not to mention experiences you childishly misinterpret or simply misremember.
And yet Janna Malamud Smith, Bernard Malamud’s daughter, a therapist with a master’s degree in social work, indulges in the kind of facile speculation about her Read More
Until I Find You: A Novel, by John Irving. Random House, 824
pages, $27.95
Until I Find You, John Irving’s massive new novel, is of
a type that you often hear referred to as “sprawling”—which, when you think
about it, just means “extremely long and somewhat disorganized.”
Except,
in Read More
Until I Find You: A Novel, by John Irving. Random House, 824 pages, $27.95
Until I Find You, John Irving’s massive new novel, is of a type that you often hear referred to as “sprawling”-which, when you think about it, just means “extremely long and somewhat disorganized.”
Except, in this case, calling it “John Read More
Demonology , by Rick Moody. Little, Brown, 306 pages, $24.95.
There is a sense in which reading fiction especially short stories, which by definition must cut quickly to the chase is like eavesdropping. It’s eavesdropping with permission, of course; that’s what the binding means. Nevertheless, most stories represent a conversation the author is having with Read More
