By Jennifer Egan 7/26/04 12:00am

Recipe for a Wrenching Novel: Comic Delivery, Somber Content

The Summer Guest , by Justin Cronin. The Dial Press, 369 pages, $24.

The Summer Guest is a melodrama, and I mean that in the most neutral, definitional sense. This second novel by Justin Cronin (his first, Mary and O’Neil , won the 2002 P.E.N./Hemingway Award) teems with big events-birth, death, illness, a harrowing Read More

By Ralph Gardner Jr. 9/16/02 12:00am

Crime Blotter

Bridges and Tunnels Do Not Deter Triborough Crook

While New York is among the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, its dirty little secret (well, at least one of them) is that many of its residents tend to be rather provincial. Many Manhattanites rarely, if ever, set foot in Queens or Brooklyn, let alone Staten Island. And Read More