A Heartbreaking Work of Intellectual Fiction
The title character of Brian Morton’s novel ‘Florence Gordon’ is an intellectual described as a precursor to writers like Vivian Gornick, Ellen Willis and Katha Pollitt.
Growing Up in Jazz Age Chicago
In Ronna Wineberg’s novel ‘On Bittersweet Place’ a Jewish family leaves Russia just before the revolution to land in Chicago, just as the roaring ’20s are getting underway.
Talking With an Angel in Suburban Hell
Deborah Levy’s ‘An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell,’ recently revised and re-published, is a timeless fable of suburban disquiet and divine intervention.
Reason and Religion Converge in 'The Mathematician's Shiva'
Stuart Rojstaczer’s ‘The Mathematician’s Shiva’ is narrated by Sasha Karnokovitch, a midwestern meteorologist born in Russia at the height of the Cold War to two brilliant mathematicians.
Anxieties of the Modern Old Age
Lore Segal’s novel ‘Half the Kingdom’ taps into post-9/11 anxieties, filtered through the frustrations of an unrecognized artist and the terrors of growing old.
Dealing With the Side Effects of Fiction
The narrator of Jerry Stahl’s new novel earns his living writing disclaimers about the side effects of drugs. He’s also got a fairly severe heroin habit of his own.
Rutu Modan's Secrets and Revelations
On its face, Rutu Modan’s ‘The Property’ is about a Jewish woman returning to Poland for the first time since the Holocaust. But there’s much more beneath the surface.