After the celebrated French writer Georges Perec began psychoanalysis in the late 1960s, he made a habit of jotting down his dreams. He perfected the ability to awake mid-dream, make…
In a certain kind of story, characters reflect and explore the financial world outside their narrative. A population left destitute by the American Civil War, for example, found hope in…
There’s a lot of words for book reviewers to throw around when faced with a novel that’s bound to shake readers to the core—multilayered, complex, riveting. We use these words…
Marisa Silver in her new novel, Mary Coin, takes all this on and the result is a compelling, hard-to-put down story. As the cover of the novel suggests, the story emanates from the photograph, “Migrant Mother,” taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936 at a pea-pickers’ camp in Nipomo, California.
Fight Song, Joshua Mohr’s fourth novel, is a suburban picaresque about a character cursed with a name that highlights his own mediocrity and the futility of his efforts: Bob Coffen.…
At their best, love and translation share some contradictions, including selfishness and generosity. Translation is impossible, or at least not very good, without a passionate desire to own the material…