What I read this week Possession by A.S. Byatt I first tried to read A.S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel about all kinds of intrigue in academia when I was in high school. What a bad idea. So much of the book is about the tedium of
What I read this week The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri What if The Virgin Suicides was narrated by only one neighborhood boy, and it was more about the boy than the Lisbon sisters, and the neighborhood boy's name was Jeffrey Eugenides? The Sisters is a story of
What I read this week The White Hot by Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes I'm not going to be able to do this one justice. I usually try to listen to the audio version of books in which the prose isn't the main thing. I save the plot-heavy
It's anticipation time... What I read this week What We Can Know by Ian McEwan When I say What We Can Know is Ian McEwan's best novel since Atonement, I should admit that I haven't been meticulous about keeping up. I believe I had
Forgive me for skipping last week's newsletter! I've been reading submissions for for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and I didn't want to use this space to write about what I read. That will be under wraps until this spring. I also took
It's Misandry Week at the Maris Review! What I read this week Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime by Sarah Weinman Spousal rape is just like any other form of rape (not uncommon, underreported, still very much about victim-blaming,
It's a short one this week because my flight back to NYC was canceled yesterday. After a night in an airport hotel, I'm just relieved to have something to sound out at all. I am furious that I was inconvenienced so thoroughly and that the Dems
It's the last big new release day of 2025 What I read this week I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Hartman, translated by Ros Schwartz Tomorrow night I'll be discussing I Who Have Never Known Men at McNally Jackson Seaport. It's the
What I read this week Heart the Lover by Lily King Lily King does it again. My favorite of her novels is still Euphoria, her fictionalization of the experiences of Margaret Mead that is action-packed and filled with both dread and beauty. But with Writers and Lovers and now Heart
I'm feeling a little under the weather today, a flu-like thing that isn't the flu. And still I was like, you MUST get your newsletter out, even if it's a little shorter than usual. And then I thought, I'll thank all of
What I read this week The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus There are so many things I want to say about this book. But let's start with this: The Four Spent the Day Together is an excellent book about how journalism cannot be objective. I
What I read this week Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa It's been more than a decade since the New York Times ran this piece about the plight of nail salon workers, but I think of it every time I pass a nail salon (very, very often in