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Book Review
Richard price’s new novel is full of color but short on drama.
“Lazarus Man” follows several characters in Harlem in the wake of a building collapse.
By Christian Lorentzen
Two Picture Books About the Many Meanings of the Word ‘Go’
In Julie Flett’s “Let’s Go! haw êkwa!” and Kirsten Cappy and Yaya Gentille’s “Kende! Kende! Kende!” going is just the beginning of a whole new world.
By Juanita Giles
Jenny Slate Has Learned to Chill by Reading Aloud to Her Daughter
“It is perhaps the most relaxing thing that I’ve ever done,” says the actress, whose new book of essays is “Lifeform.” She thanks her own mother for the gift of Margaret Atwood.
A Translation of a Translation of a Novel Within a Novel
Yang Shuang-zi’s “Taiwan Travelogue,” a National Book Award finalist, is a nesting-doll narrative about colonial power in its many forms.
By Shahnaz Habib
Awaiting the Results of I.V.F., a Couple Watch the World Burn
In his novel “States of Emergency,” Chris Knapp doesn’t just tighten the distance between our inner lives and the world around us; he erases it.
By Hilary Leichter
Alice in Moominland
Tove Jansson’s illustrations for a rare 1966 edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” are melancholy, complex and occasionally scary.
By Sadie Stein
Patrick Radden Keefe on Taking ‘Say Nothing’ From Acclaimed Book to TV Show
Keefe’s narrative history, which was No. 19 on our list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, has now been adapted into a streaming series.
12 Books Coming in November
Novels by Haruki Murakami and Rebecca Yarros, memoirs by Angela Merkel and Cher, and more.
Let Us Help You Find Your Next Book
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By The New York Times Books Staff
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The Needy Genius Who Understood the Cosmos (People, Not So Much)
“The Impossible Man,” by Patchen Barss, depicts the British mathematical physicist and Nobelist Sir Roger Penrose in all his iconoclastic complexity.
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In This Tokyo Rock Novel, the Cool Kids Are Not All Right
“Set My Heart on Fire” follows a young woman through a world of drugs, music and highly conditional relationships.
By Molly Young
How Do You Spell Rock Royalty? R.E.M.
In a new biography, Peter Ames Carlin chronicles the rise of an indispensable band and the evolution of its music.
By Dwight Garner
A Heady History of the Novel Embraces Works That Shock, Not Soothe
In “Stranger Than Fiction,” Edwin Frank maps a path from Dostoyevsky to Sebald, finding mystical power and surprising ties among 20th-century writers.
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The Early Loves of Oliver Sacks: Medicine, Muscles and Motorbikes
A new collection of personal letters tracks the neurologist’s raucous self-discovery and venerable career.
The 25 Most Influential Cookbooks From the Last 100 Years
Chefs, writers, editors and a bookseller gathered to debate — and decide — which titles have most changed the way we cook and eat.
By Jenny Comita, Jessica Battilana, Tanya Bush, Martha Cheng, Jonathan Kauffman, Michael Snyder, Amiel Stanek and Korsha Wilson
Elizabeth Nunez, Who Chronicled the Immigrant’s Challenges, Dies at 80
In “Prospero’s Daughter” and other novels, she explored the legacy of colonialism in her native Trinidad and the struggle for belonging in an adopted country.
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Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Murderous Emperors, Plagues, Killer Lobsters: New Speculative Fiction
Recent books by Minsoo Kang, Margaret Killjoy and James S.A. Corey.
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In the last year, museums, book festivals, arts journals and other organizations have experienced bitter discord over what qualifies as tolerable speech about the conflict and its combatants.
By Marc Tracy
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Samantha Harvey’s ‘Orbital’ Wins 2024 Booker Prize
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By Alex Marshall
Do You Know These World-Famous Children’s Books?
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By J. D. Biersdorfer
Where on Earth Are We Going? This Geographer’s Not Sure.
In “Four Points of the Compass,” Jerry Brotton explores the disorienting, dizzying history of our relationship to direction.
By Ian Volner
In Every World-Weary Private Eye Is an Errant Philosopher
Sergio De La Pava’s novel “Every Arc Bends Its Radian” is a detective story that takes a strange turn in Colombia’s dark underbelly.
By Dwyer Murphy
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by Yu Hua & translated by Michael Berry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2003
Yu Hua’s elderly narrator Xu Fugui relates to a passing “city boy” the story of how he gambled away his family’s fortune,...
A Chinese Everyman’s progress from self-indulgent irresponsibility to resignation and the beginning of wisdom is briskly in a 1993 novel known in other parts of the world as the source of the highly successful film.
Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2003
ISBN: 1-4000-3186-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
LITERARY FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
by Yu Hua ; translated by Allan H. Barr
by Yu Hua translated by Allan H. Barr
by Yu Hua and translated by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Carlos Rojas
by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE
More by Robert Harris
by Robert Harris
THE SECRET HISTORY
by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
More by Donna Tartt
by Donna Tartt
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