Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House multiplies the world of A Visit from the Goon Squad
Bix Bouton, the first protagonist in Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House, is the founder of a landscape-changing tech media company, but he’s plagued by fears that he won’t be able…
Desperate characters in Nathan Elias’ debut novel plunge into alternate realities
For a novel set in Los Angeles, a city legendary for its year-round sunshine, Nathan Elias’ Coil Quake Rift is strangely inundated with darkness. The gloom descends in the opening…
Joel Agee’s debut novel delves into a young boy’s mind in a time of crisis
The bildungsroman, or novel of education, should be the most open of genres, its lessons variable to time and circumstance. In practice, however, novels and films about children follow predictable…
Jennifer Haigh’s Mercy Street considers the battle over abortion
Jennifer Haigh’s new novel Mercy Street begins in January 2015 as Boston is hit by the snowiest winter in 364 years or “roughly how long people have been complaining about…
On finding the right team to root for
…Drew Pearson, Randy White, Cliff Harris — those Cowboys manifested in my fantasy life, mythic figures to whom I owed unquestioned fealty. Photo: Sean Kinch With basketball, a sport unclaimed…
Padgett Powell’s new collection of nonfiction takes you inside the mind of an unconventional novelist
Fans of Padgett Powell’s fiction expect to find in Indigo, his first collection of nonfiction, quirky characters and inimitable prose, and they won’t be disappointed. Another set of readers, unfamiliar…
