Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors creates a world of false facades and alter egos
The title of Tan Twan Eng’s new novel, The House of Doors, comes from a scene when the protagonist, Lesley Hamlyn, visits a wealthy friend’s private collection of decorated doors,…
C Pam Zhang’s Land of Milk and Honey is set within an elite bubble in a poisoned world
C Pam Zhang’s new novel Land of Milk and Honey possesses the stark outline of one of Kafka’s creepy fables. While most of the world suffers under a mysterious “smog”…
In The Men Can’t Be Saved, a rascally antihero struggles to get out of his own way
Beware the curse of early success. As Seth Taranoff — protagonist of Ben Purkert’s debut novel, The Men Can’t Be Saved — discovers after his tagline for a brand of…
Tom Piazza’s new novel imagines an 1883 meeting of writers hoping to redefine America
The question that animates Tom Piazza’s new novel The Auburn Conference is posed in the opening pages: Is American literature “worthy” of study? The answer may be obvious today, but…
In Michael Farris Smith’s Salvage This World, a young mother seeks shelter with her estranged father
Michael Farris Smith’s new novel Salvage This World begins with a woman on the run. Jessie, a young mother in an unnamed hamlet of coastal Mississippi, “scoops” her child and…
In Charles Frazier’s The Trackers, a painter searches for a rich rancher’s runaway wife
Charles Frazier’s novels possess scope and grandeur. His characters may begin life on dirt farms or parched Indian reservations, but in Frazier’s hands their quests take on epic dimensions. His…
