Tuesday, April 1, 2025

"Three Days in June," by Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler's novels always feel like old friends. I have been reading her work since the 1970s, and I don't remember ever not loving...
Wednesday, March 12, 2025

"Fasting, Feasting," and "Rosarita": Recent(ish) Novels by Anita Desai

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Back in the 1980s, I was reading many novels by Indian writers, and/or with Indian settings. This was partly because I spent most of my chil...
Saturday, February 1, 2025

"Miss Kim Knows: And Other Stories," by Cho Nam-Joo

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"Miss Kim Knows: And Other Stories" (Liveright, 2024), by the Korean writer Cho Nam-Joo and translated into English by Jamie Chang...
Sunday, January 19, 2025

The Best Books I Read in 2024

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As I do almost every year, here I list the best books (in my opinion) out of the many that I read in 2024 (although in some cases they were ...
Tuesday, January 7, 2025

"Family Reservations," by Liza Palmer

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A mother and three competitive daughters. (Queen Lear rather than King Lear?) The elite world of fine dining, also ultra-competitive. A Mari...
Thursday, December 12, 2024

"Women in Sunlight," by Frances Mayes

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Many of you know, or know of, the American writer Frances Mayes' memoirs about her time in Tuscany, Italy (most famously, "Under th...
Wednesday, November 27, 2024

"Shred Sisters," by Betsy Lerner

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As I was reading "Shred Sisters" (Grove Press, 2024), by Betsy Lerner, I was thinking about how very often novels are about sister...