Latest news with #novels
Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
An affair with your aunt? I never made a beeline for mine
T here are not many Booker-winning novels of this century you would be happy to tip your camera at. I suppose you could try with last year's winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, in which some astronauts do absolutely nothing of interest while circling the Earth at 16,000mph. If I were Harvey I'd have put a couple of aliens in it, maybe a horrible one hiding in the water tank and another — a friendly one who helps to defeat the one in the water tank — banging on the porthole trying to get in. Or anything, frankly: a line of interesting dialogue, or a compelling character. Perhaps even a story. And so it has been for most of the century, except for 2014 when the Australian Richard Flanagan took the prize for what was a comparatively conservative work of fiction — and here is The Narrow Road to the Deep North (BBC1/iPlayer) on Sunday nights, the work of Screen Australia and starring Jacob Elordi, who titillated the world in Saltburn and is receiving superlative notices.
Washington Post
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘If You Love It, Let It Kill You' turns navel-gazing into art
A few weeks ago, David Brooks ran out of things to write about in the New York Times and so decided to pour more water over some old tea bag about the death of literary fiction. 'America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women,' he wrote, and 'the public taste is occupied with their trash.' No — wait — that was Nathaniel Hawthorne back in 1855, but you get the idea. Our latest novels, Brooks wrote, have grown timid and insular. As someone who's been reviewing fiction every week for three decades and often feels moved and dazzled, I could sense a rebuttal swelling in my evidently easily pleased brain. Just over the last few months, Bruce Holsinger's 'Culpability' tackled the ethical implications of AI, Susan Choi's 'Flashlight' explored the abiding tragedy of North Korea, Karen Russell's 'The Antidote' conjured up a magical tale of environmental destruction in the American West, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 'Dream Count' followed the intertwined lives of women in the United States and Africa. Timid and insular, sir? I think not. But it was then, perched atop my high dudgeon, that I noticed I was reading Hannah Pittard's 'If You Love It, Let It Kill You.' Pittard, as you may know from her 2023 memoir, 'We Are Too Many,' is an English professor in Kentucky whose husband cheated on her. Now she's written a novel about an English professor in Kentucky whose husband cheated on her. It sounds like the kind of book you'd want to keep on the bottom shelf if you had to debate David Brooks about the ambition and audacity of contemporary American fiction. At times, you might even wonder whose side Pittard is on. Early in 'If You Love It,' the narrator admits, 'I'm a chronicler of the everyday mundanities of life.' She imagines her students complaining, 'Where's the plot?' Her partner tells her, 'You're a family of navel gazers.' He's not wrong, but that Brooksian dismissal hardly tells the whole story, because the success of such a novel depends on the navel and the gazer. For all its quirky self-referentiality and cramped plot, 'If You Love It' is an account of female anxiety, depression and sexual dissatisfaction. For decades, male anxiety, depression and sexual dissatisfaction passed as capacious themes for fiction (See: 20th-century novels by White guys named John). That such audacious writers as Pittard, Kate Folk, Ada Calhoun and Miranda July are turning those themes on the lathes of their own sharp fiction isn't just fair play, it's cause for celebration. Pittard's special contribution is her ability to braid strands of pathos and comedy. The melancholy narrator, an avatar of the author trimmed down to 'Hana,' feels besieged by the close presence of family, including her sister's household next door; her severely unbalanced father, who wants to be a charming character in one of her books; her eccentric mother, who's dating three men simultaneously online; and her partner's 11-year-old daughter, who has surely heard Hana say she doesn't like kids. What's worse, Hana has just learned that her ex-husband is about to publish a novel about their ruined marriage that portrays her as a smug, insecure hack. The publisher will be using her full name in the publicity material. 'You can't use fiction as a means of making false accusations about living people,' Hana says. 'It's unethical. Fiction isn't a platform for revenge.' These indignant lines are funnier if you're tuned into the literary kerfuffle that's been rumbling between Pittard and her ex-husband, Andrew Ewell, who did, in fact, publish a novel last year called 'Set For Life' inspired by their ruined marriage. But what's pertinent to most readers is that this story follows a mad woman, a woman mad at life, who lives too much in her head, is dogged by erratic erotic urges and suspects there might be something troubling about her desire to play dead. 'It's all happening too quickly,' she thinks, 'and it couldn't be over too soon.' Hana's humor keeps rolling over these adamantine terrors like waves, but periodically when that tide of comedy pulls back, we find ourselves stranded with a middle-aged woman crying, 'oh my god this is not what my life was supposed to be, is it?' At such moments, 'If You Love It,' feels almost too heartbreaking to bear. But Pittard doesn't leave us there. For one thing, Hana imagines her writing students critiquing her story as it takes place. And they aren't particularly kind — 'Is this some sort of plot device?' they ask impatiently. Hana doesn't hold back on them, either. She portrays her students as chronically unimaginative writers always pestering her for permission to add vampires and talking cats to their work. Until, what do you know, a particularly acerbic kitten paws into Hana's life and starts mewing no-nonsense advice. And with that surreal intrusion, 'If You Love It' tilts another few degrees away from reality's plumb line. If memoir is that pious figure who vows to tell the truth and then lies, autofiction is the cheeky kid who wants extra credit for confessing her deceit up front. Is Pittard working through her own private catastrophes in this novel? Of course — but so is every other novelist. She's just letting us see the splintered timbers of her experience clearly enough to recognize our own. 'This book,' Hana tells us, is 'neither a comedy nor a tragedy but something much worse: real life.' And what is that, really, besides the long struggle to understand — and appreciate — that we're all characters in each other's stories. Ron Charles reviews books and writes the Book Club newsletter for The Washington Post. He is the book critic for 'CBS Sunday Morning.'
Washington Post
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Publishing's affair with fan fiction has a new star couple: Dramione
If you look at two of this summer's best-selling romantasy novels, you may think you're seeing double. The covers of 'Rose in Chains' by Julie Soto and 'The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy' by Brigitte Knightley are adorned with strikingly similar couples: Each has a silver-haired man with chiseled cheekbones and a woman with curly brown hair, an intense stare and an unmistakable aura of competence. The resemblance between the books is anything but passing. The covers, both featuring art by Nikita Jobson, are a deliberate wink to the stories' shared origins in the Harry Potter fandom and Dramione fan fiction.
CBS News
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
The Book Report: Ron Charles on new summer reads (July 20)
By Washington Post book critic Ron Charles As summer revs up, here are three cool new novels, and a work of history that's wilder than fiction! Lucas Schaefer's debut novel, "The Slip," takes place in and around a boxing gym in Austin, Texas, where everybody is trying to become somebody different. Following two White teenagers – one obsessed with his African American mentor, the other discovering their transgender identity – this sweaty, comic masterpiece jumps in the ring with our most pressing social debates, and lands a knockoutv . Read an excerpt: "The Slip" by Lucas Schaefer "The Slip" by Lucas Schaefer (Simon & Schuster), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and At the start of Michelle Huneven's "Bug Hollow," the sweetest, smartest son any parents could ask for has just graduated from high school and headed off with his friends for a weeklong road trip. But what starts as a domestic comedy soon becomes a tragedy, and Huneven turns her gracious eye to the way families carry on, even when shattered, and thrive. Read an excerpt: "Bug Hollow" by Michelle Huneven "Bug Hollow" by Michelle Huneven (Penguin Press), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and In "The Satisfaction Cafe," a gently witty new novel by Kathy Wang, a woman from Taiwan makes her way in America with patience and determination. For decades, she struggles to fit in with a complicated, wealthy family, until she can finally create a little safe space where people can find what they really want: just to be heard. Read an excerpt: "The Satisfaction Café" by Kathy Wang "The Satisfaction Café" by Kathy Wang (Scribner), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and A century ago, Western scientists knew almost nothing about giant pandas. Now, in a thrilling work of history, Nathalia Holt follows Teddy Roosevelt's sons, Ted and Kermit, as they set out with a team to China to track down these black-and-white creatures. How would the brothers survive this treacherous expedition? And what would the implications be for these gentle animals? Holt explores these fascinating questions and others in "The Beast in the Clouds." Read an excerpt: "The Beast in the Clouds" by Nathalia Holt "The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda" by Nathalia Holt (Atria/One Signal), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and That's it for the Book Report. For these and other suggestions about what to read this summer, talk with your local bookseller or librarian. I'm Ron Charles. Until next time, read on! For more info: Produced by Robin Sanders. Editor: Joseph Frandino. For more reading recommendations, check out these previous Book Report features from Ron Charles:
New York Times
16-07-2025
- General
- New York Times
Where Have All the Novel-Reading Men Gone?
To the Editor: I enjoyed 'Men Fade From a Literary Circle,' by Joseph Bernstein (Thursday Styles, July 3), about the decline in the number of men who read novels. After graduation from college, while working in my first real job, I consumed 'Anna Karenina' in a beautiful marathon of reading; I worked all day, then drove home to read Tolstoy late into the night. I repeated that cycle again and again, devouring every word, happy but also sad because I knew the reverie could not last. Mr. Bernstein offers that men have stopped reading novels, but it is not only men. I try to interest my nieces in novels. I explain to them that fiction contains the distilled experiences of other people. You may never be a secret agent posted to Havana, but you can imagine what it would be like in 'Our Man in Havana.' You may never create life and be forced to live with the consequences, but you can imagine what it would be like in 'Frankenstein.' Stuart GallantBelmont, Mass. To the Editor: Joseph Bernstein's article resonated with me, but failed to reach the next step of why men should be reading more fiction. Fiction allows us to step into others' shoes, enabling us to understand how they feel (emotional intelligence) and why they make the decisions they make (cognitive empathy). As a 20-something woman, I've had the 'book genre conversation' with heterosexual men around my age, but many brush over it and don't acknowledge what there is to be gained from reading fiction. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
