The year is 1940, and President Roosevelt stands firm in his commitment to keep America out of the war. Europe is in the throes of the Nazi takeover, and London is suffering under the Blitz, yet life in America goes on as usual. In Sarah Blake’s brilliant 2010 novel “The Postmistress,” readers follow three...
Read more »
When I picked up Thrity Umrigar’s newest novel, “The World We Found” (2012) at the bookstore, I expected to read a poignant story about the reunion of three college classmates from Bombay in the 1970s with their friend who emigrated to the United States. I knew from Umrigar’s earlier novel “The Space Between Us”...
Read more »
Ten women gathered in my living room, ready to discuss our book club’s choice, “The Tiger’s Wife,” the exalted first novel of Téa Obreht. This 26-year-old Yugoslavian-born writer topped recent lists of best writers under 40, and her novel is on the best books of 2011 lists in The New York Times, The Wall...
Read more »
Tina Fey works hard in her 2011 memoir “Bossypants” to create a picture of herself as a big-hipped, thin-lipped, sarcastic loser from the suburbs of Philadelphia who by some stroke of luck became part of the world of celebrity. Nice try, Tina! There’s way too much within these pages that shows the charm, the...
Read more »
An online interviewer asked Francine Prose, author of 16 novels and several non-fiction books, how she would like to be remembered. She replied, “I’d like them to say books were substantial but fun, extremely serious but funny, and never boring.” That sentence alone could stand as a review of her 2011 novel, “My...
Read more »
By Adrienne Lawrence and Bethany E. Starin A hip new restaurant is scheduled to open this week — but it might not be a spot where you’d expect to find Bryan Voltaggio in the kitchen. Why? Because it’s a casual sandwich and lunch place that he and his business partner, Hilda Staples, are dubbing...
Read more »
I’m in awe of Geraldine Brooks. She takes on writing projects that require formidable research and exacting attention to detail like a plague-ravaged 17th-century village in “Year of Wonders” or six centuries of Jewish history in “People of the Book.” The resulting works are wonderfully convincing. Her latest winning work of fiction is “Caleb’s...
Read more »
Sometimes I forget how satisfying it can be to read poetry; Mrs. Vandling’s English classes almost killed the medium for me many years ago. But now, thankfully, there is Billy Collins, America’s Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003. I picked up my third collection of his poems, “Horoscopes for the Dead” (2011), couldn’t put...
Read more »
The Civil War 150th commemoration of the Maryland Campaign, to be held Sept. 8 to 22, 2012, has been designated as one of the American Bus Association’s 2012 Top 100 Events in North America. Inclusion in the Top 100 list, published as a supplement to the September/October issue of Destinations magazine, indicates that today...
Read more »
In 2006 Lisa Genova tried for over a year to find a literary agent to promote her first book project, “Still Alice.” “Not interested,” they said. “There’s no market for a story about a woman with Alzheimer’s.” Reluctantly Genova, who has a doctorate in neuroscience from Harvard, self-published her novel, and the professionals couldn’t...
Read more »
