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Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review — June 18, 2023

June 16, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JUNE 18, 2023: Stephen King reviews of S. A. Cosby’s blistering new Southern gothic, “All the Sinners Bleed,” which graces our cover this week. Also featured are John Vaillant’s chillingly prescient book about a 2016 Canadian wildfire; a history that pieces together a botany expedition in the Grand Canyon some 85 years ago; and the spiky, percussive, heavy-metal-infused novel “Gone to the Wolves.”

In This Thriller, the Psycho Killers Have a Southern Drawl

This illustration shows a sheriff on a dark rural street, one hand on the grip of his holstered pistol and the other hand shining a flashlight into the woods. Out of his line of sight, the silhouette of a man in a wolf mask lurks behind a tree, watching ominously.

Stephen King reviews S.A. Cosby’s latest novel, “All the Sinners Bleed.”

Titus Crown is an ex-F.B.I. agent who gets a sheriff’s job, almost by accident, in a rural Virginia community. He’s Black. Mr. Spearman teaches geography and wears a coat of many countries on Earth Day. He’s white. Given the name of the town and county where these two live — Charon — one can expect bad things to happen, and they certainly do. As in S.A. Cosby’s previous two novels, “Blacktop Wasteland” and “Razorblade Tears,” the body count is high and the action pretty much nonstop.

They Overcame Hazards — and Doubters — to Make Botanical History

In a black-and-white photograph from 1938, two women and four men sit in a boat looking at the camera. One woman wears a white dress and hat; the other wears slacks and a blouse. Three of the men are shirtless; two wear pith helmets.

In Melissa Sevigny’s “Brave the Wild River,” we meet the two scientists who explored unknown terrain — and broke barriers.

Let’s start this story on a sun-blistered evening in August 1938. A small band of adventurers had just concluded a 43-day journey from Utah to Nevada — although perhaps “journey” is too tame a description for a trip that had required weeks of small wooden boats tumbling down more than 600 miles of rock-strewn rivers. The goal was twofold. First, to simply survive. And then, to chart the plants building homes along the serrated walls of the Grand Canyon.

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The New York Times Book Review — June 11, 2023

June 9, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JUNE 11, 2023: This week’s issue brims with even more books to add to your teetering nightstand pile: talky new novels by Brandon Taylor, R.F. Kuang and Luis Alberto Urrea; a wistful ode to a beloved neighborhood bar; the latest crime fiction; even some Martin Amis titles you’ve always meant to pick up, plucked from A.O. Scott’s beautiful appraisal of the late British writer.

Good Night, Sweet Prince

This black-and-white photograph is a close-up of the writer Martin Amis’s face. He is staring intently into the camera.

Our critic assesses the achievement of Martin Amis, Britain’s most famous literary son.

By A.O. Scott

On May 6, at the age of 74, Charles III was crowned king of England. A few weeks later, at 73, Martin Amis died at his home in Florida. One event seemed almost comically belated, the other tragically premature. Charles took over the family business well past normal retirement age, while Amis was denied the illustrious dotage that great writers deserve.

For ‘The Late Americans,’ Grad School Life Equals Envy, Sex and Ennui

The book jacket for “The Late Americans,” by Brandon Taylor, is an abstract illustration of two men’s faces; one man is kissing the chin of the other.

Brandon Taylor’s novel circulates among Iowa City residents, some privileged, some not, but all aware that their possibilities are contracting.

By Alexandra Jacobs

Reading Brandon Taylor’s new novel, “The Late Americans,” I thought more than once of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award that the English magazine Literary Review gave to decades of authors, many esteemed, before showing mercy in pandemic-chilled 2020. Not because the sex in Taylor’s novel is described badly, but because — described well! — so much of it is bad.

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The New York Times Book Review-Sunday June 4, 2023

June 2, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JUNE 4, 2023: The summer reading issue lands this weekend, 56 pages filled with suggestions of books to keep you company at the beach or in that shady mothballed nook you discovered in your rental share. The issue closes with a beautiful photo essay of swimmers pictured underwater, from an art book that evokes summer as vividly as fried clam strips and soft-serve ice cream: “Swimmers,” by Larry Sultan.

Deep-Sea Creatures of Bittersweet Orange and Metallic Opaline Green

This illustration depicts two enormous fish with red eyes and lots of teeth swimming around the bathysphere, an underwater exploration machine from the 1930s.

In “The Bathysphere Book,” Brad Fox chronicles the fascinating Depression-era ocean explorations of William Beebe.

Consider the siphonophore. An inhabitant of the lightless ocean, it looks like a single organism, but is actually a collection of minute creatures, each with its own purpose, working in harmony to move, to eat, to stay alive. They seem impossible but they are real. In 1930 William Beebe was 3,000 feet underwater in a bathysphere, an early deep-sea submersible, when he spotted a huge one: a writhing 20-yard mass whose pale magenta shone impossibly against the absolute blackness of the water. As you can imagine, it made an impression.

An Indictment of Human Culture, Narrated by a Mountain Lion

This is a close-up illustration of a lion’s eye, reflecting the silhouette of a man against a blue sky and greenery.

Henry Hoke’s latest novel, “Open Throat,” follows an observant — and starving — cougar living in the Los Angeles hills surrounding the Hollywood sign.

There is a moment toward the end of “Open Throat,” Henry Hoke’s slim jewel of a novel, where the narrator, a mountain lion living in the desert hills surrounding Los Angeles’s Hollywood sign, falls asleep and dreams of Disneyland. It will be hard for those who haven’t yet read this propulsive novel to understand, but the lion’s waking life at this moment is so precarious that this slippage into pleasant dream left me scared to turn the page.

Summertime in America, Beneath the Surface

A new book of photographs by Larry Sultan captures recreational swimmers at public pools in 1970s and ‘80s California.

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The New York Times Book Review-Sunday May 28, 2023

May 26, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – MAY 28, 2023:

The New Definitive Biography of Martin Luther King Jr.

“King: A Life,” by Jonathan Eig, is the first comprehensive account of the civil rights icon in decades.

Growing up, he was called Little Mike, after his father, the Baptist minister Michael King. Later he sometimes went by M.L. Only in college did he drop his first name and began to introduce himself as Martin Luther King Jr. This was after his father visited Germany and, inspired by accounts of the reform-minded 16th-century friar Martin Luther, adopted his name.

Victor LaValle’s Latest Mixes Horror With a History of the West

A black-and-white historical photograph of a farm with mountains in the background.

His novel “Lone Women” follows a Black homesteader in Montana who is haunted by secrets and a dark past.

Victor LaValle’s enthralling fifth novel, “Lone Women,” opens like a true western, with a scene of dark, bloody upheaval and a hint of vengeance. But nothing in this genre-melding book is as it seems. When we meet Adelaide Henry, the grown daughter of Black farmers, she is in a daze, dumping gasoline all over her family’s farmhouse. We don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing, what happened to her family or, most important, what else she has or hasn’t done.

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The New York Times Book Review-Sunday May 21, 2023

May 20, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – MAY 21, 2023

In This Satire, Televised Blood Baths Offer Prisoners a Path to Freedom

You can’t applaud Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s thrilling debut novel, “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” without getting blood on your hands.

The Martian Chronicles

Astronauts simulating a Mars spacewalk. As Matthew Shindell points out, our obsession with the planet is a relatively recent phenomenon.

In Matthew Shindell’s “For the Love of Mars,” perceptions of the planet reflect the changing culture of Earth.

Essential Neil Gaiman and A.I. Book Freakout

From the cult comic book series “The Sandman” to the giddy novel “Good Omens” (co-written with his friend Terry Pratchett) to the horror-tinged children’s story “Coraline” and beyond, the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman is so inventive and so prolific that you’ve probably stumbled across his influential work without even realizing it.

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The New York Times Book Review-Sunday May 14, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – MAY 14, 2023

Abraham Verghese’s Sweeping New Fable of Family and Medicine

This illustration, in shades of deep green, shows a young woman standing at the edge of a lush landscape with ferns or palm fronds surrounding her and joining above her head.

“The Covenant of Water” follows three generations of a close-knit and haunted family in southwestern India.

Pablo Picasso, the Pariah of Paris

This sepia photograph of a young Picasso shows him standing in front of a run-down Parisian building.

As Annie Cohen-Solal shows in “Picasso the Foreigner,” the Spanish master was always under suspicion in France, simply for being not-French.

By Holland Cotter

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The New York Times Book Review- Sunday May 7, 2023

May 6, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – MAY 7, 2023

Face to Face With Culture’s ‘Monsters’

An illustration of a grid of different faces of monsters, with the labels “polymath,” “genius,” “Nobel laureate,” “virtuoso,” “Pulitzer Prize winner,” “artist’s artist,” “best painter ever,” “visionary” and “comedy legend.”

Claire Dederer’s deft and searching book surfaces a “fan’s dilemma” over such figures as Vladimir Nabokov, Woody Allen, Willa Cather and Roman Polanski.

By Alexandra Jacobs

Expanding on a popular essay published in The Paris Review a month after the exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual predation, “Monsters” sustains an essayistic, sometimes aphoristic tone throughout 250-odd pages.

Dark Shadows, Dark Times

Welcome to three novels set in locales where life is exceedingly difficult.

This is an illustration in shades of red, white and blue, of two women pressing their hands against a wall and peering at each other as if through a mirror.

By Alida Becker

AT THE HOUR BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF by Tara Ison

The title comes from a French expression for twilight. Sure enough, her novel sends us to the dusk that borders the familiar and the wild, the known and the unknown. It’s where our beliefs and suspicions can cast dark shadows over our lives. And, of course, the lives of others.

One Man’s Foray Into the Heartland of the Far Right

Alarmed by the country’s political divisions, Jeff Sharlet embarked on an anguished quest to understand the rise of antidemocratic extremism. In “The Undertow,” he documents his findings.

In this color photo, a group of men and women, including a man holding a baby, an older woman in glasses, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, stand alongside what appears to be the wall of a red barn, pledging allegiance to the American flag. Several people in the group hold their right hands over their hearts as they make the pledge.

By Joseph O’Neill

THE UNDERTOW: Scenes From a Slow Civil War, by Jeff Sharlet

The premise of “The Undertow,” Jeff Sharlet’s anguished new book of reportage, is that the United States is “coming apart.” The disintegration is political. It involves the rise of the autocratically inclined Donald Trump; the attempt by members of the Republican Party to overthrow the election of Joe Biden in January 2021; and, during the Biden presidency, the overturning by the Supreme Court of Roe v Wade.

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The New York Times Book Review – April 30, 2023

April 28, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The New York Times Book Review (April 30, 2023): On the cover this week – Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovery of America,” a sweeping, important, revisionist work of American history that places Native Americans front and center. Illustrating it is “Les Castors du Roi,” a 2011 painting by Kent Monkman, a Cree artist in Canada’s Dish With One Spoon Territory.

Read Your Way Through Boston

An illustration depicting a snowy street in Boston; a man in the foreground is engrossed in reading his book. — Credit…Raphaelle Macaron

Paul Theroux, the quintessential travel writer, has also enshrined his Massachusetts roots in his writing. Here are his recommendations for those who come to visit.

My father, like many passionate readers, was a literary pilgrim in his native Massachusetts, a state rich in destinations, hallowed by many of the greatest writers in the language. “Look, Paulie, this is the House of the Seven Gables — go on, count them!”

Everything, Everywhere, in One Big Book

This color photo shows a woman flipping pages of a book posed on top of a long low bookcase filled with volumes. Behind the woman, stretching to the top of the photograph are more bookshelves filled with books. — A woman consults a book at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan.Credit…Ángel Franco/The New York Times

In “All the Knowledge in the World,” Simon Garfield recounts the history of the encyclopedia — a tale of ambitious effort, numerous errors and lots of paper.

In ‘Ordinary Notes,’ a Radical Reading of Black Life

The book cover for “Ordinary Notes,” by Christina Sharpe, is lilac with bold black type. A blurry photo of houses at twilight sits along the bottom edge.

The scholar Christina Sharpe’s new book comprises memories, observations, artifacts and artworks — fragments attesting to the persistence of prejudice while allowing glimpses of something like hope.

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The New York Times Book Review – April 23, 2023

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The New York Times Book Review – April 23, 2023:

With His Tale of Shipwreck, David Grann Is Steady as He Goes

This illustration shows a sailing ship being tossed in heaving seas. The art is stylized, with mostly black, white and subtle blue lines, and the image is mirrored, so the same picture appears twice, once right-side up and the other upside down. — Credit…Naï Zakharia

The author’s latest book, “The Wager,” investigates the mysteries surrounding an 18th-century maritime disaster off Cape Horn.

There were multiple moments while reading David Grann’s new book, “The Wager,” about an 18th-century shipwreck, when it occurred to me that the kind of nonfiction narratives The New Yorker writer has become known for share something essential with a sturdy ship.

‘Biography of X’ Rewrites a Life Story and an American Century

The book jacket of “Biography of X,” by Catherine Lacey, is a deep red with a small, scrambled photograph of a woman’s face in the center.

Catherine Lacey’s new novel follows a polarizing artist through a fractured country.

The narrator of “Biography of X,” the new Catherine Lacey novel, is a journalist named C.M. Lucca who worked for a Village Voice-like newspaper in New York City during the 1980s. C.M. has a cool tone and a lonely intelligence; she’s a solitary spirit.

These Police Chiefs Are Working to Change Perceptions

A sea of uniformed police officers throng Fifth Avenue; an American flag waves in the background. — Police officers from across the country line Fifth Avenue for the funeral of the N.Y.P.D. officer Wilbert D. Mora, 2022.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times

In “Walk the Walk,” Neil Gross profiles three departments around the country experimenting with genuine reform.

WALK THE WALK: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture, by Neil Gross

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The New York Times Book Review – April 16, 2023

April 14, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The New York Times Book Review – April 16, 2023:

She Taught Us to Do Nothing. Now Jenny Odell Wants to Save Time.

This image shows the hands of a clock set into a circle of melting ice, suggesting time is fluid and ephemeral. — Credit…Ricardo Tomás

The author’s new book, “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock,” urges readers to revise their conceptions of time and the world to nurture hope and action for a better future.