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Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review – December 3, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (December 3, 2023): This week features the Holiday Books issue that lands with a thump, a 56-page behemoth crammed with reviews, coffee-table book spreads, recommendations from our genre columnists, a children’s book gift guide and our 100 Notables list. 

100 Notable Books of 2023

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Each year, we pore over thousands of new books, seeking out the best novels, memoirs, biographies, poetry collections, stories and more. Here are the standouts, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

How a Good Book Became the ‘Richest’ of Holiday Gifts

As Christmas came to be celebrated in the home, choosing the right volume was a way to show intimate understanding of the person opening the package.

By Jennifer Harlan

As long as people have been buying gifts for the holidays, they have been buying books. Books offer infinite variety, are easily wrapped, can be personalized for the recipient and displayed as a signifier of one’s own identity. They are, in many respects, the quintessential Christmas — or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or other December celebration — gift.

Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review – November 26, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (November 26, 2023): This week’s issue features  Michael Cunningham’s “Day.”; the 2023 Notables list, “Kantika”, “The Nursery.” and “Western Lane” , because it’s a finalist for the Booker Prize, which will be announced on Sunday.

A Pandemic Novel That Never Says ‘Pandemic’

This illustration shows three people sitting at a table, but the image is broken up into three panels, giving the appearance that the three people are in the same space, but alone and at different times.

Michael Cunningham’s “Day” peeks into the lives of a family on one specific April date across three years as life changes because of Covid and other challenges.

By Caleb Crain

DAY, by Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham’s new novel, “Day,” visits a family on April 5 in 2019, 2020 and 2021 — before, during and after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which shadows the book although the words “Covid” and “pandemic” never appear.

‘Western Lane’ Finds Solace From Grief on the Squash Court

In Chetna Maroo’s debut novel, an adolescent girl mourns the death of her mother in the empty reverberations between points.

By Ivy Pochoda

WESTERN LANE, by Chetna Maroo

At the start of Chetna Maroo’s polished and disciplined debut, Gopi, an 11-year-old Jain girl who has just lost her mother, stands on a squash court outside London. She isn’t playing. Instead, she’s listening to the sound of the ball hitting the wall on the adjacent court, “a quick, low pistol-shot of a sound, with a close echo.” It is not so much the shot itself that Gopi is hearing, but that echo, the empty reverb, the lonely response as the ball’s impact gives the striker a split second to retreat to the T, the center of the court, and prepare to counteract her opponent’s responding shot.

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The New York Times Book Review – November 19, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (November 19, 2023): This week’s issue features Fuchsia Dunlop’s seductive new exploration of Chinese cuisine, “Invitation to a Banquet”; Michael Lewis Tells His Own Story of Sam Bankman-Fried; He Carried the Bags (and the Secrets) for the Beatles – A new biography resuscitates the colorful, tragic life of Mal Evans: roadie, confidant, procurer, cowbell player…

A History of Chinese Food, and a Sensory Feast

A photograph of assorted dim sum, including green steamed dumplings, rice rolls, shumai and other items.

Fuchsia Dunlop’s “Invitation to a Banquet” is a cultural investigation of an impossibly broad and often misunderstood cuisine.

By Dwight Garner

INVITATION TO A BANQUET: The Story of Chinese Food, by Fuchsia Dunlop

“A really good cookbook,” Jan Morris wrote, “is intellectually more adventurous than the Kama Sutra.” Fuchsia Dunlop’s masterly new book, “Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food,” is not a cookbook per se. But it has an earthiness that calls to mind Morris’s comment.

AUDIOBOOKS

Listen to a Wellness-Culture Satire That Delves a Few Levels Deeper

In Jessie Gaynor’s debut novel, “The Glow,” read by Gabra Zackman, a P.R. rep immerses herself in the woo-woo world of a cultlike “spiritual retreat,” and its enigmatic leader.

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The New York Times Book Review – November 12, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (November 12, 2023): This week’s issue features ‘Fear of Flying’ turns 50 – With its feminist take on sexual pleasure, Erica Jong’s novel caused a sensation in 1973; The 2023 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books, and more…

‘Fear of Flying’ Is 50. What Happened to Its Dream of Freedom Through Sex?

This color photo is a close-up of a woman’s face near a window. She is wearing a cream-colored blouse and pearls, and her face, partly concealed by her thick blond shoulder-length hair, is turning toward the camera.

With its feminist take on sexual pleasure, Erica Jong’s novel caused a sensation in 1973. But the revolution Jong promoted never came to pass.

By Jane Kamensky

Fifty years ago last month, Erica Jong published a debut novel that went on to sell more than 20 million copies. “Fear of Flying,” a book so sexually frank that you may have found it hidden in your mother’s underwear drawer, broke new ground in the explicitness of writing by and for women. Jong’s heroine, Isadora Wing, was a live wire. She was also a dead end, certainly for Jong, and maybe for feminism, too.

6 New Paperbacks to Read This Week

Recommended reading from the Book Review, including titles by John Edgar Wideman, Yasunari Kawabata, Allegra Goodman and more.

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The New York Times Book Review – November 5, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (November 5, 2023): This week’s issue features music memoirs and biographies crammed into a single season including Madonna, Tupac Shakur, Sly Stone, Britney Spears, Thurston Moore, Jeff Tweedy and — soon — Barbra Streisand…

The Muchness of Madonna

Madonna in profile against a bright blue background during a 1990 concert. Her blond hair is in loose curls, her face is powdered white, with dark mascara and bright red lips close to a headset microphone, and she is flexing her muscular right arm and making a fist.

Mary Gabriel’s biography is as thorough as its subject is disciplined. But in relentlessly defending the superstar, where’s the party?

By Alexandra Jacobs

MADONNA: A Rebel Life, by Mary Gabriel

“I want to be alone,” Greta Garbo’s dancer character famously said in “Grand Hotel,” a quote permanently and only semi-accurately attached to the actress after she retreated from public life. Garbo was first on the list of Golden Agers in one of Madonna’s biggest hits, “Vogue,” but the pop star has long seemed to embody this maxim’s very opposite. She wants to be surrounded, as if with Dolby sound.

Rock ’n’ Soul: The Amazing Story of Sly & the Family Stone

This black-and-white photograph shows a young man singing into a microphone. He has an Afro and is wearing oversize glasses and a large necklace.

At the age of 80, Sly Stone has finally produced his memoir, and it gives a strong sense of this giant’s voice and sensibility.

‘By Alan Light

THANK YOU (FALETTINME BE MICE ELF AGIN): A Memoir, by Sly Stone with Ben Greenman

It is difficult to convey just how astoundingly unlikely it is that this book exists. Sly Stone is one of pop music’s truest geniuses and greatest mysteries, who essentially disappeared four decades ago in a cloud of drugs and legal problems after recording several albums’ worth of incomparable, visionary songs. Fleeting, baffling, blink-and-you-miss-him appearances at his 1993 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction and a 2006 Grammy tribute only served as reminders that he was still alive and still not well.

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The New York Times Book Review – October 29, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (October 29, 2023): This week’s issue features  “A Haunting on the Hill,” by Shirley Jackson; ‘I Feel a Human Deterioration’ – making sense of the violence and loss in Israel; Is It Time to Pull Up Stakes and Head for Mars? – Probably not, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith argue in “A City on Mars”….

A Fitting — and Frightening — Homage to ‘The Haunting of Hill House’

Apparitions, black hares and time warps festoon the pages of Elizabeth Hand’s “A Haunting on the Hill,” set in the same moldering mansion as Shirley Jackson’s classic horror novel.

‘I Feel a Human Deterioration’

Etgar Keret at home in Tel Aviv. “I think that this entire nation is going through PTSD,” he says.

The Israeli writer Etgar Keret has spent the last few weeks trying to make sense of the violence and loss around him. So far, he can’t.

Is It Time to Pull Up Stakes and Head for Mars?

This is a black and white illustration of our solar system.

Probably not, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith argue in “A City on Mars.”

By W. M. Akers

A CITY ON MARS: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

Face it, folks. Earth is finished. It’s overheated, overcrowded, overregulated. It’s the ultimate fixer-upper, a dump we inherited from our parents that we’d be cruel to pass on to our children. It’s time to pull up stakes. It’s time for Mars.

Or maybe not.

Lighting out for the solar system is an appealing fantasy, but “A City on Mars,” an exceptional new piece of popular science by the “Soonish” authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, suggests we shouldn’t be so quick to give up on Earth. Forceful, engaging and funny, it is an essential reality check for anyone who has ever looked for home in the night sky.

Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review – October 22, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (October 22, 2023): This week’s issue features “Hunting the Falcon,” on this week’s cover, Tina Brown, who reviewed it, calls it “a fierce, scholarly tour de force,” adding: “The authors, a husband-and-wife historian team, are a dream pairing.”

When Courtly Love Goes Wrong, It’s Deadly

In “Hunting the Falcon,” the historians John Guy and Julia Fox take a fresh look at an infamous Tudor marriage — and find there is indeed more to know.

By Tina Brown

HUNTING THE FALCON: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the Marriage That Shook Europe, by John Guy and Julia Fox

Anne Boleyn glanced over her shoulder repeatedly as she waited at the Tower of London for her executioner, a specialist swordsman who had been summoned from France. Would Henry VIII, who could spare lives as casually as he snuffed them out, spare her life on the scaffold as he’d been known to do before?

1960s London Comes Alive in a Fierce, Funny Coming-of-Age Novel

The book cover of “The Halt During the Chase,” by Rosemary Tonks, is set in a grid of purple, yellow and orange blocks.

In “The Halt During the Chase,” by Rosemary Tonks — first published in 1972, and newly reissued — a young woman goes in search of herself.

By Mary Marge Locker

THE HALT DURING THE CHASE, by Rosemary Tonks

From the first page of this clever, fishy little novel, our narrator, Sophie, is the kind of woman whose laughter is a weapon. She could scare off an assailant with one well-timed whack of her tongue. Originally published in 1972, “The Halt During the Chase” is the second Rosemary Tonks novel to be reissued by New Directions in as many years, bringing a new audience to her charming and imperfect heroines, who are all voice, half poetry and half snarl.

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The New York Times Book Review – October 15, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (October 15, 2023): This week’s issue features  a fabulous historical novel, the Janet Malcolm-like account of an Australian murder trial, a sprightly history of the Oxford English Dictionary, a homage to “The Haunting of Hill House”,  historical fiction, thrillers, crime novels, romance, horror & Gothic fiction, science fiction & fantasy.)

A Fitting — and Frightening — Homage to ‘The Haunting of Hill House’

Apparitions, black hares and time warps festoon the pages of Elizabeth Hand’s “A Haunting on the Hill,” set in the same moldering mansion as Shirley Jackson’s classic horror novel.

The Wife Has Committed Murder but It’s the Husband Who Scares Her Lawyer

In Marie NDiaye’s new novel, “Vengeance Is Mine,” a woman is haunted by a decades-old trauma she feels, but cannot quite remember.

The book cover of “Vengeance Is Mine” is designed like a ripped sheet of paper. The image features a blank surface with a triangular cutout running down from the top. The layer underneath the tear is red and reveals the author’s name and the novel’s title.

By Lovia Gyarkye

VENGEANCE IS MINE, by Marie NDiaye. Translated by Jordan Stump.

The characters in Marie NDiaye’s novels are an unsettling brood. They fret and pace around their homes, tormented by their pasts. Their minds trap and trick them. A daughter can’t shake memories of her mother’s murder; a man gropes for the truth about his imprisonment in a deserted vacation town; a chef pursues culinary perfection at any cost; a woman — reminded of a friend, a schoolteacher or was it her mother? — fatally chases an apparition in green.

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The New York Times Book Review – October 1, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (October 1, 2023): This week’s issue features the biography “Larry McMurtry: A Life”….

Larry McMurtry, a Critter of the American West Who Rejected Its Mythos

This black-and-white photo of the novelist Larry McMurtry shows him from a slight angle, seated and looking pensive. He wears heavy glasses and has one hand braced against his mouth and chin; his other arm is bent over his head and the sleeves of his white button-down shirt are rolled up past his elbows.

Tracy Daugherty’s new biography is the first comprehensive account of the prolific novelist who brought us “Lonesome Dove,” “The Last Picture Show” and more.

By Dwight Garner

LARRY McMURTRY: A Life, by Tracy Daugherty

When the art critic Dave Hickey learned that Tracy Daugherty was writing a biography of his friend Larry McMurtry (all three men are Texans), he said to Daugherty: “Knowing Larry, it’s going to be a real episodic book.” Episodic this biography is. It’s also vastly entertaining.

McMurtry, the prolific author of “The Last Picture Show,” “Terms of Endearment” and “Lonesome Dove,” was a demythologizer of the American West who appeared to live in several registers at once.

The Miracle and Madness of Science That Changed the World

The polymath John von Neumann, center, chatting with students at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1947. Von Neumann’s work on the Manhattan Project is a focus of Benjamín Labatut’s novel “The Maniac.”

Benjamín Labatut’s novel “The Maniac” examines the dawn of the nuclear age and the brilliant, sometimes troubled minds behind it.

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The New York Times Book Review – Sept 24, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (September 24, 2023): The latest issue features Walter Isaacson’s buzzy Elon Musk biography, which has already rocketed to No. 1 on the best-seller list.  Also, gorgeous historical novels from Lauren Groff and Daniel Mason; a remarkable new book about road ecology; the translation of a beloved, best-selling Japanese novel; “Doppelganger,” Naomi Klein’s investigation into the online underworld of conspiracies and misinformation; and Stephen King’s latest, “Holly,” to name just a few.

Elon Musk Wants to Save Humanity. The Only Problem: People.

This impressionistic illustration, composed of black ink and brushstrokes with accents of yellow and pink, shows Elon Musk’s face close-up. He is gazing at the viewer, his square jaw and high forehead immediately recognizable.

Walter Isaacson’s biography of the billionaire entrepreneur depicts a mercurial “man-child” with grandiose ambitions and an ego to match.

By Jennifer Szalai

At various moments in “Elon Musk,” Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the world’s richest person, the author tries to make sense of the billionaire entrepreneur he has shadowed for two years — sitting in on meetings, getting a peek at emails and texts, engaging in “scores of interviews and late-night conversations.” Musk is a mercurial “man-child,” Isaacson writes, who was bullied relentlessly as a kid in South Africa until he grew big enough to beat up his bullies. Musk talks about having Asperger’s, which makes him “bad at picking up social cues.” As the people closest to him will attest, he lacks empathy — something that Isaacson describes as a “gene” that’s “hard-wired.”

Lauren Groff’s Latest Is a Lonely Novel of Hunger and Survival

A color illustration of a girl wearing a torn blue coat and boots with a bag strapped around her back, looking back toward a coastal settlement as she enters the woods, covered in snowfall.

“The Vaster Wilds” follows a girl’s escape from a nameless colonial settlement into the unforgiving terrain of America.

By Fiona Mozley

Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, very nearly didn’t survive. A few years into its existence, in the early 1600s, the majority of the population had succumbed to famine and disease. The period known as the Starving Time has taken on allegorical status. Jamestown is the colony that tried too much too soon; that underestimated the harsh climate, the foreign land, its existing, Indigenous population. Pilgrims went in search of heaven and found hell.