With John Ashbery’s passing on Sunday, at 90, The Library of America has moved up the publication date of their second volume of his poems, John Ashbery: Collected Poems 1991 – 2000. It’s filled to the brim with his unfettered language and his welcoming warmth.
Trevor and Betsy look at Alice Munro’s “Friend of My Youth,” the title story from her 1990 collection.
Trevor looks at Richard Stern’s Other Men’s Daughters, a complicated and often frustrating look at late 1960s New England from a decidedly 1970s perspective.
Trevor reviews Patrick Modiano’s Such Fine Boys, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti, and published this week by Yale University Press.
Trevor reviews his new favorite Patrick Modiano book: Sundays in August, translated from the French by Damion Searls.
Paul reviews Mohsin Hamid’s Man Booker Prize Longlisted Exit West, a book he’d love to see on the shortlist and wouldn’t mind seeing take the prize.
Paul reviews Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, a reworking of Antigone set in the modern day which is a Man Booker Prize contender.
Lee reviews Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones, the book that won last year’s Goldsmiths Prize, set up to “celebrate qualities of creative daring” and to “reward fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.” The book is also a contender for this year’s Man Booker Prize.
Betsy and Trevor are moving on to the latter half of Alice Munro’s career, starting their story-by-story examination of her 1990 collection Friend of My Youth. This post provides an overview of the book as well as links to the reviews as they post.
The starting point for this strange little novel by Spanish novelist Andrés Barba was a ghastly game in a Brazilian orphanage in the 1960s. Trevor takes a look at Barba’s Such Small Hands, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman.