Matt Sullivan, a San Diego–based, bilingual tabloid features writer, arrives in 2003 Havana with ring and wedding dress in hand for his Cuban fianceé, Yarmi, only to find her lifeless body in the bathtub. Considered charming, chatty, and caring by all who knew her, Yarmi,...
Although the "Son of Sam" law prohibited criminals from profiting from their crimes by writing books or creating other crime-based entertainment, the Supreme Court struck down the law in 1991 citing First Amendment violations. Decades later, Dawkins, a convicted murderer serving life without parole, received...
After introducing a stupendous community of left-behind stateside military wives in her debut collection, You Know When the Men Are Gone, Siobhan Fallon presents in her first novel two women who have accompanied their U.S. Army husbands to Jordan. Shared circumstances ease Cassie and Margaret...
Badly behaved Indian and Indian American men claim the spotlight in Sharma's first story collection, yet moments of unexpected humor and pathos save at least some of the men from utter disdain. In "Cosmopolitan," a recently single older man studies women's magazines to become a...
With a name that means "cherry blossom," Sakura's favorite time of the year is understandably spring, when her namesake blooms. Her grandmother gently nurtures her floral appreciation: "Together they sat/ in the shade of pink petals/...
Fourth grader he may be, but our narrator is quite the sharp observer of his surroundings. His father is dead; his mother runs a "fortune-telling and that kind of stuff" salon. She's often the recipient of his unguarded bluntness: "If video games make you stupid,...
*STARRED REVIEW That Aviva Grossman became infamous as "Florida's answer to Monica Lewinsky" provides a quick snapshot of why she's now living in small-town Maine as Jane Young. As a 20-year-old intern to Miami Congressman Aaron Levin, she not only had that affair with the married,...
“[W]e can’t distinguish what is the truthful artist and what is the lying social man.” For Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s (The Gourmet Club, 2001) protagonist, the writer Mizuno, creating fiction using real-life details – he models a murder victim on a casual acquaintance, even inadvertently slipping in...
*STARRED REVIEW "We live in the same city, go to the same school, but each of us has a different story," a student observes. "What we have in common is trying to figure out how to tell it." Welcome back to Mr. Ward's English class, introduced...
WWII is over, and men return home, many to left-behind wives who became wholly self-supporting citizens out of necessity. For one such couple in Trenton, New Jersey, the postwar clash proves fatal, and the sole survivor completely reinvents herself. “My name is Abe Kunstler. I was...
The phrase, go home, encompasses polarizing intentions. It’s a reference to one’s safest place but can also be a hurled threat of exclusion. That polarity illuminates these 31 stories, essays, and poems by writers of diasporic Asian origin, compiled by self-described “Japanese-Chinese-Scottish-English-American” novelist Rowan Hisayo Buchanan...
Jeff Talarigo, a peripatetic global citizen whose spare, exquisite fiction also tends toward the international – Japan for The Pearl Diver (2004), the North Korean and Chinese border for The Ginseng Hunter (2008) – alchemizes his time in Gaza into this affecting novel in loosely...
A big bang brings together two professors, an illegal immigrant, and a frozen corpse during a 2016 blizzard. Professor Richard Bowmaster rear-ends a Lexus driven by Guatemalan nanny Evelyn Ortega, who then appears that evening at Richard's brownstone with a harrowing tale that requires Richard...
For Western readers, most North Korea-focused titles cover two categories, writes Daniel Tudor, former Korea correspondent for The Economist: politics and “testimony-style books written by defectors who tell horror stories.” What’s missing are “the real daily experiences of the vast majority of the North Koreans”...
In writing about new motherhood, changing dynamics in her closest relationships, navigating a demanding career requiring extensive travel, and witnessing her tiny child grow into her own person, Camille T. Dungy (Tropic Cascade) is unabashedly forthright and perceptive. Her observations are made especially piercing when...
As she did for Palestinians in Occupied Voices, Wendy Pearlman (political science, Northwestern Univ.) again gives agency to a population under siege, this time to Syrians. Fluency in Arabic provides Pearlman direct access to “hundreds of Syrian men, women, and children” of all backgrounds –...
If you were among the millions who discovered 2015 MacArthur “Genius” Ta-Nehesi Coates in his mega-bestseller, Between the World and Me, in his own voice, or you were an earlier pioneer who heard The Beautiful Struggle (2008) elegantly read by J.D. Jackson, consider choosing the...
Danzy Senna (Caucasia), the child of a Caucasian poet mother and an African American scholar father, uses her lauded writing to examine (at times, perhaps even exorcise) her mixed-race heritage in novels, short stories, and memoir. She bestows her own middle name, Maria, to her...
Susan Rieger (The Divorce Papers) shows how a wealthy Manhattan family's marital dysfunctions break, prune, and graft the branches of their family tree. Rupert Falkes, a British orphan-turned-New York elite, is dead. As far as the world knows, he's survived by his blue-blooded wife, Eleanor, their...
Initially, there were two: aging filmmaker Waldo and his 22-years-younger wife of 20 years, Zee. Bed- and wheelchair-bound for three years, Waldo has "been expecting to die any day," he admits. "I was enjoying my decline and slipping away cheerfully, and now this happens." Because...
