11/17/2014
Yanagihara follows her 2013 debut novel, The People in the Trees, with an epic American tragedy. The story begins with four college friends moving to New York City to begin their careers: architect Malcolm, artist JB, actor Willem, and lawyer Jude. Early on, their concerns are money and job related as they try to find footholds in their respective fields. Over the course of the book, which spans three decades, we witness their highs and lows as they face addiction, deception, and abuse, and their relationships falter and strengthen. The focus narrows as the story unspools—and really, this is Jude's story. Unlike his friends, who have largely ordinary lives, Jude has a horrific trauma in his past, and his inner demons are central to the story. Throughout the years, Jude struggles to keep his terrible childhood secret and to trust those who love him. He cuts himself and contemplates suicide, even as his career flourishes and his friends support him. This is a novel that values the everyday over the extraordinary, the push and pull of human relationships—and the book's effect is cumulative. There is real pleasure in following characters over such a long period, as they react to setbacks and successes, and, in some cases, change. By the time the characters reach their 50s and the story arrives at its moving conclusion, readers will be attached and find them very hard to forget. (Mar.)
From the trenches of WWI to the coast of Australia, these two debut novels depict the ubiquity of coming of age, even when the circumstances are drastically different. In Alice Winn’s In Memoriam, two young men find love and tragedy on the fields of battle. Winn talked with us abouthow the story came into being, the extensive research required to create her characters […]
Boy, do we love a re-read. We can wax poetic about them ad nauseum. Even C. S. Lewis agrees, saying “To me, re-reading my favorite books is like spending time with my best friends. I’d never be satisfied to limit myself to just one experience each with my favorite people.” Those novels that you take […]
“And when you are lucky enough as a writer to have your book be found, and then have it be a source of someone’s passion, someone who is not normally spoken to by the book publishing industry, who then with generosity and real passion, finds a way to tell other people about it, you cannot […]
You’re not supposed to do it, but judging a book by its cover is a skill we all employ from time to time; whether we’re standing in a busy Barnes & Noble or squinting at a screen full of thumbnails, a book’s cover is often all you have time to peruse. Sure, in a perfect […]
2015 has already been a great year for books. With so much to celebrate from big-name authors—Judy Blume! Toni Morrison! Nick Hornby!—you’d be forgiven for missing a few of the lower-profile, oddball novels. Yet some of them are just as surprising, engaging, and thought-provoking as the big guys. Here are some of the best.