By
Gregory McNamee
on
January 27, 2017
Mikhail Bulgakov
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.” So says—well, the devil, or at least an earthly representative of his Luciferness, in Bryan Singer’s 1995 film The Usual Suspects. But what if the devil were to appear on Earth and not be terribly shy about making his presence known? That’s the provocative premise of Mikhail Bulgakov’s much-loved novel The Master and Margarita, which first appeared in book form a quarter-century after the ...
Interviewed by
Alex Heimbach
on
January 26, 2017
Courtesy Rayon Richards
What happens when a child is charged with murder? Well, it depends. Salacious procedural episodes aside, these cases are so rare that there’s little precedent for how to proceed. When Tiffany D. Jackson came across one such story, of a 10-year-old girl in Maine charged with manslaughter for allegedly shoving pills down the throat of an infant her mother was babysitting, she immediately saw a story in it, but she added a twist: what if the girl might be innocent ...
By
David Rapp
on
January 25, 2017
Thanks to social media, many people have thriving relationships with folks they’ve never actually met in person—online interactions that would have seemed unimaginable just a few generations ago. Here are a few notable novels, all reviewed by Kirkus Indie, which put these modern types of connections front and center:
Steve McManus’ debut thriller, Red Flag, reviewed last year, focuses on Danny Kasho, a blogger for California-based crime-news website City of Angels/Dead on Arrival, or CODA. He investigates a murderer ...
Talking to debut novelist Andrew Hilleman
By
Claiborne Smith
on
January 24, 2017
Photo courtesy Kyle Gilbertson
When debut authors talk about their struggles to get published, their stories usually boil down to a dramatic tale of numbers, despite the literary context: X number of writing workshops they attended, X number of years spent working on the debut, X number of rejections from agents or publishers. Andrew Hilleman, whose electric, compelling debut novel, World, Chase Me Down, is out today, has numbers that are more memorable than most. This 332-page novel based on the real-life kidnapping in ...
By
Megan Labrise
on
January 24, 2017
Michael Chabon, courtesy of Benjamin Tice Smith
“[There might have been] a cartoon of someone vomiting.”
—Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, on the humiliating experience of breaking into his college literary journal’s office and discovering his defaced poetry submission in the reject pile, in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
***
“If you want to blame me [for] the death of Christmas, be my guest.”
—Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants, who bought $23,000 worth ...
Interviewed by
Gregory McNamee
on
January 24, 2017
Courtesy Laura Rose
Time is fleeting. Time flies. There’s never enough of it. With apologies to Irma Thomas, the greatest interpreter of the song “Time Is On My Side,” it’s really not.
We modern humans are bound to clocks, to having to be particular places at particular moments, to occupying certain points of the space-time continuum at, well, certain points. But thus has it ever been—for, writes New Yorker staffer Alan Burdick in his new book Why Time Flies, we humans of ...
By
Vicky Smith
on
January 20, 2017
Writer Sherri Winston
Over the past several months I’ve become a connoisseur of character descriptions in kids’ books. The main character of Patrice Kindl’s Don’t You Trust Me? describes herself as “white-bread-white,” which I found winningly forthright. Less forthright are the many, many books that still assume a white default and give white characters elaborate descriptions of everything but their skin—long, curly red hair and freckles; a short, brown bob and green eyes; a blond crew cut and blue eyes—while relegating their ...
Spotlighting some of my favorite new fiction
By
Laurie Muchnick
on
January 20, 2017
What better way to start a new year than by reading new writers? Here are excerpts from our reviews of some of the most exciting debuts being published this month, two first novels and a book of short stories:
Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke: “In this aptly named story collection by an Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean heritage, people living in various countries struggle to build better lives for themselves....Clarke fully inhabits the voices of her characters—a masterful feat ...