Jennifer Donnelly’s A Northern Light, set on Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks in 1906, is a coming of age story of would be writer, Mattie Gokey, who unravels a murder mystery (the real-life case involving Grace Brown and Chester Gillette, which was also the murder that on which Dreiser based his masterful “An American Tragedy”) and learns that the most important promise is … Read More

poem for 4.26.05: Spring Snowby Arthur Sze

Now here’s an interesting tale of how one woman turned her short fiction collection into a novel–Fear of Flight: This wasn’t the first time someone had tried to steer me away from short fiction. “Write a novel,” my friends of the longer form told me. “You can’t build a career on short fiction.” Alice Munro, I insisted. Mavis Gallant. Raymond Carver. Grace Paley. Vocational … Read More

Wow, I don’t quite know what to think of this story: Human Hibernation To Treat Critically Ill People? I’m both intrigued and freaked out at the thought of “suspended animation.” I read about something like this for that girl who was treated and cured of rabies–that they put her into a coma to keep the infection at bay while they treated her with drugs. … Read More

Happy Birthday, Will!

Today is the day (supposedly, as scholars still argue that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakepeare at all) that William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon (it is also my friend Peter’s birthday–happy birthday to him, too!). I am a lover of Shakespeare–a Shakepearephile. In school, I took something like half a dozen separate courses on Shakespeare and I wasn’t even a Shakespearean scholar. Clearly, there is still … Read More Happy Birthday, Will!

Earth Day Turns 35

In case you didn’t know, today is not only Earth Day but also the 35th anniversary of Earth Day. One thing you can do is take the Ecological Footprint Quiz–you may find yourself surprised at the results. I know I did.

More daffodils.

My first tulip of the year.

Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes is complex though its simple language and slimness might suggest otherwise. Told through scenes centered around the tea ceremony, the novel examines many triangles. Below, I will try to tease them apart: Husband-Wife-Lover #1 Husband-Lover-Son Husband-Lover #1-Lover #2 Husband-Lover #2-Daughter of Lover #2 Son-Father’s Lover #1- Father’s Lover #2 Son- Father’s Lover #1-potential fiancé Son-Father’s- Father’s Lover #2-Daughter of Lover … Read More

Nature Lessons is a novel of self-discovery and healing old wounds. Set in Ohio and South Africa, the narrative unfolds as Kate Jensen struggles to understand why she is incapable of putting down roots. After she receives a desperate letter from her mother, Kate travels back to her homeland of South Africa to try to unravel a 30-year mystery and find the mother she … Read More

Well, so in love with Tell Me am I, that it is hard for me to write about this collection without sounding over the top but I do fully believe that Mary Robison’s stories should be required reading for all human beings inhabiting the planet Earth. Robison typically begins in media res and ends abruptly—yet the reader never feels cheated or left without meaning. … Read More

New work this week: Denial in Triangle by the hugely talented Jordan E. Rosenfeld