Amy Gallup is a crotchety, misanthropic 60-year-old author and writing teacher who would strongly prefer to be left alone. At home. With her basset hound, Alphonse. (Her mantra, in Willett’s prequel, The Writing Class: Kill Me Now).
Written by Jan Kline five years ago
The Antagonist, by Lynn Coady
The novel made up entirely of letters isn’t a new form. But the email novel is a newer development — not that there aren’t already enough examples of them out there to make writing one a potentially slippery slope ending…
Written by Jan Kline five years ago
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
It took eight months of waiting, but finally the library copy of The Goldfinch stayed on the shelf long enough for me to get my mitts on it. As it was, I had to jerk it out of my sister’s…
Written by Jan Kline five years ago
Casebook, by Mona Simpson
It’s a coincidence that just after re-reading a childhood favorite of mine, Harriet the Spy, I should pick up an adult novel that also features kids spying on adults.
Written by Jan Kline five years ago
The Unknowns, by Gabriel Roth
By now, I would have thought that the chance of coming up with a non-cliché male geek misfit character would be very slim. But Gabriel Roth has beaten the odds.
Written by Jan Kline five years ago
The Dinner, by Herman Koch
After reading this book, I’ll never be hazy on the concept of the unreliable narrator again.
Written by Jan Kline five years ago
Post-Soviet Nebbish
When I learned that the title of novelist Gary Shteyngart’s new memoir was Little Failure, I thought he was doing his usual self-deprecating shtick. When I read that, translated into RussGlish — Failurchka — it was his mother’s pet name…
Written by Jan Kline five years ago
The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert
Yes, I read and liked Eat, Pray, Love like the rest of female America of a certain age. But I also enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert’s earlier fiction, especially Stern Men, set in the world of Maine’s lobster fishing industry.
