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NESTING, by Roisín O’Donnell “Nesting,” Roisín O’Donnell’s gripping debut novel, contains all the twists and turns of a classic thriller; but its heroine, Ciara, isn’t trying to solve a mystery or a murder — she’s a housewife struggling to cut ties with her abusive husband. Ryan is “the type of man who other women sneak … Read more
If the abuse crisis darkens much of this book, it is because the crisis has darkened the church, causing millions to leave. Disputes over homosexuality, priestly celibacy and birth control also appear so often that the reader might think that sex (the word or derivatives appear some 400 times in 514 pages of text) is … Read more
A few years ago, the translator Jeremy Tiang was browsing in a bookstore in Singapore when he came across an unusual book of stories. Written in Chinese under a pen name, the book, “Delicious Hunger,” drew on the author Hai Fan’s 13 years fighting in the jungles of Malaysia and southern Thailand as a guerrilla … Read more
We’re all influenced by how we see the world. Sometimes that view is clear and sometimes it’s a bit fuzzy. Adjusting our “lens” can help us better understand one another, and ourselves. How appropriate to find three recent picture books that look at eyeglasses from different perspectives. Anyone who wears glasses and forgets where they … Read more
Horror is having a moment. Once confined largely to Halloween, or at least to October, “spooky season” has evolved into a monthslong phenomenon — and our hunger for the frightful doesn’t stop there. At a time when real life can feel like a nightmare, a collective turn toward the ghoulish and the ghastly might seem … Read more
We’re all influenced by how we see the world. Sometimes that view is clear and sometimes it’s a bit fuzzy. Adjusting our “lens” can help us better understand one another, and ourselves. How appropriate to find three recent picture books that look at eyeglasses from different perspectives. Anyone who wears glasses and forgets where they … Read more
Barbara Ramos’s black-and-white street photographs from the late 1960s and early 1970s, when she was a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, are far from the fanfare of the Summer of Love. Instead, the art historian Sally Stein writes in A FEARLESS EYE: The Photography of Barbara Ramos (Chronicle, $35), they make for a … Read more
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | How to Listen The screenwriter Peter Straughan has become adept at taking well known — and beloved — books and adapting them for the big and small screens. He was first nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay of the 2011 film “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” based … Read more
CEREBRAL ENTANGLEMENTS: How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives, by Allan J. Hamilton The human brain! It’s amazing! A master conductor of our emotional symphonies, a supercomputer of intelligence, a treasure inside the “temple” of the skull, where it gloriously shimmers “vivid, vital, jewel-like.” I mean, is it any wonder we’re such a … Read more
Our recommended books this week take a philosophical turn — from novels that sneak meditations on memory and identity into their rousing stories of war (“The Ghosts of Rome”) or sex (“Soft Core”), to a look at the implications of global food production (“How the World Eats”) and a history of personal freedom (“The Age … Read more