OUR BEAUTIFUL BOYS, by Sameer Pandya From the first page of Sameer Pandya’s timely and timeless new novel, “Our Beautiful Boys,” we’re dropped into a series of contradictions. We’re introduced to a town that’s described as “nothing extraordinary,” but then ushered to a trio of caves cloaked in mystery and lore. We’re told these caves … Read more
AUTHORITY: Essays, by Andrea Long Chu What a strange book “Authority,” by Andrea Long Chu, is — brilliant, blind. The book critic for New York magazine and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Chu has achieved a rare ascendancy in the literary world over the past several years, in equal parts for her … Read more
THRILLED TO DEATH: Selected Stories, by Lynne Tillman Lynne Tillman is an emissary from a vanishing literary culture that you want to describe as “downtown,” regardless of where she actually lives. Manhattan, according to her book bio, but with a bassist, not a banker — as so many downtowners are today. Nothing staying the same … Read more
Books of advice come in many forms: financial, spiritual, physical, philosophical. Novels too are books of advice, if read in a certain light. Eve Babitz understood, for example, that part of Colette’s greatness is that you can open her novels anywhere and “brush up on what to do.” There are only two advice books I’ve … Read more
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about literary culture. This week’s installment tests your knowledge of the global evolution of books themselves. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to further reading on the topic.
AUDITION, by Katie Kitamura In the opening scene of Katie Kitamura’s new novel, “Audition,” a middle-aged actress of some renown meets with a much younger man in a faceless restaurant in Manhattan’s financial district. The woman, our narrator, is deeply apprehensive about the encounter, and is swarmed by thoughts of the various interpretations strangers could … Read more
UNCHARTED: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, by Chris Whipple Over St. Patrick’s Day weekend in 2024, President Joe Biden hosted the traditional gathering of Irish and Irish American politicians in the White House. This was home ground for Biden, the most ostentatiously Irish figure ever to … Read more
Smart, funny and compulsively watchable, HBO’s “The White Lotus” is the rare TV satire that strikes a perfect balance between vicious and empathetic, skewering the superrich while also humanizing their often outlandish foibles. The series, which just wrapped up its third season, follows a formula that’s as familiar as it is addictive: A flock of … Read more
Edward Countryman, a historian whose wide-ranging studies of the various groups — politicians, laborers, Native Americans and more — at work during the American Revolution helped usher in a more complex understanding of the nation’s founding, died on March 24 in Dallas. He was 80. His daughters, Karon Ornadel and Kirstein Powell, confirmed the death … Read more
The article of which he was most proud was “The Woman Who Beat the Klan,” published in The Times Magazine in 1987, about Beulah Mae Donald, who sued the Ku Klux Klan for the 1981 murder of her son — he was hanged from a tree, with his throat slit, and no one was charged … Read more