It might be fair to say that Daphne du Maurier wrote the book on suspense novels. That book would be Rebecca her 1938 romantic mystery that set the bar for its many predecessors. It embodies many of the genre’s tropes – twisted love affairs, a sprawling manor, breathlessly rendered settings – and proves that in literature, as in the rest [...]

It has probably been two years since I read  In the Miso Soup, which I consider more than just Ryu Murakami’s flagship novel, but one of the few pieces of literature that I still draw on regularly when I want to ush and gush about fiction. I can still conjure what it feels like to read that book: Dreamy, terrifying [...]

I think I came at Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man with the wrong approach. I saw the movie adaptation before I read the novel (I know. I know!) so I was expected some sort of eulogy, a soft and mournfully worded ode to a life about to end. What I did not expect was a polemic, a collection of vehement [...]

About a month ago I stumbled on a sidewalk sale where, between cheese curd vendors, a 5-year-old magician with a stunning vocabulary, and hippies juggling sticks, I found some castoffs from the public library: $1 for trade paper; $0.50 for mass market. I was in a rush. There was an Italian sausage calling my name half a block away. (“Meat [...]

The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee is a novel of epic proportions. The book is set in the present tense, but very much of it takes place through remembering life during war. June and Hector are the two main characters and they met during the Korean War. June was a young girl who lost her family and Hector, an American soldier [...]

I made a rookie error and poor, poor Vendela Vida’s novel The Lovers is the innocent victim. It all started when I fell madly in love with Jennifer Egan’s book A Visit from the Goon Squad. I lovingly caressed the cover, made kissy faces at it, considered starting from scratch and rereading it immediately. I tried to think of a [...]

There is a scene in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, when an aged and plumped and be-cancer-ed rock and roll star named Bosco is pitching an idea to his publicist: He wants to tour again in support of his album “A to B.” A suicide tour. He doesn’t want to fade away, he tells her, he wants [...]

I’m thinking about joining the ranks of those boring, jackassy literary pundits who warn about the impending death of something: publishing, the novel, the short story, the traditional book, and everything else you love hold dear. What am I declaring the death of? Story. Or at least good, engaging stories. Off the top of my head I can think of [...]

Finding fiction that I like can be a great challenge for me, so I tend to research potential candidates to make the process efficient. I tend to stick with ideas that resonate somehow with my worldview. Thankfully I have a wide interest field to choose from and know what topics to avoid, such as economics, born-again fundamentalist Christianity, and vampires. [...]

Gary Shteyngart’s fuckability levels must be off the chart right now. If he were to walk past a credit pole, numbers that rival elite college standard SAT scores would blink in his wake. He might even be considered a candidate for eternal life, according to the Post Human Services division of the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation — if he drinks his green [...]