New York Times Book Reviews

'The Buried Giant'

By KAZUO ISHIGURO
Reviewed by NEIL GAIMAN

Neil Gaiman reviews Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Buried Giant," a quest narrative set in a mythical time of ogres, sprites and dragons.

Kim Gordon: By the Book

The musician and author of the memoir "Girl in a Band" is a fan of Joan Didion: "How cool is it that Céline chose her for their new ad campaign? I want those sunglasses."

·         By the Book: Archive

'The American Lover'

By ROSE TREMAIN
Reviewed by MARY GORDON

Rose Tremain's stories of transgressive love, unfulfilled desires and souls laid bare.

'Welcome to Braggsville'

By T. GERONIMO JOHNSON
Reviewed by RICH BENJAMIN

College students head South to stage a misbegotten intervention in this darkly comic novel.

'Anonymous Soldiers'

By BRUCE HOFFMAN
Reviewed by TOM SEGEV

An American scholar asks whether the Jews or the Arabs forced the British to leave Palestine.

'Green on Blue'

By ELLIOT ACKERMAN
Reviewed by TOM BISSELL

A young soldier from Afghanistan narrates this first novel by an American who served several tours of duty there.

'The Big Seven'

By JIM HARRISON
Reviewed by SMITH HENDERSON

An outlaw clan terrorizes a town in the Upper Peninsula, and Jim Harrison's hapless detective is caught in the crossfire.

'The Italians'

By JOHN HOOPER
Reviewed by ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

The Economist's Italy correspondent explains the confounding inner workings of the Bel Paese.

'From the New World'

By JORIE GRAHAM
Reviewed by CRAIG MORGAN TEICHER

Jorie Graham's career-spanning selected poems show how she moved the art form forward.

'We Are Pirates'

By DANIEL HANDLER
Reviewed by SARA LEVINE

A father and daughter pursue riches in the music world and on the open water in Daniel Handler's comic novel.

'Find Me'

By LAURA VAN DEN BERG
Reviewed by CARMELA CIURARU

Laura van den Berg's heroine picks her way across an American wasteland, searching for the mother who abandoned her.

'The Age of Dignity'

By AI-JEN POO with ARIANE CONRAD
Reviewed by LOUISE ARONSON

Changing how society deals with caregiving.

'Hell and Good Company'

By RICHARD RHODES
Reviewed by PAUL BERMAN

Richard Rhodes offers an anecdotal - and technological - history of the Spanish Civil War.

'The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins'

By IRVINE WELSH
Reviewed by SLOANE CROSLEY

Irvine Welsh's tale of abduction and mutual obsession.

'Why Not Say What Happened'

By MORRIS DICKSTEIN
Reviewed by SUSIE LINFIELD

A memoir mixes biography and intellectual history.

'After Birth'

By ELISA ALBERT
Reviewed by MERRITT TIERCE

A novel traces the changes brought by a baby's arrival.

Crime

Lene Kaaberbol's 'Doctor Death,' and More

By MARILYN STASIO

New novels by Lene Kaaberbol, Bryan Reardon, William Shaw and S. D. Sykes.

Jonathan Lethem On His New Book, Sea World And Sci-Fi

HuffPost Arts & Books

"Lethem’s taut, darkly funny new collection, Lucky Alan, excels at creating moments of absurdity that exist not merely for their own sake, but on some level to expose our own tendency to accept the unacceptable, to live hypocritically, and to assuage our guilt with comforting words and superficialities rather than meaningful action. In a recent phone conversation with The Huffington Post, Lethem talked about the process of putting together Lucky Alan, the complex family history that inspires his writing, and his thoughts on marijuana legalization, Sea World and Guantanamo Bay." (Read more here)

Author launches online crime fiction course

Crime novelist and creative writing tutor John Dean (left) is launching an online Crime Fiction Course.

John, author of 12 novels published by Robert Hale, and the creator of DCI John Blizzard and DCI Jack Harris, also runs Inscribe Media Ltd, which is based in Darlington in North East England, which will be offering the course.

The online course, which runs in eight parts and can begin at a time and date to suit the student, will help writers to improve their technique and improve their chances of being successful, either in competitions or admissions to publishers.

When they enroll, students will be offered ongoing one-to-one feedback on their work, be it short stories or novels.

John, whose latest novel A Breach of Trust came out in January 2015, and who is a member of the UK-based Crime Writers’ Association, said: “Writing can be a lonely pastime and my aim is to help aspiring writers to improve their technique and improve their chances of being successful in a very competitive market.

“Crime fiction remains hugely popular and, hopefully, I can help aspiring writers to develop their ideas, and because it is online it does not matter where they live. In recent years, I have worked with writers from everywhere from Croatia to Australia and New Zealand.”

There is no official certificate of qualification at the end of the course, which will be led by John and features:

• Personal attention

• Exercises and practical work

• Discussions by email

• Because the tutor is on line, you can do the work at time and pace that suits you

Themes to be included are:
An examination of where ideas come from - what triggers ideas in writers?

Once you have the idea, how do you develop it? The course will look at the art of  plotting

How can you use places and landscapes to aid your story telling?

How do you pick characters to do the job? What are their functions in storytelling? This will include a look at creating villains

How conflict can be used to develop stories that assume a life of their own

That all important start to your story - how do you grab the reader right from the off?

Writing with pace - how do you produce a narrative that keeps your reader turning the page?

Pulling it all together - how to produce the finished piece of work.

Editing - how to make those changes that make all the difference.

Pitching to publishers and agents

The course costs £75. For further details you can contact John at deangriss@btinternet.com

Who’s the Greatest Unreliable Narrator in Literature?

Feb 27, 2015

Davies and Winnette.

Colin Winnette and Jeremy M. Davies each have a new novel featuring an unreliable narrator: Winnette's Coyote follows a possibly unhinged mother and Davies's Fancy is about a man looking for a catsitter. Here, once and for all, they (maybe) settle the debate: Who’s the greatest unreliable narrator in literature?

Jeremy M. Davies: Let's set some ground rules: No Faulkner, no Joyce. No John Dowell, from The Good Soldier. No Nabokov at all. Nabokov dined out on his unreliable narrators for, what, forty years? Who needs those recommendations?

We’ll qualify our assignment by rebranding it "Best Unrecognized Unreliable Narrators."

Colin Winnette: How unreliable is a narrator really if he or she is famous for being unreliable?

Should Beckett be similarly nixed? I’d otherwise propose Krapp. If unreliable narrators manipulate facts to suit their needs, Krapp—whose existence consists solely of listening to self-selected segments of autobiographical tapes and eating bananas—is the apotheosis of unreliability.

More

The Roundup with PW including Pearson Earns £69M in 2014 from Penguin Random Stake

Pearson Earns £69M in 2014 from Penguin Random Stake
Pearson reported 2014 earnings of £69 million, after taxes, from its 47% stake in Penguin Random House. For the year Pearson reported total revenues of £4.8 billion and operating earnings of £720 million. more »

Coram Williams Named Pearson CFO
Coram Williams, global and U.S. CFO of Penguin Random House, has been promoted to CFO of PRH parent company Pearson, effective July 1. more »

'Red Queen': A Bestseller Is Crowned
As followers of her blog and social media accounts know, author Victoria Aveyard doesn't like to waste time. And her career has taken off like a shot, beginning with her YA debut, that launched a dystopian trilogy featuring a teen heroine who can control lightning. more » »

Bookselling Roundup, Week Ending February 27, 2015
There was lots of good news for indies this week, from an increase in membership at the ABA, to the re-opening of Bonnie Slotnik Cookbook’s in New York City’s East Village. more » »

B&N Stock Soars: Barnes & Noble stock closed up nearly 7% Thursday following news that the 658-store book chain was going to keep its embattled Nook e-reader rather than spin it off.

Amazon Hires Jay Carney: The former press secretary to President Obama is joining Amazon as senior v-p for global corporate affairs, a new position, the retailer said Thursday.

New Bill Bryson Coming: Bill Bryson’s first travel book in 15 years will be published by Transworld in the U.K. in autumn.

The Few, the Proud, the Independent: Contending first with the chains and more recently with Amazon, independent booksellers find survival tough but not impossible and lately new stores are thriving.

Connecticut Town Pursues Sendak Museum: Three years after Maurice Sendak's death, his western Connecticut hometown of Ridgefield is pursuing a museum honoring the author of 'Where the Wild Things Are.'

VIEW ALL »

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