Book lovers were stunned when an unknown book and author won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. How did Paul Harding become the ultimate Pulitzer underdog? … More The Most Surprising Pulitzer Prize Winner Ever? The Wild Story of Paul Harding’s Tinkers (A Pulitzer Prize Deep Dive)
A book review of Jesmyn Ward’s fourth novel, Let Us Descend, a historical fiction rendering of the pain of life under slavery. … More Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward: A Spoiler-Free Book Review
Toni Morrison won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved, a novel about the ghosts of slavery. Is it worthy of the title Great American Novel? … More Can America Reckon With the Ghosts of Slavery? Beloved: A Pulitzer Prize Deep Dive
In Maggie O’Farrell’s sterling Hamnet, she seeks to fill in the blanks of history to tell a deeply human story. … More Life and Death in the Margins: Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell
The end of the world as we know it is the focus of Emily St. John Mandel’s surprisingly humane Station Eleven. … More The End is Nigh in Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window is yet another mystery novel with an unreliable, alcoholic female narrator and I can’t yawn hard enough. … More Let’s Do Away with This Mystery Novel Trend in The Woman in the Window, by A.J. Finn
The Association of Small Bombs begins with a sudden explosion in a Delhi marketplace in 1996. Two young brothers, Tushar and Nakul Khurana, are killed. Their friend Mansoor Ahmed survives. The novel then follows what happens over the next twenty years in order to show the ripple effect that this “small bomb” has. Tushar and … More A Culture of Violence: The Association of Small Bombs, by Karan Mahajan: Book Review
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