The Booker Prize included Tash Aw’s The South on its 2025 longlist, a novel about two boys experiencing first love. But is it any good? … More Booker Longlist Review: The South by Tash Aw
There was something odd about the announcement that Percival Everett had won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel James. Here’s how he nearly lost. … More How Percival Everett’s James Almost Didn’t Win (A Rant and a Pulitzer Prize Deep Dive)
When the Pulitzer Prize was announced in 2006, many expected E.L. Doctorow to win for The March. Instead, Geraldine Brooks won for a different March. What happened? … More Did the Wrong Book Win? The Curious Case of March by Geraldine Brooks (A Pulitzer Prize Deep Dive)
Jayne Anne Phillips surprised the literary world by winning the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel Night Watch. How did this happen? And was the award deserved? … More Did the Pulitzer Prize Make a Mistake With Night Watch? A Pulitzer Prize Deep Dive
The Color Purple is an American literary masterpiece that won a Pulitzer Prize and has been adapted as a film twice. But author Alice Walker has some controversial opinions. Does that impact how we see her work? … More When a Good Book Comes From a Complicated Author: The Color Purple and Alice Walker, 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
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, that classic saga of the American south, has been a beloved novel since it was first published. But is it inherently racist? … More Is Gone with the Wind Racist? 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
Reviews of Esi Edugyan’s Man Booker finalists Half-Blood Blues and Washington Black–one of which I love and one which I struggled to get through. … More When You Just Can’t Get Behind a Book Everyone Else Loves: Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan
Eleanor Roosevelt’s relationship with Lorena Hickok has been a source of controversy since the days it was happening in real-time. Were they secret lovers? Merely close friends? The topic has been endlessly debated. White Houses assumes that they were lovers, which seems reasonable, and purports to tell the story of their relationship. And it does, but … More The Secret Love Life of Eleanor Roosevelt: White Houses, by Amy Bloom
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