“Nicotine” is an overt satire of spoiled Americans, of a nation of cosseted forever-in-college kids who need not try....

Fiona McFarlane's Australians tend to be placid and remote adept at minimizing their desires, and sometimes poignantly, sometimes frighteningly conformist....

What emerges most powerfully from "The Longest Night" is a kind of quiet wonder at how a person can come to exist in another....