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The Evil Stepmother as Insult Comic
Gideon Leek reviews the reissue of Caroline Blackwood’s 1976 novel “The Stepdaughter.”
Fiction
"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep
Sunny S. Yudkoff reviews “Gretel and the Great War," Adam Ehrlich Sachs’s new abecedarian WWI novel.
A Road Atlas for Self-Reckoning
Erik Gleibermann confronts the elusive father figure in his review of “Someone Like Us,” the third novel from acclaimed Ethiopian-American writer Dinaw Mengestu.
Peering Through the Darkness
Regan Mies reviews Wolfgang Hilbig’s “Under the Neomoon” and “Territories of the Soul/On Intonation.”
An Honorable Man in an Elaborate Maze
Tara Cheesman reviews Keigo Higashino’s “The Final Curtain,” the final book in his Kyoichiro Kaga series.
A Strange Career
Adam Sobsey reviews Jeffrey Meyers’s “James Salter: Pilot, Screenwriter, Novelist.”
The Elsewhere Is Always There
Krys Lee speaks with Kevin Barry about place, poetry, and genre in his latest novel, “The Heart in Winter.”
Integral Witnesses
Renee Hudson reviews Eliana Hernández-Pachón’s “The Brush” and Selva Almada’s “Not a River.”
A Dog-Eat-Dog World
Gisela Salim-Peyer reviews Rodrigo Blanco Calderón’s “Simpatía” in advance of the Venezuelan elections.
When a Woman Turns into a Wife
Jenessa Abrams reviews “Liars” by Sarah Manguso in the wake of Andrea Skinner’s essay about her sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, and her mother Alice Munro’s silence.
A Treasure Trove of Suppressed Feeling
Rob Latham reviews Peter Bush’s new translation of Honoré de Balzac’s novel “The Lily in the Valley” for NYRB Classics.
The Season of Lost Souls
Hamilton Cain reviews the prolific Irish author Kevin Barry’s new literary Western, “The Heart in Winter.”
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