Fiction

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

The New Western, Realism and Redemption
The novel "transcends its setting and the circumstances of a few people in a small Montana town to say something true … about violence and families …"
Vicki GundrumFeb 3, 2015
- Fiction
“You understand it to the point that it almost tears you to pieces”: Growing Up with Mary Gaitskill
As a teenager, Victoria Beale was drawn to Mary Gaitskill’s offbeat characters and virtuostic style; now rereading Gaitskill at twenty-five, Beale finds emotional complexity, exquisite precision, and compassion.
Victoria BealeFeb 3, 2015
- Fiction
This Sends Me Googling
When Megan Mayhew Bergman writes the book she wants to read, it’s a sentence-driven book of stories about unusual women from history.
Jane GaydukFeb 2, 2015
- Fiction
An Anna Is an Anna Is an Anna
Translators of Anna Karenina are wonderful — except for their annoying habit of denigrating the work of earlier ones.
Bob BlaisdellFeb 2, 2015
- Fiction
Epic Noir
Ira Wells on James Ellroy’s "Perfidia"
Ira WellsJan 26, 2015
- Fiction
- Noir
The Trauma Hero: From Wilfred Owen to “Redeployment” and “American Sniper”
“Yet when the trauma hero myth is taken as representing the ultimate truth of more than a decade of global aggression, as in it does in American Sniper, we allow the psychological suffering endured by those we sent to kill for us displace and erase the innocents killed in our name. As in Klay’s story, the real victims of American political violence disappear under a load of shit.”
Roy ScrantonJan 25, 2015
How Should a Woman Behave?
Sarah Gerard reviews 'The Wallcreeper' and 'Helen Keller Really Lived'
Sarah GerardJan 23, 2015
- Fiction
Penelope Fitzgerald Was Here: An Appreciation
"Penelope Fitzgerald’s story was both permission and company; it was okay if I too had to start late and move slowly as a writer."
Courtney CookJan 23, 2015
- Biography & Autobiography
- Fiction
The Violence and Music of Dorthe Nors
"In Denmark we have a saying that goes: 'Sorrow and joy walk hand in hand,' and I think that is true."
Marian RyanJan 22, 2015
- Fiction
The Binary Companion
The thing about the image of the binary star is that it’s such a powerful relationship that you can’t just use it anywhere, but you can compare it to the power of addiction, and to the power of young love.
Whitney Curry WimbishJan 22, 2015
- Fiction
Late Start, Spectacular Finish: The Life of Penelope Fitzgerald
For Fitzgerald, who grew up in a literary household and who was a brilliant student at Oxford, barge penury was not supposed to be in the cards.
Priyanka KumarJan 21, 2015
- Biography & Autobiography
- Fiction
A Death-Defying Love: Versions of the Orpheus Myth
Ultimately, Orpheus doesn’t lose Eurydice because he fails but because life and death are so profoundly incompatible; the story reminds us of the abyss between them.
Tim J. MyersJan 19, 2015
- Fiction