Jean Rhys’s 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea rethinks the character of Bertha Mason, Charlotte Brönte’s madwoman in the attic from Jane Eyre. In Brönte’s novel, Bertha, a Creole woman from Spanish Town, Jamaica, serves as a paradigmatic character, embodying Victorian England’s fears of the foreign and female body. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys revives Bertha’s […]
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First published in 1962, We Have Always Lived in the Castle tells the story of what remains of the Blackwood family. Our gothic heroine, Merricat Blackwood lives with her older sister Constance and eccentric, elderly Uncle Julian in their oversized house. Six years prior to the novel’s setting, Merricat and Constance’s parents, aunt and younger
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In her debut book Why Fish Don’t Exist, Lulu Miller writes about David Starr Jordan, a taxonomist and the first Stanford University president, who became an influential voice in the early eugenics movement. Miller is interested in Jordan chiefly because of his resilience when unforeseen adversities impacted his personal and professional life. In contemplating Jordan’s
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A journalist for The New York Times, Kate Murphy writes about the art of listening in her 2020 book, You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters. Through thorough research and well-written prose, she considers the science and culture behind how we listen as a society. With our ever-shortening attention spans and
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Free Food for Millionaires is the debut 2007 novel of Min Jin Lee, who also authored the best-selling novel Pachinko. Much like Pachinko, Lee’s first novel is meticulously researched, full of true-to-life characters and an absolute pleasure to read. As readers, you get the sense that every sentence is deliberately constructed, and there are no
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Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics has a clickbait-esque title but accurately describes what Tim Marshall attempts to undertake in his 320-page text. The book starts off strong with a chapter on Russia, where many of Marshall’s 2015 observations feel like terrible forebodings for the
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Antoine Wilson’s 2022 psychological thriller Mouth to Mouth is about an art dealer, Jeff Cook, who runs into an old college acquaintance at JFK airport. After their flight is delayed, the two hold up in the first-class lounge–on Jeff’s ticket–where he recounts the key events in his life after college that led him to where
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Another excellent collection by David Sedaris! Holidays on Ice is the oldest collection of Sedaris’s I have picked up thus far. Unlike Calypso and The Best of Me, this book’s humor is extra snappy and significantly darker. In the collection’s opening story, Sedaris relates his time working as a Santa elf at 33 years old
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Much like the fruit, Lemon, Kwon Yeo-Sun’s first English translated book, is a vibrant, searingly curt read. At first glance, this novella feels like a classic murder mystery, complete with thickheaded police officers and a beautiful, virginal victim on the precipice of adulthood. Kwon turns many of these classic thriller tropes on their head by
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Goodbye to Berlin is a semi-autobiographical novel chronicling life in Berlin just before the outbreak of World War II. Isherwood’s novel is a particularly engaging read because he published it the year World War II began. Without knowing what was to come, Isherwood does not overanalyze the city and its people. Instead, he primarily records
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