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Fiction

Five authors whose fame rests on a single great novel

“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.” And so begins Harper Lee’s seminal 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, where we’re introduced to young Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, her brother and protector, Jem, and their father, the wise attorney and champion…
Jordan Foster
April 30, 2014
Fiction

The Scent of Reincarnation

The Collector of Dying Breaths (Atria, April) is the follow-up to The Book of Lost Fragrances and Seduction. They all feature Jac (short for Jacinth) L’Etoile, a young woman who is part of a perfume dynasty in France. She was joined in the previous novels by her brother Robbie, her on-and-off…
Barbara Tom
April 8, 2014
Fiction

Why the geometry of the love triangle pulls us in

Contained within the simple geometry of a love triangle are all the ingredients for an engrossing plot. There are characters (desired and desiring, therefore compelling); conflict (fights and lies and changes of heart); and resolution (someone will win, someone will lose, the triangle will be broken apart). Is it any…
Melissa Duclos
April 1, 2014
Fiction

What would Hemingway eat? A menu for a Moveable Feast

I realized, as I worked my way through Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, that he titled it so because his time in Paris was an ongoing banquet of social activities, incessant writing, and literal feasting and imbibing from one café to the next. It was also most apparent to me…
Ingrid
March 24, 2014
Fiction

Journey into some favorite books with a “bibliomemoir”

I retain only the vaguest impressions of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I read it as a 19-year-old study abroad student in England, too busy exploring a new country and having my first romance to fully appreciate an 800-page treasure of literature. I certainly missed out on the life-changing experience with Eliot…
Rebecca Foster
February 21, 2014