In this powerful, many-layered novel, Bennett explores the role of identity in six connected lives, considering race and gender as her characters wrestle with truth. Some are looking for the truth about…

This novella by the Irish writer, Claire Keegan, is a small masterpiece. The story centers around Bill Furlong, a coal merchant, as he makes deliveries during the Christmas season in Northern Ireland…

Do not miss Mrs. Palfrey at The Claremont, by Elizabeth Taylor, originally published in 1971, but recently re-issued by New York Review Books. This stunning novel takes us into the world of…

Until I read The Family Chao, my favorite novel by Lan Samantha Chang was All Is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (2010), a story about two poets who meet in grad school and maintain their…

Steven Schwartz brings a fresh vision to issues of marriage and family in his recent fiction, developing characters that claimed my allegiance because I empathized with their problems and admired their…

Ghosts of New Yorkby Jim Lewis is an unusual novel because it lacks a central character and a plot. Some might argue that New York City is the protagonist, but what engaged me more consistently…

The Women in Black is a favorite of Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures, the novel I discussed in my last post. Published in 1993, it was Madeleine St. John's first novel and…

As I work on my next novel, I have been thinking about the many ways a writer can keep a mystery alive through hundreds of pages. Clare Chambers' extraordinary new novel, Small Pleasures is…

I've been rereading the novels I've loved in these last few weeks as I've moved from a rural location in western New York State back to Brooklyn, and in this post I want to discuss Joan Silber's Improvement.…

After finishing All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, I turned to Sabina Murray's Valiant Gentlemen, another novel about lives impacted by World War Two written in the third…