Monthly Archives: September 2011

From that synesthetic description of the suitcase (“a smooth shellacked surface with yellow stitching underneath the glaze…Ann Lord could almost taste the surface of it at the back of her throat.”) and the initial car ride, dizzying with the thrill of sexual magnetism and New England summer, I knew I was in the hands ofContinue reading “Susan Minot’s Evening”

Much as in her collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, the emotional force of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, depends upon the silence of her characters. As the protagonist’s mother Ashima enters labor in the opening pages, she refrains from calling out her husband’s name, which she views as “something intimate and therefore unspoken.”Continue reading “Review of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri”

In periods of personal crisis and upheaval, my first response is to find a quiet place and think. I’m not sure this is useful, but it is what I do. I map out how I arrived at this point. I ponder my choices and reconsider my worldview, and I wonder if and where I haveContinue reading “Why Be Good”

Those who loved the understated, quiet prose of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus will not be disappointed by her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. Winner of the 2007 Orange Prize, besting work by such notables as Anne Tyler and Kiran Desai, the novel is full of halves—characters, and a nation—wandering in search ofContinue reading “Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”