Philip Pullman’s Anti-Escapist Fantasy
In his fiction, the author of The Golden Compass tells us how to love this world. It isn’t easy.
Book Review
A Novel That Understands Where Romance Is Going
Claire-Louise Bennett’s new novel trades romantic fatalism for something odder and pricklier.
A Warning for the Modern Striver
A new biography of Peter Matthiessen chronicles his many paradoxical attempts to escape who the world expected him to be.
The Many Lives of Eliza Schuyler
She lived for 97 years. Only 24 of them were with Alexander Hamilton.
There Is No Green Transition Without Consequences
A new book argues that simply replacing fossil-fuel extraction with critical-mineral mining is no way out of the climate crisis.
Patricia Lockwood’s Mind-Opening Experience of Long COVID
In her new novel, the author captures the strangeness of ordinary life for the chronically ill.
A Portrait of Southern Sexual Repression
In her debut novel, Addie E. Citchens creates a vibrant Mississippi town and a dire morality tale about the suppression of desire.
John Cheever’s Secrets
In a new memoir, Susan Cheever searches for the wellspring of her father’s genius.
A Book That Doesn’t Seek to Explain Itself
In his movies and his writing, the South Korean director Lee Chang-dong has long used images to suggest what can’t be expressed.
How a Tradition Forged in Slavery Persists Today
A new book argues that conjure—a Black spiritual practice—has touched nearly every corner of American life.