Sunday Book Review
‘Illuminations’
By ARTHUR RIMBAUD; translated by JOHN ASHBERY
Reviewed by LYDIA DAVIS
Illustration by Hugo Guinness
John Ashbery brings a long and deep familiarity with French life, language and culture to this translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s poetry.
‘A Moment in the Sun’
By JOHN SAYLES
Reviewed by TOM LeCLAIR
John Sayles’s novelistic reimagining of America at the turn of the last century nods to both Harriet Beecher Stowe and Thomas Pynchon.
Books About Jane Austen
By WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ and RACHEL M. BROWNSTEIN
Reviewed by MIRANDA SEYMOUR
A memoir of how Jane Austen’s novels transformed one reader’s life, and a study of why we still read the “Lady novelist.”
‘A Most Dangerous Book’
By CHRISTOPHER B. KREBS
Reviewed by CULLEN MURPHY
How a long-lost Latin manuscript became a Nazi talisman.
‘Your Voice in My Head: A Memoir’
By EMMA FORREST
Reviewed by EMILY GOULD
A young writer overcomes her self-destructive behavior with the help of a gifted therapist.
‘In the Garden of Beasts’
By ERIK LARSON
Reviewed by DOROTHY GALLAGHER
How an American ambassador to the Third Reich, and his daughter, gradually realized what a mess they were in.
‘Maine’
By J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN
Reviewed by LILY KING
In J. Courtney Sullivan’s novel, three generations of a family’s women take guilt, secrets and old wounds on a beach retreat.
‘The Filter Bubble’
By ELI PARISER
Reviewed by EVGENY MOROZOV
A progressive political activist asks whether the personalization of search-engine results is a blessing or a curse.
‘Berlin 1961’
By FREDERICK KEMPE
Reviewed by JACOB HEILBRUNN
An account of the construction of the Berlin Wall asks whether J.F.K. should be blamed for losing the city.
‘My American Unhappiness’
By DEAN BAKOPOULOS
Reviewed by J. ROBERT LENNON
In this novel, a 33-year-old bureaucrat with his own problems sets out to reveal a nation of fake smiles.
Books About Women in the Workplace
By LYNN PERIL and ANNE KREAMER
Reviewed by EMILY BAZELON
Two books offer workplace history and advice, with particular regard to the matter of gender.
‘Out of the Vinyl Deeps’
By ELLEN WILLIS
Reviewed by EVELYN McDONNELL
Now out of the vault, the collected work of a New Yorker critic who bore eloquent witness to the heyday of rock.
‘The Rights of the People’
By DAVID K. SHIPLER
Reviewed by JONATHAN MAHLER
David K. Shipler laments the state of the Constitution in the aftermath of 9/11.
YOUNG ADULT
‘Anya’s Ghost’
By VERA BROSGOL
Reviewed by PAMELA PAUL
A graphic novel about a teenage girl and her friend Emily, a 100-something-year-old ghost who died 90 years earlier.
Book News and Reviews
Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Jorge Semprún
Mr. Semprún was a member of the French Resistance, a Communist organizer, a novelist and a screenwriter.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, Travel Writer, Dies at 96
By RICHARD B. WOODWARD
Mr. Fermor crossed Europe on a three-year journey, then wrote about his adventures.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘Dreams of Joy’
By LISA SEE
Reviewed by JANET MASLIN
In Lisa See’s new novel, a headstrong young woman who grew up in Los Angeles rejects her family and the United States to find out what China is like during the Great Leap Forward.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘India: A Portrait’
By PATRICK FRENCH
Reviewed by DWIGHT GARNER
In “India: A Portrait,” a new biography of a sort, Patrick French tries to get his arms around the size and import of this teeming country.
A Heckuva Book Pitch. That’s Putting It Mildly.
By JULIE BOSMAN
A mock children’s book with an obscenity in the title has become a hit for a small Brooklyn publisher, which now has to gear up for what it hopes will be big sales.
AT HOME WITH TOM MCNEAL
An Imagination With Built-Ins
By STEVEN KURUTZ
Tom McNeal’s new novel, “To Be Sung Under Water,” took shape at his home overlooking an orange grove in Southern California.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘Between Parentheses’
By ROBERTO BOLAñO
Reviewed by DWIGHT GARNER
The excellent thing about “Between Parentheses, ” a collection of Roberto Bolaño’s nonfiction, is how thoroughly it dispels any incense or stale reverence in the air.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘The Man in the Rockefeller Suit’
By MARK SEAL
Reviewed by MICHIKO KAKUTANI
How a 17-year-old immigrant came to America and assumed a succession of identities, eventually passing himself off as one Clark Rockefeller.
After 90 Years, a Dictionary of an Ancient World
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Scholars at the University of Chicago have completed a project that includes 28,000 words from ancient Mesopotamia, covering a period from 2500 B.C. to A.D. 100.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion’
By RON HANSEN
Reviewed by JANET MASLIN
In “A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion” Ron Hansen delves into the real-life case of a wife who coaxed her lover into killing her husband for insurance money.
BOOKSHELF
Views of New York, From Past to Present
By SAM ROBERTS
Stories handed down from father to son, a love letter to the dogs of New York, and guides to the city, sincere and snide.
- Fiction
- Nonfiction
PRINT & E-BOOKS
- Fiction
- Nonfiction
HARDCOVER
- Trade Fiction
- Mass-Market Fiction
- Nonfiction
PAPERBACK
Book Review Back Page
The Pleasures and Perils of Creative Translation
By JAMES CAMPBELL
The French novels I read in my youth were really English novels by translators, based on original ideas by Camus and Cocteau.
Book Review Podcast
Featuring Dorothy Gallagher on Erik Larson’s new best-seller, “In the Garden of Beasts”; and Emily Gould on Emma Forrest’s memoir, “Your Voice in My Head.”
This Week's Book Review Podcast (mp3)
Visuals
By STEVEN HELLER
A roundup of new art and design books, about screen printing, graffiti lettering, signage in South African townships and pavement chalk artists.
‘The Influencing Machine’
By BROOKE GLADSTONE
Reviewed by DAN KOIS
A media manifesto from N.P.R.’s Brooke Gladstone, delivered in comics form.
MORE REVIEWS
Summer Reading Special Issue
The complete June 5 Book Review, with roundups of cookbooks, gardening books and travel books; new fiction; books about Hollywood and music; and more.
Book Review Features
Up Front: Lydia Davis
By THE EDITORS
Lydia Davis is well known for her extremely short, elliptical stories. But in her parallel career, as a translator of French literature, she has tackled wordier writes, including Proust and Flaubert.
TBR
Inside the List
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
David Eagleman, who hits the hardcover nonfiction list this week with “Incognito,” is the kind of guy who really does make being a neuroscientist look like fun.
Editors’ Choice
Recently reviewed books of particular interest.
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