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Gabrielle and Louis (Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) meet in 1910 Paris, 2014 Los Angeles and again in 2044 in The Beast . Carole Bethuel/Kinology hide caption

Movie Reviews

'the beast' jumps from 1910, to 2014, to 2044, tracking fear through the ages.

This wildly original adaptation of the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle follows human alienation and anxiety, asking why, in every era, we disengage from life and the people around us.

Movie Interviews

Journalist says we're 'basically guinea pigs' for a new form of industrialized food.

by Tonya Mosley

by Justin Chang

• See Fresh Air sponsors and promo codes

Previous Shows

Fresh air for april 17, 2024: planning for a better death, fresh air for april 16, 2024: salman rushdie, fresh air for april 15, 2024: diarra kilpatrick, a.k.a. 'diarra from detroit', fresh air for april 13, 2024: andrew scott; how cars became a gendered technology, fresh air for april 12, 2024: king kong and godzilla — the origin stories.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player
• Latest Show
• Terry Gross
• Tonya Mosley
• Contact Fresh Air
• Subscribe to

Gabrielle and Louis (Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) meet in 1910 Paris, 2014 Los Angeles and again in 2044 in The Beast . Carole Bethuel/Kinology hide caption

Movie Reviews

'the beast' jumps from 1910, to 2014, to 2044, tracking fear through the ages.

This wildly original adaptation of the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle follows human alienation and anxiety, asking why, in every era, we disengage from life and the people around us.

Movie Interviews

Journalist says we're 'basically guinea pigs' for a new form of industrialized food.

by Tonya Mosley

by Justin Chang

• See Fresh Air sponsors and promo codes

Previous Shows

Fresh air for april 17, 2024: planning for a better death, fresh air for april 16, 2024: salman rushdie, fresh air for april 15, 2024: diarra kilpatrick, a.k.a. 'diarra from detroit', fresh air for april 13, 2024: andrew scott; how cars became a gendered technology, fresh air for april 12, 2024: king kong and godzilla — the origin stories.

Title: Meet The Voice Behind NPR Fresh Air’s Book Reviews

In “Behind the CV,” we explore professors’ deepest passions, what makes them tick and how they got to where they are in academia.

Maureen Corrigan grew up loving all sorts of books. After earning her undergraduate English degree and on her way to her Ph.D., she applied for a job as a book critic at what would become one of the most popular radio shows in America.

She was rejected for being “too academic.” But that didn’t hold her back from trying again.

Thirty-five years later, Corrigan is one of the most recognizable radio and podcast voices as the book reviewer for Fresh Air , one of the most popular programs on public radio and a hit NPR podcast. 

On top of reading countless books every year for Fresh Air , she also teaches in the College of Arts & Sciences as the Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism. She is also a prolific writer and has authored two books while regularly writing for the Wall Street Journal , Washington Post and other major media outlets

“I still feel like I’ve got the greatest combination of jobs in the world,” Corrigan said. “I get to go back and read classics like The Great Gatsby every year with my students, and then I get to read the latest books that are coming down the pike.”

Discover how Corrigan found her love of books and became one of the country’s most popular book critics.

Behind the CV: Maureen Corrigan on NPR, Book Reviews, and What Makes a Great Read

My love of reading came: early from my dad, who was a refrigeration mechanic and loved to read. He would come home from work installing refrigeration systems on buildings all over New York City and he would always crack open a paperback, usually an adventure story about World War II since he had been in the war, but also detective novels and some canonical novels. I remember one day when he saw me reading A Tale of Two Cities for school and he said, “That’s a good one.” So that kind of encouragement to read really took root.

The first book that made me upset: was Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch because my mother was set on giving it to a younger cousin and I wanted to keep that book. I was probably around six and I really loved that book because it was about a woman with a lot of children. As an only child I was fascinated by big families.

The summer of 1975 was magical because: One of my wonderful English professors at Fordham, Mary Fitzgerald, took six of us rabid English majors to the Yeats International Summer School. She knew Seamus Heaney, who later won the Nobel Prize, and we kept running into him all throughout that trip in Dublin and Sligo. My memory of that summer is of a time that was enchanted. I met a lot of writers and poets and saw that they were living a life immersed in literature, and I felt that somehow such a life might be possible.

Why I hated my Ph.D program: I went to Fordham University for college and had the greatest professors of my life there, and they inspired me to go ahead for my Ph.D.  I was fortunate to be awarded a fellowship to the University of Pennsylvania, but hated the Ph.D program — although I stuck it out because I wanted to be a professor. I was at Penn during the period when deconstruction and continental critical theory ruled, and I found those ways of talking about books deadening and, now I would say, elitist, too. 

I love to teach because: It’s a lot like opening up a fresh book. You walk into the classroom the first day of the semester, and you don’t know who you’re going to be with for the next few months and what your shared experience is going to be. When a class gels, you really feel, as a professor, that you and your students are all together on a freshly illuminating and, sometimes, unpredictable journey through the material.

I got into reviewing books when: a friend of mine in graduate school asked if I would help her with a take-home editing test for a job she was applying to at the Village Voice , which was back then the greatest alternative newspaper in America. The Village Voice is the newspaper that the Georgetown Voice is named after. I helped her, and as a way of thanking me, she asked if I wanted to try to write a book review for the literary supplement. Writing that review felt like the magic antidote to what I so disliked about academic writing. It was as if somebody gave me a life support system to get through the rest of graduate school. In my reviews I could write about books with enthusiasm and humor and, I hope, intelligence, rather than putting my voice through what I considered to be the “deflavorizing machine” of academic critical theory.

“Writing that review felt like the magic antidote to what I so disliked about academic writing. It was as if somebody gave me a life support system to get through the rest of graduate school.” Maureen Corrigan

I landed my job at NPR’s Fresh Air because: I had a gig during two summers during graduate school grading AP English exams. I always compare the speed with which we had to grade those essays to the classic scene of Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory. The conveyor belt would get faster, and you, as a grader, had to read faster. The system was nuts and immoral. I did an exposé for the Village Voice about that escapade. A producer from Fresh Air called me and asked me to do a much shorter on-air version for the show, and the folks at Fresh Air liked it and asked me if I would like to join as a secondary book critic. John Leonard was the book critic at the time and had a reputation for being very generous to younger writers, and when he eventually left the show, I became the book critic — a position I’ve held for some 35 years and counting. 

Reading books every day never gets old: because, while the books I’m considering as a critic may not always be great, they’re always new. Every year there are some books by writers I haven’t read before who are amazing; every year there are books by familiar writers I love who surprise me by going off in new directions. You just never know what you’re going to encounter when you open up a book.

I choose what books to review by: making a master list of what’s coming out at least a season ahead. I probably get at least 25 emails a day from publicists and publishers. I also talk to independent booksellers I know and trust to learn what forthcoming books they are excited about. My current review list changes from week to week. If I feel like I’m getting in a rut or I’m doing a lot of literary fiction, I’ll make a special effort to find some promising non-fiction or genre fiction. If I’m doing a lot of books from major publishing houses written by big-name authors, I’ll try to make a special effort to change up my review list and find an academic or independent press book or something else that’s a little off-road. 

What makes a great book is: if it’s fresh, authentic, conceived out of the author’s soul or imagination; in short, a subject hasn’t been done 5,000 times before or not quite in that same style or voice or form before.

A book I keep coming back to: The Great Gatsby . I’ve read Gatsby well over a hundred times. I learn something new every time I reread it:  that’s one of the marks of a great work of art. Gatsby, as F. Scott Fitzgerald himself said, is about aspiration. It’s about reaching with the knowledge that one’s efforts are always going to fall short. And Fitzgerald’s language is so gorgeous. It’s almost unearthly. As other people have said, the last seven and a half pages of The Great Gatsby are the best writing that anybody has ever produced about the promise of America.

In my free time, I gravitate toward: hard-boiled detective fiction. At its best, it’s a form that investigates the underside of American life and society. Detective fiction is also the only literary genre where the act of thinking is at the center of the narrative.  Edgar Allan Poe, the inventor of the detective story, called his strange new creation “tales of ratiocination” — tales of thinking. How do you make thinking itself engrossing, suspenseful, even sexy? That’s the challenge for detective fiction writers. 

If you asked me how many books I read this year: I couldn’t possibly tell you. 

Behind the CV

Do Men Really Think About the Roman Empire Every Day? This Roman History Professor Sure Does

Literary fiction dominates Maureen Corrigan's 2021 Best Books list

by Maureen Corrigan

• Book Reviews
• Arts & Life

This was a spectacular year for literary fiction, so my "Best Books" list is exclusively composed of novels and short story collections — and I wish I could triple its length, but I'll keep it to 10.

Klara and the Sun

by Kazuo Ishiguro's

Klara and the Sun takes pride of place in this list. As he did in his 2005 novel Never Let Me Go , Kazuo Ishiguro here explores what it means to be human through the perspective of a being who's regarded as merely "humanlike." Ishiguro is the master of slowly deepening our awareness of fragility and the inevitability of death — all that, even as he deepens our awareness of what temporary magic it is to be alive in the first place.

Cloud Cuckoo Land

by Anthony Doerr

Of all our contemporary literary fiction writers, Anthony Doerr is the one whose novels seem to be the most full-hearted response to the primal request, "Tell me a story." Doerr's latest, Cloud Cuckoo Land , spans eight centuries and dramatizes how an ancient tale gives light and hope to five young people, each living in dangerous times, with correspondences to our own.

Light Perpetual

by Francis Spufford

Francis Spufford's historical novel, Light Perpetual , is a miracle not only of art, but of empathy. It opens with a real-life incident: the dropping of a V-2 rocket on a Woolworths in London one Saturday in 1944. What follows is a narrative that unsentimentally imagines the lives that five of the victims, all children, might have lived. Light Perpetual is a resonant novel about chance, as well as a God's-eye meditation on mutability and loss.

by Lauren Groff

Don't be misled by the title, Lauren Groff 's historical novel Matrix is no dystopian thriller, but rather a radiant novel about the 12 th -century poet and mystic Marie de France, about whose life we know almost nothing. No matter. Groff richly imagines Marie's decades of exile in a royal convent, which she eventually leads. A charged novel about female ambition, Matrix also dramatizes Marie's canny political insight that: "most souls upon the earth are not at ease unless they find themselves safe in the hands of a force far greater than themselves."

Harlem Shuffle

by Colson Whitehead

I'm beginning to think that any year Colson Whitehead brings out a new novel I should just reserve a spot on my "Best Books" list for it. Harlem Shuffle is a crime story in the sardonic style of Chester Himes ' classic Cotton Comes to Harlem, crossed with every film noir ever made about a good man caught up in a bad situation. Ray Carney, a family man, sells used furniture in the New York of the late 1950s and early '60s: You can smell the dust on the blond wood console radios he's trying to unload as TV sets are taking over. When Ray's cousin lures him into a heist at the Hotel Theresa — the so-called "Waldorf of Harlem" — Ray's hard-won respectability threatens to crumble.

Afterparties

by Anthony Veasna So

Afterparties , by the late Anthony Veasna So, was one of the big buzz books this year and it exceeded and upended my expectations. So, who died at the age of 28 before the book came out, was a queer first-generation Cambodian American who wrote smart, flip, rude, funny, sexually explicit and compassionate stories about the Cambodian refugee community in Stockton, Calif.

My Monticello

by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

The title novella of Jocelyn Nicole Johnson 's collection, My Monticello , is set in the near future when a group of mostly African American characters takes a last stand against the forces of racism high atop the "little mountain" that gives Thomas Jefferson's plantation its name. That novella is a rich, eerie riff on American mythology.

by Yoon Choi

The eight stories in Yoon Choi's collection, Skinship , splinter out to touch on decades of family history shaped, sometimes warped, by immigration. Choi takes that familiar topic and makes her characters' predicaments vivid and nuanced.

Oh William!

by Elizabeth Strout

In Oh William! Elizabeth Strout returns to her writer character, Lucy Barton, who, with her ex-husband, goes on a road trip that carries them deep into the wilderness of their failed marriage and personal pasts. That summary sounds grim, but if you know Strout you know that she compresses into the most ordinary conversations epiphanies about love, parenting and the untold ways we humans mess up.

We Run the Tides

by Vendela Vida

Finally, I want to give one last plug to a novel that I don't think has yet gotten all the recognition it deserves: Vendela Vida 's We Run the Tides . Set in the mid-1980s in the Sea Cliff neighborhood of San Francisco that's perched on the very edge of the Pacific, the novel follows a squad of four 13-year-old girls also perched on the very edge of things. Haunted, tough and exquisite, this sliver of a novel summons up a world of female adolescence that I, for one, wanted to remain lost in — and yet also felt relieved to have outgrown.

More Fresh Air

'the beast' jumps from 1910, to 2014, to 2044, tracking fear through the ages.

by Justin Chang

Journalist says we're 'basically guinea pigs' for a new form of industrialized food

by Tonya Mosley

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Gabrielle and Louis (Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) meet in 1910 Paris, 2014 Los Angeles and again in 2044 in The Beast . Carole Bethuel/Kinology hide caption

Movie Reviews

'the beast' jumps from 1910, to 2014, to 2044, tracking fear through the ages.

This wildly original adaptation of the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle follows human alienation and anxiety, asking why, in every era, we disengage from life and the people around us.

Movie Interviews

Journalist says we're 'basically guinea pigs' for a new form of industrialized food.

by Tonya Mosley

by Justin Chang

• See Fresh Air sponsors and promo codes

Previous Shows

Fresh air for april 17, 2024: planning for a better death, fresh air for april 16, 2024: salman rushdie, fresh air for april 15, 2024: diarra kilpatrick, a.k.a. 'diarra from detroit', fresh air for april 13, 2024: andrew scott; how cars became a gendered technology, fresh air for april 12, 2024: king kong and godzilla — the origin stories.

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• Latest Show
• Terry Gross
• Tonya Mosley
• Contact Fresh Air
• Subscribe to NPR's Up First Email

Gabrielle and Louis (Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) meet in 1910 Paris, 2014 Los Angeles and again in 2044 in The Beast . Carole Bethuel/Kinology hide caption

Movie Reviews

'the beast' jumps from 1910, to 2014, to 2044, tracking fear through the ages.

This wildly original adaptation of the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle follows human alienation and anxiety, asking why, in every era, we disengage from life and the people around us.

Movie Interviews

Journalist says we're 'basically guinea pigs' for a new form of industrialized food.

by Tonya Mosley

by Justin Chang

• See Fresh Air sponsors and promo codes

Previous Shows

Fresh air for april 17, 2024: planning for a better death, fresh air for april 16, 2024: salman rushdie, fresh air for april 15, 2024: diarra kilpatrick, a.k.a. 'diarra from detroit', fresh air for april 13, 2024: andrew scott; how cars became a gendered technology, fresh air for april 12, 2024: king kong and godzilla — the origin stories.

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Select air date, select segment types, 5,209 segments, daughter of warhol star looks back on a bohemian childhood in the chelsea hotel.

Alexandra Auder's mother, Viva, was one of Andy Warhol's muses. Growing up in Warhol's orbit meant Auder's childhood was an unusual one. For several years, Viva, Auder and Auder's younger half-sister, Gaby Hoffmann, lived in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. It was was famous for having been home to Leonard Cohen, Dylan Thomas, Virgil Thomson, and Bob Dylan, among others.

• Alexandra Auder

How private equity firms are widening the income gap in the U.S.

Financial journalist Gretchen Morgenson explains how private equity firms buy out companies, then lay off employees and cut costs in order to expand profits. Her new book is These are the Plunderers.

• Gretchen Morgenson

Diet culture can hurt kids. This author advises parents to reclaim the word 'fat'

Virginia Sole-Smith produces the newsletter and podcast Burnt Toast, where she explores fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. In her new book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, she argues that efforts to fight childhood obesity have caused kids to absorb an onslaught of body-shaming messages.

• Virginia Sole-Smith

Judy Blume was banned from the beginning, but says 'It never stopped me from writing'

When Judy Blume began writing for pre-teens and teens in the '70s and '80s, young readers devoured her novels, which spoke to their hopes and anxieties. Two of her books Forever, and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret... were banned in some places.

Remembering historical crime novelist Anne Perry

For decades, Perry, who died April 10, kept secret the fact that she was one of the teenage girls involved in the murder depicted in the 1994 film Heavenly Creatures. Originally broadcast in 1994.

Remembering Michael Denneny, an editor who championed LGBTQ voices

One of the first openly gay editors working at a major publishing house, Denneny launched the Stonewall Inn Editions imprint. He died April 12. Originally broadcast in 1987 and 1994.

• Michael Denneny

In 1984, Margaret Thatcher was nearly assassinated — a new book asks, what if?

In a new book called "There Will Be Fire," Irish journalist Rory Carroll investigates the IRA plot to assassinate Margaret Thatcher, a plot that almost succeeded and thus almost changed the course of history.

NPR host Mary Louise Kelly reflects on juggling motherhood and chasing the news

Kelly has reported from around the world, including from war zones. Her new memoir, It. Goes. So. Fast, chronicles her ongoing attempts to be a good mother — and be good at her job.

• Mary Louise Kelly

A daughter confronts the failures of our health care system in 'A Living Remedy'

Class identity, however, much more than racial identity or adoption, is the factor that greatly determines the course of events recalled in A Living Remedy says book critic Maureen Corrigan.

In 'Above Ground,' Clint Smith uses poetry to confront the legacy of slavery

Smith's poems, which are addressed to his young children, describe what their ancestors endured and escaped. He also examines the joy and anxiety of parenthood, especially as a Black father.

• Clint Smith

Everything she knew about her wife was false — a faux biography finds the 'truth'

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says of this new book that "just when you think you have a handle on Biography of X, it escapes the stack of assumptions where you thought you'd put it."

2 novels to cure your winter blahs: Ephron's 'Heartburn' and 'Pineapple Street'

Nora Ephron's 1983 novel Heartburn just come out in a 40th anniversary edition. And Jenny Jackson's debut comic novel, Pineapple Street, is a smart comedy of manners.

Novelist Thomas Mallon looks back on the early years of the AIDS epidemic

The New Yorker recently published Mallon's diary excepts detailing life in Manhattan in the '80s. His new novel, Up With the Sun, is based on the life of a little-known actor who was gay and closeted.

• Thomas Mallon

Jimmy Carter: The 'Fresh Air' interviews

At 98, Carter is the oldest living president in U.S. history. After serving his term, he worked to promote safe housing, human rights and conflict resolution. Originally broadcast in '93, '95 and '96.

• Jimmy Carter

Rebecca Makkai's smart, prep school murder novel is self-aware about the 'ick' factor

Maureen Corrigan reviews I Have Some Questions for You which she says "is both a thickly-plotted, character-driven mystery and a stylishly self-aware novel of ideas."

LBJ biographer Robert Caro reflects on fame, power and the presidency

Caro isn't solely interested in telling the stories of famous men. Instead, he says, "I wanted to use their lives to show how political power worked." Originally broadcast in 2013 and 2019.

• Robert A Caro

Want to be a writer? This bleak but buoyant guide says to get used to rejection

"On Writing And Failure" is the title of a new pamphlet-length book by Canadian novelist and essayist Stephen Marche. Book critic Maureen Corrigan says that while failure may be no laughing matter, Marche's little book is a witty delight to read.

Remembering Victor Navasky, longtime editor and publisher of 'The Nation'

The Nation doubled in circulation under Navasky's tenure. He went on to teach at Columbia University, and chaired the Columbia Journalism Review. He died Jan 23. Originally broadcast in 1982.

• Victor S Navasky

Novelist Julie Otsuka draws on her own family history in 'The Swimmers'

Otsuka has recently been awarded the Carnegie Medal for Excellence for her novel about a Japanese American woman who's lost much of her memory to dementia. Originally broadcast Feb. 22, 2022.

• Julie Otsuka

Classic LA noir meets the #MeToo era in the suspense novel 'Everybody Knows'

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says Jordan Harper's new suspense novel is L-A noir at its sleazy, suspensful best.

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Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio's most popular programs. Each week, nearly 4.5 million people listen to the show's intimate conversations broadcast on more than 450 National Public Radio (NPR) stations across the country, as well as in Europe on the World Radio Network.

Though Fresh Air has been categorized as a "talk show," it hardly fits the mold. Its 1994 Peabody Award citation credits Fresh Air with "probing questions, revelatory interviews and unusual insights." And a variety of top publications count Gross among the country's leading interviewers. The show gives interviews as much time as needed, and complements them with comments from well-known critics and commentators.

Fresh Air is produced at WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and broadcast nationally by NPR.

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, is a weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio’s most popular programs.

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6 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

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Our recommended books this week include two satirical novels — one about identity politics and victimization, the other about artificial intelligence and gender roles — along with Tana French’s second crime novel about a Chicago police officer who retired to the Irish countryside. In nonfiction, we recommend the story of a deadly avalanche, a philosopher’s exploration of the concept of giving up, and the gratifyingly intimate audio version of Barbra Streisand’s recent memoir, which she narrates herself. Happy listening, and happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

MY NAME IS BARBRA Barbra Streisand

Certain of the, shall we say, eccentricities (oh … the ellipses!) in Streisand’s 992-page doorstop of a memoir get wonderfully ironed out in audio form. Its sprawling a-star-is-born anecdotes seem to find their natural form in the towering performer’s 48-plus hours of discursive, disarming and often gloriously off-the-cuff narration.

“As Streisand recites the story of her life … she ad-libs off the written text, splices sentences, audibly shakes her head at dubious decisions, and altogether places us opposite her on the sofa with a cup of coffee for a two-day kibitz.”

From Zachary Woolfe’s review

Penguin Audio | 48 hours, 17 minutes

VICTIM Andrew Boryga

Boryga’s debut is a lively social satire about the fetishization of victimhood, following a young working-class student, Javi, who uses exaggerated stories of tragedy to earn attention and success. Boryga is having fun, and he’s inviting us to join in.

“Let’s be clear: Though Boryga is playing, he’s not playing around. Through Javi’s story, Boryga humorously and scathingly calls out the gluttonous consumption of stories of victimhood.”

From Mateo Askaripour’s review

Doubleday | $27

ANNIE BOT Sierra Greer

On the surface, “Annie Bot” is a story about an A.I. sex robot that grows more and more sentient, but underneath this high-tech premise is a sharp and smart exploration of misogyny, toxic masculinity, selfhood and self-determination.

“A brilliant pas de deux, grappling with ideas of freedom and identity while depicting a perverse relationship in painful detail.”

From Lydia Kiesling’s review

Mariner | $28

ON GIVING UP Adam Phillips

In his latest book, Phillips’s exploration of “giving up” covers the vast territory between hope and despair. We can give up smoking, sugar or a bad habit; but we can also give up on ourselves. Phillips proposes curiosity and improvisation as antidotes to absolute certainty.

“Phillips doesn’t try to prevent us from thinking whatever it is that we want to think; what he does is repeatedly coax us to ask if that’s what we really believe, and how we can be sure.”

From Jennifer Szalai’s review

Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $26

THE DARKEST WHITE: A Mountain Legend and the Avalanche That Took Him Eric Blehm

In January 2003, seven skiers and snowboarders were killed in an avalanche on a glacier in western Canada. Among them was the American snowboarder Craig Kelly, and the adventure writer Blehm turns this page-turner not just into a biography of the athlete, but a tribute to the sport itself: addictive, thrilling — sometimes deadly.

“Probably the most unremittingly exciting book of nonfiction I have come across in years. I found myself reading late into recent nights wholly transfixed by every paragraph, every word.”

From Simon Winchester’s review

Harper | $32

THE HUNTER Tana French

For Tana French fans, every one of the thriller writer’s twisty, ingenious books is an event. This one, a sequel to “The Searcher,” once again sees the retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper, a perennial outsider in the Irish west-country hamlet of Ardnakelty, caught up in the crimes — seen and unseen — that eat at the seemingly picturesque village.

“The novel’s greatest pleasures — genuine twists aside — reside in the specific intersection of outsider and native, and particularly the former’s determined need to idealize, to claim, to tint whole rivers green.”

From Sadie Stein’s review

Viking | $32

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Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, “Knife,” addresses the attack that maimed him  in 2022, and pays tribute to his wife who saw him through .

Recent books by Allen Bratton, Daniel Lefferts and Garrard Conley depict gay Christian characters not usually seen in queer literature.

What can fiction tell us about the apocalypse? The writer Ayana Mathis finds unexpected hope in novels of crisis by Ling Ma, Jenny Offill and Jesmyn Ward .

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Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

Screen Rant

The spiderwick chronicles season 1 review: the dark fantasy series is a breath of fresh air.

The Spiderwick Chronicles season 1 is a win as a book adaptation, providing an exciting first chapter for what could be a multi-season fan-favorite.

• The Grace family's dynamic adds depth to the series.
• Mulgarath is a frightful villain that adds intensity.
• The series is dark, immersive, and perfect for younger audiences.

The Spiderwick Chronicles season 1 is the perfect entry into a world filled with equal parts wonder and fear. The series was initially produced to be released on Disney+, though cost-cutting measures ended up changing those plans, with the series finding a new home on The Roku Channel. It's a good thing that happened, too, because The Spiderwick Chronicles season 1 offers an exciting fantasy story rooted in family, mystery, and a darker feel than the usual Disney fare, making for an excellent addition to Roku's growing roster of projects.

A family moves into their ancestral home only to discover that magical creatures exist. With the help of their aunt, the children of the Spiderwick manor set out on a quest to find the magical pages created by their father to protect themselves from a dangerous creature.

• The Grace family's dynamic is compelling
• The series' fantastical world is immersive
• The Spiderwick Chronicles is the perfect dark series for young audiences
• Jared is a hard-to-like lead character

Created by Aron Eli Coleite — who co-created Netflix's Locke & Key , a series that possesses similarities to The Spiderwick Chronicles — Roku's new fantasy show is based on the series of books by authors Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. The new adaptation is the second to be released after the 2008 movie of the same name. The series follows the adventures of the Grace family, who, after moving into an old family home, discover a world filled with magical creatures, some friendly, and some not.

Viewers are thrust into the wondrous world of the series alongside the Grace family, who see their lives get flipped in a few different ways.

The Spiderwick Chronicles' World Is Immersive

Viewers are thrust into the wondrous world of the series alongside the Grace family, who see their lives get flipped in a few different ways. After moving from Brooklyn to the Spiderwick Estate in Henson, Michigan, the Graces have to deal with the normal changes that come from going from a big city to a smaller town and leaving friends and loved ones behind. However, the Spiderwick Estate offers a different set of challenges altogether, with the Grace family slowly discovering that magical creatures are real and that their family's past holds the key to their predicament.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is the perfect dark series for younger audiences. It's a fresh addition amid fantasy series that are normally dedicated to young adults. The show starts with some intriguing horror elements, which help add a flair to the world that keeps the stakes high. While other fantasy series might not be as effective due to its main characters always being safe, The Spiderwick Chronicles does a great job of maintaining suspense, as anything could happen at the flick of a switch, with shocking deaths sprinkled throughout.

The Spiderwick Chronicles (2024)

The grace family's dynamic works, the spiderwick chronicles' mulgarath is a frightening villain.

The Graces are exciting characters to follow. The series centers around Jared, Simon, Mallory, and their mother, Helen. While all three children get their moments to shine throughout the season, Simon is the character I enjoyed following the most. Like Jared keeps reminding everyone, Simon is the ultimate do-gooder, though the character is more than someone who simply wants to please others. Simon has some poignant scenes with a couple of characters that help show his depth, and Noah Cottrell's great chemistry with Alyvia Alyn Lind makes all of Simon and Calliope's scenes pop.

Shazam! 's Jack Dylan Grazer delivers a hyper-energetic vocal performance as Thimbletack, a magical creature who should become a fan-favorite.

Lyon Daniels does a great job as Jared, the main character resolved to fight the evil that has come to Henson in the form of the ogre Mulgarath. However, he is extremely hard to like, with character development that walks forward and back several times throughout the season. Halfway through season 1, I found myself tired of Jared's antics, even though the character gets a couple of good scenes in the latter episodes. Mychala Lee's Mallory is determined, brave, and smart, making her an important player in the battle against Mulgarath.

Christian Slater is perfect as Mulgarath. The actor is clearly having fun in the role, with Slater stealing every scene he is in. He makes the ogre a frightening foe, and there are some elements under the surface that serve to make Mulgarath a complex villain. Aunt Lucinda helps move the plot forward in interesting ways, with Shazam! 's Jack Dylan Grazer delivering a hyper-energetic vocal performance as Thimbletack, a magical creature who should become a fan-favorite. The Spiderwick Chronicles ' ending perfectly sets up another season, and there's enormous potential for it to be even better in its sophomore outing.

All 8 episodes of The Spiderwick Chronicles will begin streaming on The Roku Channel on April 19.

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'Beyond Binaries' review: A fresh perspective on India-China relations

Shastri Ramachandran’s book provides the much-needed reporter’s experience

Men trip not on mountains, they trip over molehills. Or goes the Chinese proverb at the beginning of  Beyond Binaries: The World of India and China . In the India-China relationship, even molehills are mountains, and Shastri Ramachandran’s book gives a clear-eyed view for peak gazing and aims the reader to skip past the molehills.

In an ever-expanding bookshelf on understanding China, Ramachandran’s book provides the much-needed reporter’s experience. “Most expats tend to assume censorship and restrictions even when they do not exist,’’ he writes about when he worked with the Global Times. He narrates an incident when he wrote a piece that centres on Chinese politics, pulled no punches, but found that the editors who kept an “eagle eye against transgressions’’ said that he was “not critical enough’’. 

The anecdote is illustrative of the kind of fresh perspective that Ramachandran offers in his book. In India, he writes China is like the proverbial Indian elephant ‘seen’ by five blind men. What you don’t see is what you get. And in this space of “a threat’’, “enemy’’, “rival’’, “competitor and rising power” “itching for a war’’, Ramachandran has chosen to introduce another—a fly-on-the-wall journalist, with old-fashioned curiosity. His book which traces the relationship through the ages, does so from the perspective of this journalist covering the beat. 

His first trip to China was in 2008 when he travelled with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for an economic summit with Premier Een Jiabao—a defining moment, as he writes—and then, he worked in Beijing with China Daily and Global Times. This experience gave him a ringside view of China—from newsrooms—that is a vastly different view. 

“India and Indians need to face up to the fact that we are not in China’s sights as much as we think,’’ he writes. In short, India does not matter, much. During his first months in China Daily, India figured prominently only a few times. India does not matter that much. Then, why China’s Global Times, is in the news in India for its anti-Indian comments, he asks. His explanation is “to feed the frenzy’’. Or in short, fun. The idea, he says, is a powerful one—that all publicity is good. And on the net that usually spells provocative. During his stint with the paper, for a year, there was only one India-related editorial that was carried. The Global Times English launched in 2009 but became popular. The Chinese edition had been coming out for decades. But it was a year later, that it went viral. As they were meant to be export products for a foreign audience, what appeared he believes is not necessarily the view of the Party, but often also to provide red herrings of what can be said.

If busting the first two myths is not reason enough to read on. Here is another. The 1962 war. It is a war that the Indian army can’t forget. But “few in present-day China hark back to it,’’ he writes. His book aims to push boundaries, fill in silences and add a new view. If there was ever a time to make sense of the Chinese whispers to hear a high-top note, it is now. 

Title: ‘Beyond Binaries- The World of India and China’

Author: Shastri Ramachandran

Publisher: Institute of Objective Studies

Price: Rs. 750

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