
In our morning reading: thoughts on books by Nancy Lemann and Jayne Anne Phillips, short fiction recommendations, and more.

In our morning reading: thoughts on books by Nancy Lemann and Jayne Anne Phillips, short fiction recommendations, and more.

Those Days Are Over
by Steve Anwyll
Drivers treat rue Saint-Jacques like a race track. Waiting at the corner S hoists a bag meant for camping on his shoulders. The weight is meant for a younger man. All his dirty clothes. Blankets too. Ash asked him when the last time he washed them and he didn’t have a good answer.

In our weekend reading: thoughts on Nora Lange’s new collection, revisiting Lena Dunham’s work, and more.

Colm Tóibín has long been a master of the silences that hum beneath the surface of domestic life, and his latest collection, The News from Dublin, finds him operating at the peak of his understated powers. These stories are less about dramatic upheavals and more about the quiet, tectonic shifts in identity, exile, and the persistent weight of the past.

In our morning reading: thoughts on Don DeLillo, this year’s Guggenheim fellows, and more.

In our afternoon reading: checking in with Melvin Gibbs, thoughts on Chloe N. Clark’s new book, and more.

Until earlier this year, the only novel I’d read by the late Todd Grimson was Brand New Cherry Flavor. That book was an absolute headrush, one part bizarre tale of the supernatural, one part cutting Hollywood satire. It was adapted for the small screen a few years ago by Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion; Antosca had long been an advocate for the book, and for Grimson’s work in general. And now there’s a stylish new edition of another one of Grimson’s novels out in the world: Stainless. This is also a story of the uncanny intersecting southern California; it’s also not what you might expect.

In our morning reading: new writing by Isle McElroy and Rax King, a spring book preview, and more.