reviews

Move over Olive Kitteridge: Elizabeth Strout gives us her most affecting novel yet Author: Elizabeth Strout “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” In Elizabeth Strout’s incredibly moving new book, main character Lucy Barton considers this classic line from Tennessee Williams. “Many of us have been saved many times by the kindness of strangers, but after a while it sounds trite... And that’s what makes me sad, that a beautiful and true line comes to be used so often that it takes on the superficial sound of a bumper sticker.” The thread of human kindness—beginning in a New [...]

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream Author: Karen Russell Entranced by the bizarre, award winning author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Karen Russell (author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove) is back with another enigmatic message from a curious albeit eerily recognizable future. In a world of hyper awareness and emotional sanitization, a sleep crises has swept the globe. Every day hundreds of people die from lack of sleep, wasting away into a surrealistic void until their brains cannot handle anymore. Science struggles to understand and control the epidemic. Sleep donation, the process of harvesting healthy sleep and dreams from the few non-insomniacs [...]

Reality and nothingness... Author:  Jennifer Keishin Armstrong It seems like a long time ago, but for television viewers of a certain age, 1989 was a year of critical  importance.  Somehow, cynicism and sarcasm had finally made it to the home screen.  Brought to life by stand-up comics Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, NBC’s Seinfeld would go on to create a universe of unapologetically selfish and small-minded individuals that viewers could know and love, changing television forever.  Twenty-some years later, entertainment journalist and New York City resident Jennifer Keishin Armstrong looks back at nine seasons of “nothing” in Seinfeldia. Reveling in [...]