At first glance, the timing of New York Review Books Classics’ rerelease of Helen Weinzweig’s Basic Black with Pearls is almost as intriguing as the novel itself.
It is said that imitation is the purest form of flattery. Be that true, the question becomes what hold does a feeble imitation of a literary classic have on flattery.
Fiction writers exist in their imagination as they search for ideas to put into a novel. Liza Cole, with one bestseller to her credit, is frustrated with her editor.
“From Italy’s agricultural heartland, largely an autodidact, Walter Ferranini doubts the sincerity of claims for the dignity accorded labor by ideological spokesmen for the post-war communist regim
Tens of millions of Americans live in suburbs, so it’s not surprising to see so many readers gravitating toward stories that happen there. The literary crowd loved the way John Cheever wrote them.
Avid thriller readers are experiencing the whirlwind of a trend toward releases featuring women who are “unreliable narrators.” That trend makes sense from a publishing point of view given the succ
