Heller McAlpin

Heller McAlpin appears in the following:

Compassion Is The True Test Of A Person In 'Second Place'

Saturday, May 08, 2021

Rachel Cusk follows her acclaimed Outline trilogy with this story about a woman whose lifelong obsession with a truculent painter is tested when he comes to stay at a cottage on her property.

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Jhumpa Lahiri's New 'Whereabouts' Is About Places Both Geographical And Emotional

Thursday, April 29, 2021

Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel — which she wrote in Italian, then translated back to English herself — centers on a middle-aged Italian woman trying to figure out her place in the world.

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'The Souvenir Museum' Is An Exhibit To Savor

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Elizabeth McCracken's new story collection dazzles with verbal flexibility, insight and feeling, capturing the oddities and mixed bags, the loves and losses that make up most people's lives.

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'First Person Singular' Asks A Lot Of Questions — But Shies Away From Answers

Sunday, April 04, 2021

Haruki Murakami's plain-spoken new story collection features narrators a lot like him — male, middle-aged, recounting inexplicably strange things that have happened to them,

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You Actually Will Be Talking About 'No One Is Talking About This'

Thursday, February 18, 2021

Patricia Lockwood's first novel follows an Extremely Online woman whose life changes forever when her niece is born with a serious illness — which sounds Hallmark-ready, but Lockwood pulls it off.

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'Between Two Kingdoms' Tells A Story Of Survival — And Of A Journey To Learn To Live

Tuesday, February 09, 2021

A new book by Suleika Jaouad, author of the column "Life, Interrupted," encompasses a less familiar tale of what it's like to survive cancer and have to figure out how to live again in its aftermath.

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Joan Didion's 'Let Me Tell You What I Mean' Offers Plenty Of 'Journalistic Gold'

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

What's particularly salient in this book of previously uncollected essays is Didion's trademark farsightedness — especially striking decades later. But it does leave one wishing to hear from her now.

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'The Liar's Dictionary' Is A Delight From A To Z

Wednesday, January 06, 2021

Eley Williamsdid her doctoral dissertation on "mountweazels," fake words inserted into dictionaries as copyright traps — and she builds on that in her charming debut novel, about an epic dictionary.

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'Perestroika In Paris' Is A Cozy, Fairy-Tale Trot Through The City Of Lights

Wednesday, December 02, 2020

Fans of Jane Smiley's previous books will be pleased to see that talking horses make a return in her latest — plus a dog, a raven and a couple of ducks, all making lives for themselves in Paris.

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In 'This Is Not My Memoir' André Gregory Recounts Tales Of Childhood And The Theater

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

The avant-garde theater director and actor pairs up with writer-director Todd London to present the story of his multi-faceted life, full of dramatic ups and downs — and celebrities.

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In 'Wintering,' Katherine May Encourages 'The Active Acceptance Of Sadness'

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

The British author writes beautifully of her own recent bout with a personal winter, a period when she felt low and overwhelmed — and aims to help others to embrace their winters.

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'Shelter In Place' Is An Ill-Mannered Comedy Of Manners

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

David Leavitt's new novel Shelter in Place aims for sparkling social comedy — but it's let down by a cast of privileged, shallow characters you wouldn't want to spend your lockdown with.

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'Here We Are' Conjures Magic From Ordinary Lives

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Graham Smith's new novel seems at first to be a light little story about a seaside love triangle in Brighton, England in the 1950s — but it turns out to be about something far deeper.

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Attachment Brings Joy, And Inevitably, Loss In 'What Are You Going Through'

Wednesday, September 09, 2020

Sigrid Nunez's new novel follows an unnamed narrator who agrees to keep a dying friend company until the end — but despite encompassing all kinds of sadness, the story is never grim.

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Ali Smith Brings Her Seasonal Quartet To A Close With 'Summer'

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

In Ali Smith's new novel, she reveals the overarching connections between the characters and themes of her previous three. Critic Heller McAlpin says connection is the great theme of these works.

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The Real 'Hamnet' Died Centuries Ago, But This Novel Is Timeless

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Maggie O'Farrell's new novel confronts a parent's worst nightmare: The loss of a child. In this case, it's Hamnet, the real-life son of William Shakespeare, whose death may have inspired Hamlet.

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'Bright Precious Thing' Encompasses Memories Unleashed By #MeToo Movement

Monday, July 06, 2020

Like most good memoirs, Gail Caldwell's latest is a reassessment of life choices, roads taken and others foregone. "At some point you shuffle the cards and call the deck a life," she writes.

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'Miss Iceland' Is A Subdued, Powerful Portrait Of A Suppressed Society

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir's atmospheric novel, about a young writer and her outcast friends in 1963 Iceland, will transport you to another time and place, though not necessarily a rosier time and place.

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'The Vanishing Half' Counts The Terrible Costs Of Bigotry And Secrecy

Wednesday, June 03, 2020

Brit Bennett's triumphant new novel follows two light-skinned black sisters whose lives take very different paths; you'll keep turning pages not to find out what happens, but who these women are.

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Get Everything 'Under Control' With These 3 Quarantine Comfort Reads

Thursday, May 07, 2020

Now's the time for cheerful reads, so we've picked three — including Emma Straub's latest and two lively culinary memoirs — that'll help transport you to a happier place for a few hours.

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