The November issue is up! Headlining it is Steve Donoghue’s review of Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (spoiler: he doesn’t like it!). Other recent fiction reviewed includes Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, and Richard Kadrey’s YA novel Dead Set. Sam Sacks takes a look at a new book on Hamlet that “attempts to illuminate the play’s darker corners, and in the process provides useful glosses on some of the more rebarbative thinkers of the modern era”; Greg Waldmann reviews Collision 2012, another entry in the usually short-lived genre of the campaign book; Ivan Keneally explores what sounds like a wonderful exhibition of Sargent’s watercolors at the MFA; and our new poems for the month, from Katy Bohinc, take the form of letters to Alain Badiou. My contribution this time is a ‘second glance’ at one of my long-time favorites to read and teach, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone: I needed a break from disappointing contemporary fiction! Add in Irma Heldman’s regular mystery column and some well-chosen pieces from our archives (especially worth another look is John Cotter’s piece on Sargent’s El Jaleo), and that’s a wrap! Please go on over and check it out, and if you like what you find, help us get the word out.
Novel Readings 