By Anna Fiore | On August 22, 2017 | Updated November 18, 2022 | Comments (0)
The original edition of Birds of America by Mary McCarthy describes it as “the story of Peter Levi, an innocent abroad, who is Ms. McCarthy’s Candide. In the fall of 1964, he arrives in France to do his junior year at the Sorbonne after spending a bizarre holiday in New England with his enchanting mother.”
Mary McCarthy (1912 – 1989) was an American author, drama critic, and political activist. During her lifetime, she authored more than two dozen books, and gained attention as a cutting critic who argued for the need for creative liberty that transcended ideology.
Her work is known for its precise prose and intricate blend of fiction and non-fiction. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On August 19, 2017 | Updated January 14, 2024 | Comments (0)
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel was published in England just before this iconic American poet took her own life at age thirty.
It was released on January 14, 1963 under a pseudonym, Victoria Lucas, and was published in the U.S. under her real name eight years later (April 11, 1971), in accordance with the wishes of fellow poet Ted Hughes, to whom she was married at the time of her death (though the two were separated).
The Bell Jar reflects Plath’s real-life struggles with severe depression and a breakdown through her character, Esther Greenwood. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On August 9, 2017 | Updated November 14, 2022 | Comments (0)
On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Missouri in 1894 by Laura Ingalls Wilder is based on a diary found after the author’s death, detailing her journey with her husband Almanzo from South Dakota to Missouri.
In 1894, The couple and their seven-year-old daughter, Rose, made the trek from their drought-stricken farm in De Smet to a new farm in Mansfield, Missouri, where they settled permanently.
Laura chronicled the journey in these diary entries, which were undiscovered until after her death and remained unpublished until collected in this 1962 book. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On August 6, 2017 | Updated November 14, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the 1988 North Point Press edition of The World is Round (1939): Gertrude Stein’s only children’s book tells the story of Rose, a little girl determined to find her place in a “World that was round and you could go on it around and around.”
Rose’s search for identity leads her to friendships with dogs, rabbits, lions, and other children, to carve ‘Rose is a Rose is a Rose’ around the trunk of a tree, and finally on a quest (accompanied only by a blue garden chair) to the top of a mountain, where “everywhere she should see everywhere and she would sit on the chair, yes there.” Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On July 29, 2017 | Updated November 14, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the 1953 Viking Press edition of Kingfishers Catch Fire by Rumer Godden: returning to the scene of her best love books, Rumer Godden now brings us another moving story of India.
Kingfishers Catch Fire has all the color, tenderness, and humor, and the feeling for the local inhabitants’ ways, that marked The River as a book and a film.
It also has the kind of the emotion that Miss Godden’s peculiar gift — the emotion of an individual threatened by mysterious alien forces. Read More→
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