5 Comments

Thanks! Great books to look into. For me: Novel-EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal. Short stories: (older book) Sam Shepard’s GREAT DREAM OF HEAVEN. And anything by Claire Keegan. She is marvelous!

Expand full comment
author

Thank you, David. I just read the sample of EASTBOUND online and I take back what I said about third person:) Well not really BUT--this is definitely a book I would take home if I read the first few pages in a bookstore. I love novels set on trains, for one thing, and I love how the author closes the distance between the reader and Aliocha as we move closer to him in the train car.

Also, Riding the Iron Rooster is a book I loved thirty years ago that has stayed with me, and it's about the Trans Siberian Railway.

Expand full comment

Hi Michelle, Thanks for this. I hope you’ll look at my most recent novel, The Moment Before, that tells of a Parisian artist whose New York gallery receives a painting by her that may be her masterpiece. The trouble is, she has no memory of having painted it. Available on order everywhere.

Expand full comment
author

Great opening paragraph to the novel, Terence!

Expand full comment

Fascinating list.....I would add two by Pulitzer Prize recipient, former U.S. Poet Laureate, librettist, Harvard prof, etc., etc. Tracy K. Smith: ORDINARY LIGHT (about growing up in Fairfield, CA; she makes a suburban town into a whole world) and the recent, highly touted TO FREE THE CAPTIVES (a reflection on racial issues and how she came to understand them through researching her family history). She was interviewed recently by Mina Kim on KQED's "Forum" and also on S.F.'s City Arts and Lectures series, plus in the NYT and WP and elsewhere. A remarkable writer and person. "Full Disclosure": She was my high school English class student.

Expand full comment