Daisy Buchanan’s Daughter
by Tom Carson
The Week
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Tom Carson’s “ingenious” novel finally offers fans of The Great Gatsby a look at what happened after that novel’s “mournful” final pages, said Steven Moore in The Washington Post. Pamela Buchanan narrates, dishing on her mother’s post–Gatsby morphine addiction and her own days under Nick Carraway’s guardianship. But it’s what happens later in Pamela’s Zelig-like life that makes Carson’s book a page-turner. “You’re unlikely to find a more compulsively readable novel this year.”
A Good Hard Look
by Ann Napolitano
(Penguin, $26)
One can almost imagine Flannery O’Connor railing against “how idiotic it would be” to turn her into a fictional character, said Gina Webb in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Were she alive to read Ann Napolitano’s debut novel, she might reconsider. Set during the last five years of the author’s life, “against a background of screaming, caterwauling peacocks (O’Connor’s beloved, ever-expanding flock),” this is an irresistible, “decidedly un-Gothic” version of the great novelist’s final days.
The Secret History of Costaguana
by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
(Riverhead, $27)
Juan Gabriel Vásquez has a score to settle with Joseph Conrad, said Alberto Manguel in the London Guardian. “On a mission” to reclaim his country’s literary territory from the English novelist, the Colombian author imagines a confrontation between Conrad and a fictional narrator after Conrad has pillaged the narrator’s story to write his novel Nostromo. Vásquez’s “forceful, masterly” book gives readers a Colombia “far removed from the European exotic perception.”
The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown
by Paul Malmont
(Simon & Schuster, $26)
Paul Malmont’s “rambunctious pulp adventure” takes its inspiration from an unlikely real-life alliance, said Andrew Dunn in Bloomberg.com. During World War II, the U.S. military pulled together a group of science-fiction writers to brainstorm ways to defeat the Axis powers. Malmont has grafted onto this historical oddity a plot full of “death rays, subterranean vaults, and secret passages”—plus a cameo by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
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September 13 editorial cartoonsCartoons Saturday's political cartoons include court-approved racial profiling and America's moral compass
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Giorgio Armani obituary: designer revolutionised the business of fashionIn the Spotlight ‘King Giorgio’ came from humble beginnings to become a titan of the fashion industry and redefine 20th century clothing
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Kim Jong Un’s triumph: the rise and rise of North Korea’s dictatorIn the Spotlight North Korean leader has strengthened ties with Russia and China, and recently revealed his ‘respected child’ to the world
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”