The Holiday Season
by Michael Knight
The Week
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Amid the “seasonal avalanche” of holiday-themed books, Michael Knight’s slim new work of fiction may be the one best suited for serious readers, said Jacqueline Bliss in USA Today. Nobody writes better about “the country club set” of today’s South than the Alabama-born Knight, said John Sledge in the Alabama Press-Register. The two novellas he’s paired in The Holiday Season explore with insight and humor the family tensions and squabbles that this time of year is notorious for. Yet he holds a reader’s attention “without resorting to cheap devices and pyrotechnics.” In the title piece, said Maria Browning in the Nashville Scene, the “unfavored” adult son in a small Mobile, Ala., family spends Thanksgiving and Christmas trying to mediate between a first-born brother intent on playing host and their stubborn widowed father, who refuses to surrender old traditions. The second novella, Love at the End of the Year, follows a larger cast of Mobilians during their New Year’s Eve revelries. Both stories’ endings remain true to the way that life usually “defies our hopes.” In one of Knight’s biggest surprises, silly, debauched New Year’s “winds up being life-affirming, and filled with intense, if imperfect, joy.”
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Why is the Trump administration talking about ‘Western civilization’?Talking Points Rubio says Europe, US bonded by religion and ancestry
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Quentin Deranque: a student’s death energizes the French far rightIN THE SPOTLIGHT Reactions to the violent killing of an ultraconservative activist offer a glimpse at the culture wars roiling France ahead of next year’s elections
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Secured vs. unsecured loans: how do they differ and which is better?the explainer They are distinguished by the level of risk and the inclusion of collateral
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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.”