I reviewed Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs for Dallas Morning News. Here’s how the review begins:

The Woman Upstairs

Claire Messud

(Knopf, $25.95)

Nora Eldridge, a woman scalded by the fallout from an unusual relationship, narrates Claire Messud’s bracing fifth novel, The Woman Upstairs. Nora details the events that wounded her in retrospect, serving them with a mix of vivid anger, self-loathing and genuine appreciation for the objects of her affection that led to her unusual seduction and disgrace.

Nora reflects, “It was supposed to say ‘Great Artist’ on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say ‘such a good teacher/daughter/friend’ instead.” Nora wanted to have children and create stirring art, but instead at 37 she’s a childless schoolteacher, and when she meets Sirena Shahid, an up-and-coming Paris-based Italian artist, mother of Nora’s enchanting student Reza, Nora is particularly vulnerable to her charms.

The Woman Upstairs is not so much the story of the road not taken as it is that of the longed-for road that never appeared. Some of the blame for this lies in a lack of luck that found Nora at 30 still struggling to become an artist, and soon after spending years caring for her dying mother — but some fault lies in Nora’s restraint, her tendency to cleave to the practical, and her inability to pursue her passions at full tilt.

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dallasne.ws/10wdP6a 

I reviewed a new documentary, Out of Print, that examines how the rise of digital reading is changing the book industry, libraries, and even our brains, for PBS MediaShift.

‘Out of Print’ Doc Examines the End of Print Books and What it Portends

People have used books as a reliable tool to transmit and preserve information, ideas, and stories for hundreds of years. E-books have enjoyed wide use for only about six years — counting from when Amazon introduced its Kindle in 2007. Yet e-books have rapidly upended so many facets of the traditional book world that the changes they’ve caused have inspired a documentary, “Out of Print,” by director Vivienne Roumani, which debuted April 25 at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Through interviews with historians specializing in the history of books, as well as key figures in publishing, libraries, schools, bookselling, and cognitive science, and by presenting statistics culled from recent literacy surveys, “Out of Print” presents a portrait of a literary landscape in the midst of rapid change, both positive and negative. The advent of e-books has made reading more efficient and affordable for many and has increased access to and acceptance of self-publishing.

But on the other hand, “Out of Print” portrays young people who are unable or unwilling to read long sections of text, and can’t retain or synthesize the snippets of information they skim. “A book is something I’m being forced to read, so I spend my time thinking about how I’d rather be sleeping,” says one teenage boy in the film.

Another teenager describes the bewildering experience of visiting a library to conduct research. Although he may be hamming it up for his fellow interviewees, he describes it as “probably one of the hardest experiences of my life. There were so many books, each book specific to one thing. It’s not like you could find one book with everything that you needed in it. I was like, ‘this is terrible. I just want to Google it.’”

Please click through to read the rest:

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/04/out-of-print-doc-examines-the-end-of-print-books-and-what-it-portends119.html

I have a beer-related satire up on McSweeney’s this week.

Here’s how it begins:

WELCOME TO MY NANOBREWERY!

BY JENNY SHANK

I’ve been lucky to have a string of review assignments for three impeccable and very different novels this spring, all of which I’d categorize as feminist: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud, and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. Here’s my review of the first, which ran today in Dallas Morning News:

The Interestings

Meg Wolitzer

(Riverhead, $27.95)

“Talent,” Meg Wolitzer writes in her sweeping, thoughtful novel The Interestings, “could go in so many directions, depending on the forces that were applied to it and depending on economics and disposition, and on the most daunting and most determining force of all, luck.”

The Interestings dramatizes this idea through a four-decade unfurling of the lives of six characters who meet at an idealistic summer arts camp, Spirit-In-The-Woods, in rural New York in 1974.

Although the perspective shifts throughout this engrossing, panoramic novel, the main guide is Julie Jacobson, at the camp on scholarship after her father’s death. The beautiful and brainy aspiring actress Ash Wolf invites Julie to join a group of friends that includes Ash’s handsome and arrogant brother Goodman, an aspiring architect; Cathy, a dancer; Jonah, a musician and son of a famous folk singer; and Ethan Figman, a skilled artist and animator. They call themselves “The Interestings.”

These friends, who live in Manhattan and seem sophisticated, dazzle suburban Julie. “Irony was new to her and tasted good, like a previously unavailable summer fruit,” Wolitzer writes. When Ash calls Julie “Jules,” she keeps the name for life, a symbol of her dream to change herself from “an outsider and possibly even a freak” into an admired comic actress. “They all seduced one another with greatness, or the assumption of eventual greatness. Greatness-in-waiting.”

The novel jumps back and forth in time, propelled by the repercussions of a dramatic incident involving Goodman, whose life, Wolitzer writes in the first chapter, has “an alarming trajectory.” As the friends’ lives develop, whether they fulfill their early artistic promise depends on a number of factors — money, connections, desire and hard work, and the quality of their talent. Jonah is among the first to drop off the artistic path, setting aside his musical gifts after a bizarre exploitation and studying engineering at MIT. Cathy’s womanly body dooms her dance career.

Please click through to read the rest: http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/books/20130419-book-review-the-interestings-by-meg-wolitzer.ece

I reviewed Sam Lipsyte’s new story collection for Dallas Morning News. I liked it a lot better than his most recent novel, The Ask, because he seemed to care about the characters more in the stories. Here’s the beginning of my review:

Please click through to read the rest:

http://dallasne.ws/15hJQlv

A month ago, Amazon obtained a patent that would make it possible for people to sell used e-books and other digital content. I spoke to two prominent authors, Ayelet Waldman and John Scalzi, about what this would mean.

Here’s the beginning of the article, which ran on PBS MediaShift today:

Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child is out in paperback, and it’s a good one for the end of winter. Here’s a bit from my review of it in High Country News:

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http://bit.ly/Zh8qmq

I reviewed the new novel by Kent Haruf, one of my favorite writers, for Dallas Morning News. He’s reading tonight, March 7, at the Boulder Book Store.

“Benediction,” by Kent Haruf

Please click through to read the rest:

http://dallasne.ws/15rDfqu

I reviewed Pauls Toutonghi’s excellent Evel Knievel Days for High Country News.

A Montanan walks into a Cairo bar: A review of Evel Knievel Days

After reading two of Karen Russell’s three books, I’ve decided she’s a writer whose every book I need to read. From now on. I reviewed “Vampires in the Lemon Grove” for Dallas Morning News:

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Karen Russell

(Knopf, $24.95)

Please click through to read the rest:

http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/books/20130215-book-review-vampires-in-the-lemon-grove-by-karen-russell.ece