The line between human and nonhuman
Alice Hoffman’s Holocaust novel collapses the boundaries between reality and fantasy.
fiction
A sneak peek at the CC staff’s Christmas gift list
A school of death
Colson Whitehead dramatizes a horrifying piece of historical reality.
Back to Margaret Atwood’s Gilead
The Testaments returns to the world of The Handmaid’s Tale. Is this a good idea?
Action without agency
A philosophy professor races through a (predetermined?) action plot
Two-bit hustlers in the church and elsewhere
In Patrick Coleman’s novel, people hurt others with drugs, dollars, and/or Jesus.
Four people, one church
Cara Wall writes beautifully about something novelists rarely address: a mainline Protestant congregation.
This novel about ridiculously rich people offers no simple lessons
Patrick deWitt is far too smart a writer to offer a sentimental narrative of redemption.
A novel about the chasms between people
Can we cross them? Is it worth it?
The anguish and ecstasy of the ark’s matriarch
Sarah Blake’s surrealist novel about Naamah—Noah’s wife—is mesmerizing.
A prodigal son story on the island of Trinidad
Claire Adam’s debut novel is animated by a complicated landscape of family.
Miriam Toews imagines her way into an insular community grappling with sexual assault
In her new novel, women in a Mennonite colony plot their own liberation.
Fiction that makes prisons visible
How three novelists depict the reality of incarceration
Trying to make amends
In Chigozie Obioma’s new novel, forgiveness is no light matter.
A novel about centuries of Jewish-Christian relations
James Carroll tells a story of faith, reason, and freedom.