novel

We asked some of our favorite novelists and poets to tell us about three recent works of fiction that speak to them in a deep way.
May 9, 2018

Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch connects to both head and heart, while Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit tells of Theodore Roosevelt, an endlessly fascinating figure.
April 24, 2014

Free for what?

Franzen has turned his considerable novelistic talents to a kind of inquisito­rial examination of the American ideal of freedom. He shows how freedom is negatively construed—focused on what we are free from and not on what freedom might be for, what worthy ends it might be used to pursue.
October 17, 2010