fiction Apr/May 2015

Wise Crack

When crack cocaine enters a story, we usually brace ourselves for a downfall. The tales of those who have fallen prey to the drug are so familiar that they have taught even nonusers to consider themselves experts. Many speak knowingly of the crack addict—gaunt, unkempt, willing to do anything for the next fix. In James Hannaham’s second novel, Delicious Foods, crack figures heavily in two ways. Darlene Hardison, a young widow, is an addict, and Scotty, who narrates a good deal of the novel, is crack personified (that’s right: Crack is one of the novel’s narrators). This is a welcome change to

culture March 13, 2014

Bedrock Faith by Eric Charles May

All is well in the quiet South Side Chicago neighborhood of Charles May's new novel. Until, that is, Stew Pot Reeves, the bad boy of the block, returns after fourteen years in prison. Though he once terrorized his neighbors, Stew Pot claims that he is a changed man. He moves back in with his mother and appoints himself as the neighborhood's moral guardian—and in so doing inspires a new kind of terror.

After reading Eric Charles May’s Bedrock Faith, you may well feel like you’ve lived the whole of your life in Parkland, the South Side Chicago neighborhood where this promising but uneven debut novel is set, circa 1993. Parkland is a tight-knit, god-fearing community, one where nothing goes unnoticed and everyone’s lives are interconnected and in many cases have been for generations.

There is Mrs. Motley, a widowed librarian, who lives in a grand old home—the “house her grandfather had built, and where she’d been raised, and where she’d raised her own children, and where her parents and husband

culture November 04, 2013

Pryor Expectations

A new biography about Richard Pryor offers a frequently bizarre and overly reverential take on the great comic's life.

Though the term genius is used rather promiscuously, few comics merit the label as much as Richard Pryor did. He was masterful—a truth teller, an incisive social critic, a man who opened up a great deal of the black experience to a general audience. He also plumbed his own personal experience with a flair for self-deprecation that could be as discomfiting as it was funny. Onstage, he hid little of himself: While performing at a gay-rights benefit in San Francisco, Pryor startled the crowd by declaring, “I’ve sucked dick … and it was beautiful.” Then, after inviting them to “kiss my rich happy

culture October 18, 2013

Rivers by Michael Farris Smith

Rivers is set in the post-Katrina Mississippi Gulf Coast after a climate shift has made much of the gulf uninhabitable. The federal government has given up trying to rebuild. A line has been drawn, both literally and figuratively, and if you live below “the Line”—meaning, in this case, “a geographical boundary drawn ninety miles north of the coastline from the Texas-Louisiana border across the Mississippi coast to Alabama”—you are forsaken.

I live in farm country in the Midwest. Last summer, the prairie was dry and haunted. Scorched cornfields stretched as far as the eye could see, the stalks standing tall and brown, bearing no fruit. On the local news every night, reporters talked about the blessing of crop insurance, and reported how nearly 90 percent of the state was suffering from the drought. Conditions were similar across the plains. This year was different: We were inundated by rainfall. Hundreds of acres flooded into small lakes big enough to have currents. “We’re the Seattle of the prairie,” was the joke, only there hasn’t

culture June 12, 2013

You Are One of Them by Elliott Holt

Elliott Holt’s You Are One of Them is a novel of grand and intimate scope, artfully balanced between the political and personal. The book’s narrative satisfies on multiple levels, as both a compelling character study and a psychological thriller with a ferociously intelligent ending. It also captures the tenor of the 1980s and ’90s, portraying, in detail that will resonate with readers who grew up in the era, the waning tensions and paranoia of the Cold War, the illusory trappings of American prosperity (Greed is good, sayeth Gordon Gekko), and the early rise of the Internet and other technologies

interviews April 30, 2013

Bookforum talks with Meg Wolitzer

Meg Wolitzer is a bestselling novelist and an unapologetic advocate for women writers, I have been intrigued by her work since reading The Wife (2003), a book about a successful male novelist and the woman behind him that offers incisive, witty commentary on contemporary publishing and the roles of men and women in that world,Wolitzer is a force, and she has brought her ferocious energy, wit, and intelligence to bear on her latest novel, The Interestings, which follows a group of friends who meet at an arts camp as teenagers in the 1970s and remain connected throughout their lives.

Meg Wolitzer is a bestselling novelist and an unapologetic advocate for women writers. I have been intrigued by her work since reading The Wife (2003), a book about a successful male novelist and the woman behind him that offers incisive, witty commentary on contemporary publishing and the roles of men and women in that world.

Wolitzer is a force, and she has brought her ferocious energy, wit, and intelligence to bear on her latest novel, The Interestings, which follows a group of friends who meet at an arts camp as teenagers in the 1970s and remain connected throughout their lives. One member

interviews January 18, 2013

Bookforum talks to Laird Hunt

In Laird Hunt’s provocative new novel Kind One, set during the antebellum era, a young woman, Ginny, leaves her family and everything she knows and loves to follow a man, Linus Lancaster, who is not who he claims to be, After moving to his farm, Ginny discovers that Linus is a selfish, abusive husband whose grandiose ideas about himself far exceed his abilities, During her early years of marriage, Ginny befriends Linus’s slaves, Cleome and Zinnia.

In Laird Hunt’s provocative new novel Kind One, set during the antebellum era, a young woman, Ginny, leaves her family and everything she knows and loves to follow a man, Linus Lancaster, who is not who he claims to be. After moving to his farm, Ginny discovers that Linus is a selfish, abusive husband whose grandiose ideas about himself far exceed his abilities. During her early years of marriage, Ginny befriends Linus’s slaves, Cleome and Zinnia. When Linus’s attentions eventually turn to them, Ginny betrays her only friends and she becomes almost as cruel as her husband. I had the opportunity

Roxane Gay