November 11 is Armistice Day, the day in 1918 when the fighting in what was then known as The Great War, came to a stop. It took until June 28, 1919 for the Treaty of Versailles to be signed, which means that we are only just now coming to the end of centennial observances. But […]
You might expect that there’d be a little bit of Beowulf in a book by a medieval studies scholar in York, England. Fiona Mozley’s debut novel adds some Heathcliff, too, for a touch of Yorkshire Moors gothic. But even if you can spot the forbears in Elmet, you probably won’t suspect what you’re getting in […]
De’Shawn Charles Winslow’s debut novel begins with an arresting scene. Pratt Shepherd is in the middle of a fight with his free-spirited girlfriend in a small, coastal North Carolina town on the eve of World War 2. However, Azalea ‘Knot’ Centre, a sometime teacher at the local school for African-American children, is nobody’s possession. When […]
Even when I was a child in the 1960s and 70s there was still some adventurer’s romance attached to the words of Henry Stanley upon finding his quarry: Dr. Livingstone, I presume? Despite the flood of newly independent African nations in that era, people could still be heard referring to Africa as “the dark continent” […]
Katrina doesn’t arrive until Salvage the Bones is almost over, but the hurricane has always been coming. She broods over the whole of Jesmyn Ward’s epic 2011 novel, even when the only one who seems to know she’s on the way is Esch’s Daddy, whose preparations seem excessive to his four children living with him […]
My interview with Virginia Reeves, author of The Behavior of Love, concludes with some thoughts on ‘should’ and the struggles of human beings in love to connect. (The interview begins here.) One of the other big words in this book for me is the word ‘should.’ In fact, you title a whole section ‘Should.’ I […]
In the previous segment of our interview with Virginia Reeves, we talked about the origins of her new book, The Behavior of Love, and the inspiration for one of its main characters, Ed, a behaviorist working within a Montana institution. In the second part of the interview we discuss behavior, identity, and the windows of […]
Virginia Reeves is a confounding author. How does someone who can capture the beauty of landscape and human relationships with such rich writing also manage to resist the expectations of what books about such things must be like? Just when you think you know how her stories will go, when you’ve seen the end of […]
“I hope you can understand why it is that despite all its faults and its legacy of violence, I so very much love my country and my culture. It is an amazingly rich, vibrant, and active way of life. So, it is possible that in one country you can find such extremes as genocide and […]
An article I wrote for FaithLink, the great United Methodist Publishing House resource for study groups on faith and current events, is now up on Ministry Matters. Exploring the remarkable comeback of printed books, despite my earlier predictions that they were headed for the dustbin! Check out The Persistence of Print.
