Maureen Corrigan

Coming To 'Americanah': Two Tales Of Immigrant Experience

Maureen Corrigan — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:34:00 +0000

First things first: Can we talk about hair? Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a big knockout of a novel about immigration, American dreams, the power of first love, and the shifting meanings of skin color; but, as Adichie has said in interviews, she also knows that black women's hair can speak volumes about racial politics.

Godwin's 'Flora': A Tale Of Remorse That Creeps Under Your Skin

Maureen Corrigan — Mon, 06 May 2013 16:56:00 +0000

Gail Godwin says one of the inspirations for her new novel, called Flora, is Henry James' ghost story The Turn of the Screw. Both stories take place in isolated old houses, and both revolve around mental contests between a governess character and her young charge.

'Equilaterial': Martians, Oil And A Hole In The Desert

Maureen Corrigan — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:14:00 +0000

Equilateral is a weird little novel, but any reader familiar with Ken Kalfus expects his writing to go off-road. Kalfus wrote one of the best and certainly the least sentimental novels about New York City post-9/11. I loved A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, but I stopped assigning it to students in my New York lit class because they were usually turned off by its black humor and lack of uplift. Equilateral doesn't run that same risk of being in bad taste as social commentary because, at first, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with current events.

Beauty Marks: Patricia Volk's Lessons In Womanhood

Maureen Corrigan — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0000

I've loved Patricia Volk's writing ever since I read her evocative 2002 memoir, Stuffed, which told the story of her grandfather — who introduced pastrami to America — as well as the rest of her family, who fed New Yorkers for more than 100 years in their various restaurants. Stuffed, like the best food memoirs, served up so much more on its plate than just a bagel and a schmear. So when I picked up Volk's new memoir, Shocked, my appetite was already whetted for the humor of her writing, its emotional complexity and smarts.

'Burgess Boys' Family Saga Explores The Authenticity Of Imperfection

Maureen Corrigan — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:16:00 +0000

In 1846, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a famous essay called "The Philosophy of Composition," in which he sounds like an interior decorator. I say that because in the essay, Poe insists that all good writing must strive for what he calls "unity of effect." For Poe, it was important that everything in his short stories — characters, setting, narration — add up to one big "color-me-terrified" impact.

I kept thinking of Poe's matchy-matchy theory of writing as I was reading Elizabeth Strout's new novel, The Burgess Boys.

The Apathy In 'A Thousand Pardons' Is Hard To Forgive

Maureen Corrigan — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:09:00 +0000

Jonathan Dee likes to write about rich, good-looking people falling apart — and who among the 99 percent of us can't enjoy that plot? In The Privileges, the dad of the family was a Wall Street trader, tempted by existential boredom into larceny; in A Thousand Pardons, the dad of the family is a partner in a New York law firm, tempted by existential boredom into a disastrous workplace affair. The women in Dee's recent fiction tend to be decorative stay-at-home moms; that is, until the spontaneous combustion of hubby's career expels them out of their silken domestic cocoons.

'Lean In': Not Much Of A Manifesto, But Still A Win For Women

Maureen Corrigan — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:19:00 +0000

Sheryl Sandberg tells an anecdote in her new book, Lean In, about sitting down with her boss, Mark Zuckerberg, for her first performance review as chief operating officer at Facebook.

A Fiendish Fly Recalls Kafka In 'Jacob's Folly'

Maureen Corrigan — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:30:00 +0000

Man awakens to find out he has turned into an insect. And the Double Jeopardy question is, "What is Kafka's The Metamorphosis?" Well, what other response could there possibly be? Kafka all but cornered the market on that verminous plot in 1915; although, after nearly 100 years, the exclusivity clause may be about to expire. It takes a gutsy writer to pad in Gregor Samsa's sticky steps, but, by now, Rebecca Miller is clearly used to coping with the anxiety of influence and staying true to her own vision.

Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant Mother' Inspires The Story Of 'Mary Coin'

Maureen Corrigan — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:52:00 +0000

I shied away from Marisa Silver's new novel because of its book jacket: a reproduction of Dorothea Lange's iconic Depression-era photograph called "Migrant Mother." You know it: the woman's strong face is worn and worried; her children lean protectively into her. Lange took the photo at a pea-pickers' camp in California in 1936; the name of the destitute mother of seven, who wasn't identified till the 1970s, is Florence Owens Thompson.

Karen Russell's 'Vampires' Deserve The Raves

Maureen Corrigan — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 18:13:00 +0000

I don't have a good track record when it comes to raving about Karen Russell. Last year, along with my two fellow judges, I nominated Russell's novel, Swamplandia!, as well as two other finalists, for the Pulitzer Prize. Result? The Pulitzer Board made headlines by deciding not to give out the award in Fiction. Nevertheless, I rave on: this time about Russell's new short story collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove.

A Soured Student-Teacher Friendship Threatens 'Everything'

Maureen Corrigan — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 18:38:00 +0000

Over the past week or so, I've mentioned James Lasdun's new book, Give Me Everything You Have to a bunch of colleagues; they've all heard about it already and they're all dying to read it. What Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother was to parenting a couple of years ago, Lasdun's Give Me Everything You Have may well be to teaching: a controversial personal reflection on the professor-student relationship — except Lasdun, unlike Chua, really has no advice to offer; no certitude, nor help for pain.

Jane Austen's 'Pride And Prejudice' At 200

Maureen Corrigan — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 18:54:00 +0000

My favorite item from the growing mountain of Pride and Prejudice bicentennial trivia comes courtesy of an article in something called Regency World Magazine, which is going gaga over the anniversary. The article, "Albert Goes Ape for Austen," describes how a 200-pound orangutan named Albert, living in the Gdansk Zoo in Poland, insists on having 50 pages a night of Pride and Prejudice read to him at bedtime by his keeper or else he refuses to go to sleep.

What does Albert the orangutan hear in Pride and Prejudice, I wonder?

How A 'Madwoman' Upended A Literary Boys Club

Maureen Corrigan — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:05:00 +0000

This week, the National Book Critics Circle announced that two feminist literary scholars, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, would be the recipients of its 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award.

The front cover of my paperback copy of The Madwoman in the Attic got torn off years ago; the back cover is hanging on courtesy of bubbled Scotch tape. On the title page, I wrote my name and the date 1981, which means I bought my copy in graduate school, two years after Madwoman came out.

George Saunders Lives Up To The Hype

Maureen Corrigan — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:15:00 +0000

I was baffled by the cover of The New York Times Magazine two Sundays ago. You may remember that the headline of the cover story was: "George Saunders Has Written The Best Book You'll Read This Year." I was baffled because the only George Saunders I could think of was that old movie star who was always playing cads in films like Rebecca and All About Eve.

'A Grain Of Truth' About Memory And Modern Poland

Maureen Corrigan — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 17:04:00 +0000

My mother is Polish, which meant that during the holidays when I was a kid, we broke out the polka records and kielbasa for special occasion meals from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day. Certainly, nostalgia for those belch-y festivities of yore led me to A Grain of Truth by Zygmunt Miloszewski, a Polish mystery novel that unexpectedly turns out to be as hard-boiled as the skin around a circlet of that ubiquitous holiday kielbasa.

10 Books To Help You Recover From A Tense 2012

Maureen Corrigan — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:06:00 +0000

2012 has been a very jittery year — what with the presidential election, extreme weather events and the looming "fiscal cliff." In response to these tense times, some readers seek out escape; others look to literature that directly confronts the atmospheric uncertainty of the age.

At Home With Dickens And Lousia May Alcott

Maureen Corrigan — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:35:00 +0000

Famous writers and their families: that's the subject of two recent biographical studies that read like novels — one a Gothic nightmare; the other, a romance.

Great Expectations is the tongue-in-cheek title of Robert Gottlieb's marvelous little book about Charles Dickens and the lives of his 10 children. Despite Dickens' single-handed invention of the Victorian Christmas, I would not recommend giving Gottlieb's Great Expectations as a holiday gift to any impressionable loved one. That's because, as his children matured, Dickens turned out to be an emotional Scrooge.

Hungry Hearts And Family Matters In 'Middlesteins'

Maureen Corrigan — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:00:00 +0000

At first glance, a novel in which the main character eats herself to death may not seem like the most felicitous pick for Thanksgiving week; but The Middlesteins turns out to be a tough but affecting story about family members putting up with each other, even in their most unlovely, chewing-with-their-mouths-open life moments.

Ian McEwan's 'Sweet Tooth' Leaves A Sour Taste

Maureen Corrigan — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:28:00 +0000

Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth is that oddest of literary achievements: an ingenious novel that I compulsively read, intellectually admired and increasingly hated. By the time I got to McEwan's last sneer of a plot twist, I felt that reading Sweet Tooth is the closest I ever want to come to the experience of watching a snuff film. Think that's harsh?

Caring For Mom, Dreaming Of 'Elsewhere'

Maureen Corrigan — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 19:52:00 +0000

Something must have been in the tap water in Gloversville, N.Y., during the 1950s when Richard Russo was growing up there — something, that is, besides the formaldehyde, chlorine, lime, lead, sulfuric acid and other toxic byproducts that the town's tanneries leaked out daily.

But one day, a droplet of mead must have fallen into the local reservoir and Russo gulped it down, because, boy, does he have the poet's gift.

'Master' Jefferson: Defender Of Liberty, Then Slavery

Maureen Corrigan — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:34:00 +0000

His public words have inspired millions, but for scholars, his private words and deeds generate confusion, discomfort, apologetic excuses. When the young Thomas Jefferson wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," there's compelling evidence to indicate that he indeed meant all men, not just white guys.

But by the 1780s, Jefferson's views on slavery in America had mysteriously shifted.

'May We Be Forgiven': A Story Of Second Chances

Maureen Corrigan — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:50:00 +0000

A.M. Homes is a writer I'll pretty much follow anywhere because she's indeed so smart, it's scary; yet she's not without heart. It's been a while since her last book, the 2007 memoir The Mistress's Daughter, which is certainly the sharpest and most emotionally complex account of growing up adopted that I've ever read.

Roving Eyes, Wandering Hands In 'How You Lose Her'

Maureen Corrigan — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:27:00 +0000

Ay-yi-yi, what is it with these Dominican men? Their hands — and eyes — never stop roving, even as they're slipping engagement rings on their true loves' fingers.

If that sounds like negative stereotyping, don't complain to me: I'm just passing along the collective cultural verdict of the women and men, most of them themselves Dominican, who hustle through Junot Diaz's latest short story collection, This Is How You Lose Her.

A Lifetime Of Love In 'My Husband And My Wives'

Maureen Corrigan — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 17:04:00 +0000

Given the glut of autobiographies, a provocative subject alone isn't enough to snag a reader's attention, although, admittedly, the title of Charles Rowan Beye's new memoir, My Husband and My Wives, is certainly arresting.

'Life Of Objects' Tells A Cautionary WWII Fairy Tale

Maureen Corrigan — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 17:35:00 +0000

Susanna Moore's latest novel, The Life of Objects, is a slim World War II saga that reads like a cautionary fairy tale: It's packed with descriptions of ornate furniture and paintings, lavish banquets, demons and diamonds. At the center of the story is a young girl bewitched by her own desire to live a larger life, a wish that's granted with grim exactitude.

'The Scientists': A Father's Lie And A Family's Legacy

Maureen Corrigan — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 18:02:00 +0000

Every New York story ever written or filmed falls into one of two categories. The first — like Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, or the musical On the Town — regards New York as the representative American city, a jam-packed distillation of the country's dreams and nightmares. The second group views New York as a foreign place — a city off the coast of the U.S. mainland that somehow drifted away from Paris or Mars. Think every Manhattan movie ever made by Woody Allen.

Was Zadie Smith's Novel 'NW' Worth The Wait?

Maureen Corrigan — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 19:37:00 +0000

Zadie Smith wrote her last novel On Beauty seven years ago — a long time in the anxious world of publishing. Her new novel NW was released in the U.S. on Monday. Critic Maureen Corrigan asks: Was it worth the wait?

In 'The Brontes,' Details Of A Family's Strange World

Maureen Corrigan — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 16:59:00 +0000

In the new, updated edition of her landmark biography The Brontes, Juliet Barker tells a sad story about Branwell, the infamous brother of Charlotte, Emily and Anne.

In 1834, Branwell began to study painting under a man named William Robinson, a member of the prestigious Royal Academy of Art.

'Dreamland': Open Your Eyes To The Science Of Sleep

Maureen Corrigan — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 17:35:00 +0000

Step, if you will, into my bedroom at night. (Don't worry, this is a PG-rated invitation.) At first, all is tranquil: My husband and I, exhausted by our day's labors, slumber, comatose, in our double bed. But, somewhere around 2 a.m., things begin to go bump in the night. My husband's body starts twitching, like Frankenstein's monster receiving his first animating shocks of electricity. Thrashing about, he'll kick me and steal the covers.

A Moody Tale Of Murder In A 'Broken' Dublin Suburb

Maureen Corrigan — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 20:18:00 +0000

Mid-20th-century mystery master Ross MacDonald is credited with moving hard-boiled crime off the mean streets of American cities and smack into the suburbs. In MacDonald's mythical California town of Santa Teresa, modeled on Santa Barbara, evil noses its way into gated communities, schools and shopping centers that have been built expressly to escape the dirt and danger of the city.