Column, farewell. I’ve been old for quite a while, now, and producing this column is beginning to tire me out, a little, and that’s showing up in the column. A little. I’ve believed … more

Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor by Andrew Kirtzman (Simon &  Schuster). Here’s something a certain New Yorker, once a Hoosier, wrote to some other former … more

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf). This is, of course, the author of Hamnet, the literary historical novel of a couple of years ago—which this column somehow managed to … more

Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Riverhead). A (perhaps surprisingly) beautiful historical novel by the 2021 Nobel laureate, a British author of Tanzanian birth. Gurnah writes in English, of course, … more

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford (Atria). Some- thing like an epic, in the description, but fast and fun to read and as much future fiction as histo ical: it’s set in 2045, or at … more

Alias Emma by Ava Glass (Bantam). A superfast spy thriller, set in London; the action—not combat, mostly fleeing, if they can move fast enough and stealthily enough—it’s … more

Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional by Isaac Fitzgerald (Bloomsbury). This guy, with his Auld Sod last name and Old Testament first name, is clearly well known to almost everybody but me: often on … more

Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories by Meng Jin (Mariner/Morrow). Faithful readers with good memories (all of us here, surely) will remember a lead review in January, ’20, of Meng … more

A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence by Mary Pipher (Bloomsbury). A psychologist (that’s what her Ph.D says), but pretty clearly her real calling from the start was not psychotherapist, … more

Future Stories: What’s Next? by David Christian (Little, Brown). This is a small-ish, slightly playful book of philosophy. So a book of (somewhat) playful but (seriously) thoughtful … more