 |
Debut
Mischa Berlinski, Fieldwork
Berlinski’s novel is a smart, engaging thriller about anthropologists and missionaries in Thailand that occasionally gets lost in jungles of digression. Honorable mention to Ellen Litman’s charming The Last Chicken in America, about Russian immigrants in Pittsburgh.
Stinker
The Almost Moon, by Alice Sebold
Lots of big names underwhelmed us this year: Amis, DeLillo, Roth, Rowling. But Sebold, whose debut novel, The Lovely Bones, was the best-selling book of 2002, went above and beyond—or below and behind. Her wandering story of matricide is both implausible and uncompelling: The voice is wrong, the characterization is off, the pacing is set on shuffle.
Email
Print
Behind Tim Burton's MoMA Retrospective
How Nicholas Coppola Became Nicholas Cage
Brooklyn's Wild, Prospering Music Scene
Zach Gilford on Leaving Friday Night Lights
Nine Winter Fashion Trends 
Fake Buyers Are Back at Open Houses 
Look Book: The Mixed Martial Arts Fighters 
Elevated, Reinvented Italian Basics at A Voce
The Times Journalist Too Big to Fail
Can NBC Be Saved? 
Bloomberg's New Political Challengers
