The transformation of milk into preserved milk is a magic trick of sorts, a way to extend the life of a perishable product. Although in very different ways, Varlam Shalamov’s “Condensed Milk” and Stuart Dybek’s “Pet Milk” are interested in considering man’s ability to do the same.
I have become a far better reader over the last year and a half because of learning how to read more slowly. Perhaps most importantly, though, I once again love to read.
Over the course of Maria Kuznetsova’s second novel, out next week, we switch back and forth between the perspectives of a woman and her grandmother. In the process, we begin to understand how tightly the two women are connected, even as the lives they live are vastly different, and how storytelling works to bind generations together.
Through a juxtaposition of present-day and memory, Colm Tóibín’s second novel allows the reader to understand who the protagonist is and the pressure of his past on the present.
At the start of Alex Hyde’s debut novel, we cannot imagine how its characters’ stories are connected, but by the end we understand that what they share is far more important than what keeps them apart.
It seems—for Lucy, and perhaps for Elizabeth Strout herself, and perhaps for us all—that community is the thing that will help us get through to the end.
In John McGahern’s 1965 novel, the point-of-view changes from first-person to second person to third person to no point of view at all. As the point of view shifts, the narrator seems to be seeing himself through different lenses, just as he is redefining himself through his choices.
In “Peach Cobbler,” Deesha Philyaw manages a long stretch of time by tracking her protagonist’s relationship to an object. Writing sensually about peach cobbler, Philyaw draws the reader into the story: we are there, smelling the peaches and sugar and cinnamon, as Olivia develops from a girl into a woman.
The way that Arinze Ifeakandu chooses to depict a character’s world, seen through their eyes, also reflects their emotional landscape. It is a subtle and beautiful way to portray his characters, to allow us to truly understand how they feel.
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