Arts & Culture » Books
It's curtains for Joy
Christopher Castellani's deeply felt new "Leading Men" (Viking) exhibits another compelling aurora.
In his new memoir, gay actor Andrew Rannells tells the contemporary Candide-like adventure of a Midwestern boy relocating to New York City to fulfill his dream of being on a Broadway stage.
"The Editor," a new novel by Steven Rowley (Putnam), takes off from the most promising of premises. What if a first-time novelist discovers that the book editor at Doubleday who signs on to shepherd his book through publication turns out to be Jackie?
I read my way sequentially through Michael Carroll's new short story collection, "Stella Maris and Other Key West Stories" (Turtle Point Press).
The astute literary examination of the enduring trauma of wartime military service "Men Touching" is set in the mid-1980s and follows Robb Jorgenson, a Seattle biology professor in his 40s.
"Luminous Traitor: The Just and Daring Life of Roger Casement" (UC Press) is a deeply informed biographical novel, skillfully told in present tense, that brings a lesser-known historical era and its principal actors.
The stories in "Lot" are free-standing but cycle around the family fable of a first-person narrator Nic (Nicolas), whose name is revealed grudgingly.
You can judge both the book and the subject by the cover of Pete Buttigieg's new autobiography, "Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future" (Liveright).
Books tend to pile up on the Arts desk. Here are some interesting volumes worth calling attention to, with attendant squibs.
David Thomson, who lives and teaches in San Francisco, has been called the best writer on film in English, having authored almost 30 books on the subject, from biographies to chronicles about Hollywood.
Oscar Wilde is generally thought of as a proponent of gay rights, which has led to the equality we see today, but even more important may have been his role as an environmentalist.
Jacob Tobia's new memoir "Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story" (Putnam) joins a rapidly growing, if not yet groaning shelf of books on what it is like to be trans, gender queer, gender non-conforming.
"A ghost knows who to scare," Marlon James writes in a characteristically pithy chapter-opening sentence midway through his 600-page new fantasy novel "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" (Riverhead). So, let it be said, does James.