Robert Webb’s first book, the memoir How Not to Be a Boy, established that as well as being funny on the telly he could write both sensitively and well. His first novel confirms it: it’s well paced, nicely written and highly entertaining. It’s also a very rum concoction indeed – as if someone had sandwiched a David Nicholls novel in the middle of a comedy thriller, using a Tardis.
Every technological innovation both changes its human users and uncovers something new about our nature. In this ingenious novel, Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin conducts an unnerving thought experiment: if an individual could be virtually inserted into the life of a random stranger, anywhere in the world, what effects would that have on them both? And what hidden truths would be revealed?
So much has been written about Abraham Lincoln that it’s rare when a historian discovers an episode in his life that, if fully developed and interpreted, yields important new insights. Ted Widmer has done just that in his superb new book, “Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington.” It’s ostensibly about the train trip the president-elect took from Springfield, Ill., to the nation’s capital; it’s in fact about how Lincoln and his fellow Americans came to know and trust one another, an experience that profoundly shaped his presidency.
I watch the eager baby run down the driveway
open mouth the only mark that the bird is a baby
My mother is unlearning the way to walk;
feels her hand with her other hand,
then drags her cheeks flat in the mirror
to smooth her frightened face.
Always I have been a cottonwood in May,
when the swollen pod
bursts and everywhere the air goes white,
all lawns returning