A.
Lately, when I imagine, I remember. Then I shift into a peaceful kind of forgetfulness. And I start to imagine again, remembering. Like a circle that’s no longer vicious because it erases its own trail, little by little, always re-sketching its outline for the first time.
Despite the no-beach requirement, beach reads often announce themselves with a woman wearing sunglasses on the cover. This is not the case with “The Foundling,” which sports the moody image of bare branches and a hulking Victorian building in shades of deep blue. It also has an introduction by the author explaining the historical threads that inspired her novel: the early 20th-century incarceration of “feebleminded” women and the disturbingly widespread support for the eugenics movement. Sounds serious, right?
Well, it is, but it’s also insanely fun, with fascinating characters, jaw-dropping plot twists and a hair-raising caper finale that recalls the nail-biting climaxes of “Ocean’s Eleven” and “The Shawshank Redemption.”
In his new book, “Raising Raffi: The First Five Years,” the n+1 magazine co-founder, novelist (“All the Sad Young Literary Men”) and New Yorker contributor describes the surprising, joyful and often enervating experience of raising Raphael, his son with novelist Emily Gould. As a toddler, Raffi, who turns 7 today, was bright and fun-loving if occasionally aggression-prone. (“You don’t know anything about yourself until the day your adorable little boy looks you in the eye, notices that your face is right up close to him, and punches you in the nose,” Gessen writes.) But it’s also a book about how books can only do so much to make us better parents — or to address the isolation and confusion that often accompanies parenthood.
Edwards has a key role: he writes detective stories, he is a tireless champion of crime fiction, he has a hand in those British Library reprints (you know, the ones with the great 30s covers that make good gifts) – and he is also creating a body of serious research into the genre.
The Life of Crime is his new contribution, and it is awe-inspiring: 600 pages followed by a 40-page list of all the books featured. It describes the entire history of crime fiction from the 1790s to right now, and is aimed squarely at those of us with a deep interest in the genre and its more obscure corners.