If you are a member of the Asian diaspora in America, the push-pull around foodstuffs may be a tension you recognize. On the one hand, there is the desire to maintain a connection to the ancestral land. On the other, a sense that too much weight is placed on food as a source of meaning and identity. There’s an impulse to share and celebrate all the culinary wonders of an inheritance and to bristle when some wellness influencer mispronounces turmeric or khichdi.
“The English Understand Wool” is a perfect introduction to the anarchic pleasures of DeWitt’s fiction. Once again, using the obtuse ratiocination of her characters, DeWitt aims at nothing less than expanding readerly consciousness, gesturing toward a world of untapped possibility freed from convention. Why go to school if you’re not going to learn anything? If the law is stupid, flout it! Don’t let the bastards get you down!
In a Cohen song, we would tolerate and perhaps even enjoy this, because there would be a killer tune, and the voice delivering the beating would sound like that of a world expert on compassion. Stripped of the troubadour’s glamour, it appears – as Cohen clearly intended – far more ugly than the hapless Cagely. But it’s the taint of bitterness that is most offputting. In order to become the truly heroic man I saw in 2008, Cohen had first of all to win the love of those countless audiences, and then overcome his need for it. Here are his first, fascinating struggles to repulse and to endear.
"Once somebody is dead, the world reveals all the things they might have enjoyed if they weren't," Elizabeth McCracken writes in her funny, perceptive novel "The Hero of This Book."
McCracken chronicles a trip the unnamed narrator took to London in 2019, the year after her mother died. The narrator, who has much in common with McCracken, visits tourist attractions and walks around the city. The narrator is frequently joined by a second narrative presence, who McCracken calls "the author," who comments on the story. Both reminisce about her remarkable mother, who loved London, from its wheelchair-accessible black cabs to its abundant theater offerings.
What do a beetle’s backside, a lotus leaf and a giraffe’s leg have in common? As science journalist Kristy Hamilton explains in her delightful first book, all three have inspired human engineers to solve complex problems.