She was still so new to the sport that she barely knew the rules of competitions. Floating on the surface before her first official dive, she asked the judge whether she should submerge before the judge finished counting down or after. “She was like, ‘Read the rule book!’ ” Burnett recalls, laughing. But she performed well during the tournament, reaching 65 meters.
That same judge told her, after she had completed her dives, that she ought to try for the U.S. women’s free diving team. Athletes must apply to compete in a world championship, and the deadline was imminent. “I was on a high,” she says. “I was like, Oh, f— it, I’ll just sign up.” She was startled when she was one of four women chosen for the U.S. team.
After working as a critic for various publications in the UK for over a decade, I was haunted by the desperate look in the eyes of the hundreds of performers I’d been sent to review, a look that fell somewhere between pleading and confrontational. I held an unsettling suspicion: that people who make art are usually desperate for the approval of critics, yet sometimes they don’t—or can’t—think of critics as fully human.
“A Marriage at Sea” is an enthralling account of a partnership in extremis, and of how the commonest hazards of married life—claustrophobia, codependence, boundarylessness—become totalized amid disaster.
Castillo is a writer of razor-sharp acuity who takes seriously the sinister instrumentalisation of storytelling, in a world increasingly veering right. As a novel of ideas, Moderation contains terror enough to keep you reading, and looking for signs of the nightmare its author has taken the time to document.
“Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” These questions about our place in the world, famously asked in an 1897–98 painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, are as relevant today as they were at the turn of the last century. And, in the ambitious spirit of Gauguin’s beautiful and controversial masterpiece, Lucas Schaefer’s much vaunted debut novel The Slip raises issues of race and entitlement, as well as the malleability of identity, all in one big, sloppy, and occasionally gorgeous package.
Nothing is harder to find these days than quality time with oneself. We are always trying to run away from ourselves, chasing a million distractions. Yet the solitude we crave and, perhaps, dread, is right within our reach, within a moment’s capture. In An Island to Myself, Michael McGregor, in luminous, evocative prose, reminds us why it’s worth our while to embrace the present and seize the day. Maybe even on the island of our choice.
The heart of an empath beats behind every page of The Roma: A Traveling History. The book is, first and foremost, a critique of stubborn stereotypes and historical crimes against the ethnic group known variously as Romani, Travelers, Zigeuner, and by other names. It provides a useful overview of the political and legal mechanisms behind institutionalized racism and ethnocentrism against the Roma in Europe. But at its core, this book is an ode to Madeline Potter’s people and culture. Her upbringing in a Romani family during a time of upheaval—as nomadic traditions are eroding rapidly in the face of globalization and technological advancements—lends an important authenticity and lived experience to her writing. The book rests on a foundation of her nostalgia for those years and her desire to celebrate and revivify her heritage.
It’s clear how much Lee cherishes his connection to Martha’s Vineyard, a place that’s easy to love. And in these pages, he’s crafted a must-read for anyone who seeks to know the island with depth that extends well beyond its superficial myths.