Book of the Month – Page 7 – Princeton Writes

Pachinko (2017) by Min Jin Lee

Stephanie Whetstone2018-11-05T08:00:36-05:00

Critical Evaluation "Like most memorable novels, however, Pachinko resists summary. In this sprawling book, history itself is a character. Pachinko is about outsiders, minorities and the politically disenfranchised. But it is so much more besides. Each time the novel seems to find its locus — Japan’s colonization of Korea, World War II as experienced in East Asia, Christianity, family, love, the changing role of women — it becomes something else. It becomes even more than it was." Krys Lee, "July’s Book Club Pick: Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee," The New York Times, February 2, 2017. First Excerpt "June 1932 "At the very beginning [...]

Pachinko (2017) by Min Jin LeeStephanie Whetstone2018-11-05T08:00:36-05:00

White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2008) by Brenda Wineapple

Cate Mahoney2018-10-01T12:00:24-04:00

Critical Evaluation “Conventional wisdom has it you can tell a lot about a person by the company he or she keeps. But, what if posterity makes a big mistake in judging a famous somebody's friends; wouldn't that blunder then trigger a huge misreading of the chief person of interest? There you have the reasoning underlying Brenda Wineapple's fascinating new book, White Heat, which explores the relationship between Emily Dickinson and one of her closest confidants, Thomas Wentworth Higginson. For decades, Higginson has been derided by Dickinson scholars and fans as a kindly oaf, a Victorian man of minor letters damned with [...]

White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2008) by Brenda WineappleCate Mahoney2018-10-01T12:00:24-04:00

An American Marriage (2018) by Tayari Jones

Stephanie Whetstone2018-09-01T09:00:04-04:00

Critical Evaluation "Tayari Jones’s wise and compassionate new novel, “An American Marriage,” tells us a story we think we know. Roy, a young black man, is tried and wrongly convicted of rape while his wife, Celestial, waits for his return. But Jones’s story isn’t the one we are expecting, a courtroom drama or an examination of the prison-industrial complex; instead, it is a clear vision of the quiet devastation of a family. The novel focuses on the failed hopes of romantic love, disapproving in-laws, flawed families of origin, and the question of life with or without children that all married couples [...]

An American Marriage (2018) by Tayari JonesStephanie Whetstone2018-09-01T09:00:04-04:00

One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García Márquez

Stephanie Whetstone2018-08-01T09:00:16-04:00

Critical Assessment "We live in an age of invented, alternate worlds. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Rowling’s Hogwarts, the dystopic universe of 'The Hunger Games,' the places where vampires and zombies prowl: These places are having their day. Yet in spite of the vogue for fantasy fiction, in the finest of literature’s fictional microcosms there is more truth than fantasy. In William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha, R. K. Narayan’s Malgudi and, yes, the Macondo of Gabriel García Márquez, imagination is used to enrich reality, not to escape from it." Salman Rushdie, "Magic in the Service of Truth," The New York Times, April 21, 2014 First Excerpt [...]

One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García MárquezStephanie Whetstone2018-08-01T09:00:16-04:00

Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process (2017) by John McPhee

Stephanie Whetstone2018-07-01T08:00:16-04:00

Critical Evaluation "It’s the last three chapters, 'Checkpoints,''Draft No. 4' and 'Omission,' that will be assigned and reassigned by grateful writing teachers. Perhaps the most generous passages in this generous book are in these final chapters: letters to the student of a fellow writing teacher, Anne Fadiman (whose yearly seminar at Yale was endowed by a former student in honor of Zinsser), and to Martha and Jenny, two of his four daughters, now both professional writers: 'Blurt out, heave out, babble out something — anything — as a first draft.... As you work it over and alter it, you begin to [...]

Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process (2017) by John McPheeStephanie Whetstone2018-07-01T08:00:16-04:00

Self Portrait with Boy (2018) by Rachel Lyon

Stephanie Whetstone2018-06-01T09:00:34-04:00

Critical Evaluation "Self-Portrait with Boy, Rachel Lyon’s fascinating first novel, is about a photograph, the artist’s intent, and her choice, but in an unexpected and compelling way. A photographer just out of art school sets up an automatic shutter to take a self-portrait and accidentally captures the image of a young boy falling to his death out the window behind her. She has unintentionally created a terrifying and arresting work of art. Her self-portrait on its own would not be as interesting, but with the addition of the falling body it becomes something great. Is it art? She wants it to [...]

Self Portrait with Boy (2018) by Rachel LyonStephanie Whetstone2018-06-01T09:00:34-04:00

The Sympathizer (2015) by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Stephanie Whetstone2018-05-01T09:00:13-04:00

Critical Evaluation "In films like 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Platoon,' the Vietnamese (often other Asians portraying Vietnamese) are never more than walk-ons whose principal roles seem to be to die or wail in the ashes of incinerated villages. Which brings me to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s remarkable debut novel, 'The Sympathizer.' Nguyen, born in Vietnam but raised in the United States, brings a distinct perspective to the war and its aftermath. His book fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previously voiceless while it compels the rest of us to look at the events of 40 years ago in a [...]

The Sympathizer (2015) by Viet Thanh NguyenStephanie Whetstone2018-05-01T09:00:13-04:00

A Wrinkle In Time (1962) by Madeline L’Engle

Stephanie Whetstone2018-04-01T08:00:12-04:00

Critical Evaluation "Before they returned to the city, the family embarked on a 10-week, cross-country trip. It was during their time camping that L'Engle got the idea for A Wrinkle in Time: “We drove through a world of deserts and buttes and leafless mountains, wholly new and alien to me. And suddenly into my mind came the names, Mrs. Whatsit. Mrs. Who. Mrs .Which.” The story wove in elements of her life (many, including L’Engle, have identified the character Meg Murry as L'Engle), and although she had never taken a science course, she used elements in her story that she had [...]

A Wrinkle In Time (1962) by Madeline L’EngleStephanie Whetstone2018-04-01T08:00:12-04:00

Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) by George Saunders

Stephanie Whetstone2018-03-01T09:00:47-05:00

Critical Assessment "Saunders’s novel is at its most potent and compelling when it is focused on Lincoln: a grave, deeply compassionate figure, burdened by both personal grief and the weight of the war, and captured here in the full depth of his humanity. In fact, it is Saunders’s beautifully realized portrait of Lincoln — caught at this hinge moment in time, in his own personal bardo, as it were — that powers this book over its more static sections and attests to the author’s own fruitful transition from the short story to the long-distance form of the novel. Michiko Tatukani, Review: [...]

Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) by George SaundersStephanie Whetstone2018-03-01T09:00:47-05:00

Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) by Jesmyn Ward

Stephanie Whetstone2018-02-01T09:00:15-05:00

Critical Assessment "In Jesmyn Ward’s Mississippi, one must grow inured to the rituals of killing and butchering animals for sustenance. Exhausted women beat their children in public. Men of good character do unspeakable things out of necessity, and the bad men do far worse. And there, just as in the real world, caring about people like Jojo and Leonie is not a matter of looking past these grim possibilities, but rather consenting to step into them and be affected. Such feats of empathy are difficult, all too often impossible to muster in real life. But they feel genuinely inevitable when offered [...]

Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) by Jesmyn WardStephanie Whetstone2018-02-01T09:00:15-05:00

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