Anna Bruno’s ‘Fine Young People,’ set at St. Ignatius, an elite Jesuit high school in a Pittsburgh suburb, operates as a whodunit on multiple levels simultaneously.
Ellen O'Connell Whittet
Ellen O’Connell Whittet teaches in the writing program at U.C. Santa Barbara. She is the author of What You Become in Flight and Book of Hours.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: A thriller novel with a theological twist
In ‘The Nimbus,’ Robert Baird has written a campus novel that doubles as a theological thriller, a domestic drama that questions the very nature of reality.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The holy challenge of living in bodies that are both material and mystical
Sinead Gleeson’s body shapes—molded by leukemia, a hip replacement, complicated childbirths—provide the most fully realized essays in ‘Constellations.’
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Colson Whitehead and the long reach of trauma
Colson Whitehead’s award-winning novel is a timely reflection on who gets to write history…and who gets to erase it.
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Isabel Allende’s timely new novel unveils the lifelong effects of war
Isabel Allende’s novel of profound displacement reflects the life of someone who has known displacement as her permanent state.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The last words from John L’Heureux
A new collection of stories from the late John L’Heureux shows his literary dexterity.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Jon Hassler’s fiction takes us to the midwest and back again
Jon Hassler championed “America’s often struggling middle class” with his rigorous moral vision in his novels.