With a sense of itself as the future of humanity, Facebook proves to be no ordinary company. When you’ve got a billion users, Martínez points out, it doesn’t matter if your advertising model is enormously flawed.

So what defines a Catholic novel? I am still struggling with that question. But I know that that which asks most of us is most worthy of us.

As one reviewer observed, “She began by writing about sidewalks and finished with an account of Western civilization itself.”

In a midtown subway station four silent women, bent over their smartphones, texted or read while an unconscious ragged man sprawled helpless at their feet. I checked to see if he was dead.

A drive along Sunset can be a startling experience, each turn in the road presenting another movie star smiling down from on high.