"You are as alive as anybody else"
If you’ve heard of The Fault in Our Stars, the recently released movie based on John Green’s bestselling book, you’ve probably heard that it’s about teenagers with cancer....
Young adult fiction
The In-Between, by Barbara Stewart. When 14-year-old Eleanor Moss survives a terrible car accident, she gains entry into an in-between world inhabited by Madeline....
Amity and Sorrow, by Peggy Riley
Amaranth is the first of Zachariah’s 50 wives, who live together with their children in a compound hidden in the mountains. When she married Zachariah, she was adrift and he was irresistible.
News from Heaven, by Jennifer Haigh
In her 2005 novel Baker Towers, Jennifer Haigh introduced readers to Bakerton, Pennsylvania, a town named after the coal mines that sustain it. In News From Heaven, Haigh explores Bakerton again.
Fiction chronicle
Kevin Brockmeier’s characters ignore the divine fabric of the universe even when they are shaping it. Lauren Groff takes an opposite tack.
American Dervish, by Ayad Akhtar
This debut novel features ten-year-old Hayat Shah, a first-generation Pakistani American, who is attempting to find his identity as a Muslim....
The Hunger Games contradiction
In Suzanne Collins's trilogy, and the recent movie
adaptation of the first book, the Hunger Games are a nationally-televised
spectacle in which 24 randomly chosen teenagers are forced to fight to the
death in a man-made arena. The annual Hunger Games are an instrument of
oppression by the Capitol--the center of totalitarian power that survived a
rebellion--to remind the 12 districts under its power just how powerless they
are.
The citizens of the Capitol love the Hunger Games. To
them it is pure entertainment. To the citizens of the 12 subservient districts,
it is a form of torture. Their children and neighbors become murderers or
victims, and they are forced to watch (literally--viewing is mandatory).
There is a paradox at the heart of The Hunger Games' appeal.
The Submission, by Amy Waldman
Amy Waldman's debut novel asks us to take a long look at our post-9/11 selves and be disappointed.
Irma Voth, by Miriam Toews
Many, many things happen in Miriam Toews's slim new novel—drug dealing, a shotgun wedding, filmmaking, filicide, teenagers running away, political protests—and all of them happen in a year of the l...
Summer reading list
I have two major reading projects that I'll be continuing in tandem this summer. They may sound like polar opposites, but I find them to be quite similar.
Nuns Behaving Badly, by Craig A. Monson
Music historian Craig Monson had the rare privilege of doing research in the Vatican Archive reading room....
The Illumination, by Kevin Brockmeier
In the opening pages of The Illumination, a woman cuts her finger with a knife and the wound emits a silvery light....
Chosen Ones and Flight of the Outcasts, by Alister McGrath
Alister McGrath, one of modern Christianity's foremost theological voices, is writing children's books....
From faith to proof
In Laurence Cossé's A
Corner of the Veil, a French novel translated into English in 1999, a...
An astonishing life
A few weeks ago, on my way home on a crowded rush-hour train, I was
slouched down in my seat trying to hide my uncontrollable crying. I was sobbing...