The celebrated author's "A Gate at the Stairs" is aggressively clever, meticulously crafted -- and exhausting
By Stephanie Zacharek Sep 1, 2009
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The screen icon on playing Coetzee's doomed hero, rewriting other people's scripts and making terrible movies
By Andrew O'Hehir
September 18, 2009
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Lucinda Rosenfeld talks about the dark side of female friendships and plants a stiletto in sisterhood clichés
August 26, 2009
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She wants me to comment -- but what can I say without ending our friendship?
By Cary Tennis
August 26, 2009
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"The Magicians" is a ravishing adult novel that shines a new light on the fantasy tales we read as kids
By Laura Miller
August 12, 2009
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The famed author is back with a tale of drugs, hippies and paranoia -- and you don't need a decoder ring to read it
By Laura Miller
July 31, 2009
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The "Hills" star puts reality TV behind her -- with a novel about a reality star who just wants to be a normal girl
By Thomas Rogers
June 19, 2009
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Aleksandar Hemon's fictional alter ego drinks and writes his way through exile in these superb coming-of-age tales.
By Allen Barra
June 4, 2009
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Diamonds are a boy's best friend in this crackling novel of scams, sex and druggy escapades in the jewel trade.
By Laura Miller
May 26, 2009
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I've had some success at 60, but it seems downhill from here.
By Cary Tennis
May 19, 2009
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Love among the iPods: A divorced TV director is content to be left alone with his old songs -- until he meets a new singer.
By Laura Miller
April 14, 2009
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Controversial "Wetlands" author Charlotte Roche talks about bodily functions, shaving pubic hair, and why there are so few euphemisms for female masturbation.
By Nina Power
April 4, 2009
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The cursed and the dead haunt this elegantly gothic tale, tracing the line between the scientific and the paranormal.
By Laura Miller
March 16, 2009
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A '60s activist-turned-vigilante is tortured by a handsome interrogator in Glen Duncan's gripping new novel. So which one is the villain?
By Andrew O'Hehir
December 17, 2008
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A lumber baron, a ruthless sexpot and a one-handed henchman star in this wildly entertaining tale of passion, murder and deforestation set in Depression-era North Carolina.
By Laura Miller
December 16, 2008
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Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany discusses his creative process and his other profession: Dentistry.
December 15, 2008
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What if Hitler had a love child? A.N. Wilson's "Winnie and Wolf" is a chilling fictional tale of a clandestine affair.
By James Hannaham
November 25, 2008
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A messed-up Midwestern family grapples with buried secrets in Sandra's Kring's gripping saga "Thank You for All Things."
By James Hannaham
September 30, 2008
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Wildly praised and pathologically reviled, the writer who built a career on pop-cultural essays explains why he has written a novel about small-town America.
By Sarah Hepola
September 24, 2008
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In his affecting new book, Roth's young hero abandons his Jewish upbringing for life in small town Ohio.
By Louis Bayard
September 16, 2008
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"American Wife" author Curtis Sittenfeld on her first lady obsession, dirty bits with George W., and whether we're responsible for the behavior of our loved ones.
By Rebecca Traister
September 8, 2008
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Penélope Cruz gets art-history naked and Ben Kingsley is diamond-brilliant in an overly pretty film adaptation of Philip Roth's "Dying Animal."
By Andrew O'Hehir
August 8, 2008
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I had an agent and a book deal for my first novel. All I was missing was quotes for the back cover. Next time, remind me to suck up to more famous writers.
By Rebecca Johnson
August 4, 2008
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The 9-year-old narrator of the heartbreaking "When We Were Romans" flees family chaos through literature.
By Laura Miller
July 24, 2008
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The fiercely talented critic takes us on an illuminating tour of fiction -- but there's a hole in his plot.
By Louis Bayard
July 22, 2008
People like Lorrie Moore are the only people here
John Malkovich faces "Disgrace"
My best frenemy
My friend wrote a horrible novel
Critics' Picks: Magic for grown-ups
Pynchon lights up
The unbearable lightness of Lauren Conrad
What should I read next?
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The dirty girl
"The Seance"
All-American terrorist
"Serena"
Big Think: "That was my only dream, to be a novelist"
"Winnie and Wolf"
"Thank You for All Things"
Diagnosing Chuck Klosterman 
Philip Roth's Jewish question
Sex, power and Laura Bush
"Elegy" for a topless bombshell
Why won't you blurb me?
The history boy
How to read the James Wood way
Broadsheet
How the World Works
War Room