We take the weekend to highlight recent books coverage of note in The Times:
A tour of the Book Review
Julie Orringer’s new novel, “Flight Portfolio,” is, according to the critic and author Cynthia Ozick, a “prodigiously ambitious” one. It is historical fiction and a kind of fictionalized biography, the study of the real-life World War II figure Varian Fry. It is also a Holocaust novel and a tale of suspense. There’s a lot to dig into, and Ozick does just that with characteristic insight and flair. One of our greatest living critics, Ozick last wrote for the Book Review about the role of gossip in storytelling. Zoë Heller reviewed her most recent collected work here.
We’ve also got reviews of fiction from Jennifer duBois, Stewart O’Nanand Laila Lalami, who joins us on the podcast this week.
Don’t miss one nonfiction review of note from The Times’s own Paul Krugman, who reviews “Firefighting: The Financial Crisis and Its Lessons,” written by Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner and Henry Paulson Jr. They were all there, and in addition to turning out a primer on the crisis and a tick-tock of what happened, they offer, as Krugman puts it, “a very scary warning about the future.”
Reviews from our critics
Dwight Garner reviews Ali Smith’s new novel, “Spring,” the latest in a projected seasonal cycle. Its among her more political novels, dealing with Brexit, immigration, climate change and a host of other Garner writes that it “taps deeply into our contemporary unease. It’s always alive.”
The science of mental illness has vexed researchers for generations, and the Harvard scholar Anne Harrington takes up the subject in her new book, “Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness.” In her review of the book, Jen Szalai writes, “It turns out that psychiatry’s understanding of mental illness is full of hairpin turns and unintended consequences.”
The rise of #MeToo fiction
In an essay last week, our critic Parul Sehgal looks at recent wave of remarkably various books, all which remind us of the kind of touchy ethical explorations the novel makes possible. As she writes, “They trouble debates that traffic in certainties; they come laden with confusion, doubt, subtlety — is it excessively earnest to call it truth?"
Looking for your next read?
A new month means a new crop of books. Here’s a list of our 14 most anticipated books coming out this month, including George Packer’s latest title and a new look at Harper Lee’s life. The author of that book, Casey Cep, spoke with our reporter about her project, which delves into a true crime book that Lee never finished. “I felt like there was one thing I could do which she was never going to do, which was talk about her,” Cep said of Lee. “It’s the story behind the story. She would never have included herself.”
Separately, here are 10 books our editors recommend this week.
The Canadian retailer revolutionizing bookselling
Indigo is expanding to the United States with its new model for how a big bookstore chain can thrive in the era of online retail.
A Y.A. novel causes a stir
Earlier this year, the writer Amélie Wen Zhao pulled her debut young adult novel before it was published, amid criticism that it was racially insensitive. But now, she’s changed her mind
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