Follies of youth: ‘The Rachel Incident,’ by Caroline O’Donoghue

by Yastika Guru

Autofiction is usually accompanied with disclaimers and explanations, shame and caveats. Caroline O’Donoghue’s new novel The Rachel Incident (Knopf; 304 pages), too, is bookended with disclaimers. It opens with, “It was never my plan to write about any of this” and closes with the protagonist saying, “It’s not my story.” Though it is unclear how much memoir this confessional novel actually holds, this conceit of autofiction is marvelously executed—the details of memory feel preciously excavated, the plot clicks in place in that inevitable way of real life. Even at its most alarming—the protagonist extorts an older couple to fund her […]

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For Oppenheimer, Bay Area was the spark

by John McMurtrie

It all started with a haircut. Taking advantage of a slow Sunday, Luis W. Alvarez, a budding physicist, was at a barbershop on the campus of UC Berkeley, not far from where he worked at the university’s Radiation Laboratory. Sitting in the barber’s chair, he held that morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, dated January 29, 1939. In it was a wire report that said German chemists had bombarded uranium with neutrons—they had discovered nuclear fission. Alarmed by what he read, Alvarez “stopped the barber in mid-snip, and ran all the way to the Radiation Laboratory to spread the word.” In what […]

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White Tears: ‘Yellowface,’ by R.F. Kuang

by Margot Lee

With her fifth novel, Yellowface (William Morrow; 323 pages), R.F. Kuang promised a departure from the speculative genre work of her fantasy Poppy Wars trilogy and science fiction Babel (2022), winner of the 2022 Nebula Award for Best Novel. Yellowface is a biting satire about the publishing industry, informed by Kuang’s own experience as a Chinese American writer who regularly tops bestseller lists. It follows the publication of protagonist June Hayward’s second novel, a historical drama titled The Last Front about Chinese laborers who fought for the Allied Forces in World War I. Kuang writes for a wide audience, and […]

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‘The epic nature of our own stories’: A conversation with Héctor Tobar

by John McMurtrie

Héctor Tobar has explored Latin American history and the Latino experience in numerous award-winning best-selling works, ranging from novels (The Last Great Road Bum, The Barbarian Nurseries, and The Tattooed Soldier) to nonfiction books (Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free and Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States). Tobar has also published fiction and nonfiction in Zyzzyva. In his latest book, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino,” Tobar delves with great candor […]

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Double time: ‘August Blue,’ by Deborah Levy

by Yastika Guru

There are many routes to be introduced to British novelist Deborah Levy’s August Blue (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 208 pages). It is a book about being shadowed by a “double,” so one thinks of Dostoevsky and Henry James’ short story “The Jolly Corner.” It is a book about a child prodigy’s intense and complicated relationship with her mentor, so one is reminded of movies like Whiplash and Black Swan. It is an Odyssean story of exile and return home. It is also a sort of “governess story”: as Elizabeth Hardwick writes in The Brontes, “Most governesses in fiction are strangely […]

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Costs of art: ‘The Late Americans,’ by Brandon Taylor

by Margot Lee

The characters in Brandon Taylor’s The Late Americans (320 pages; Riverhead Books) are poets, dancers, painters, students, and townies, lovers, and exes, “upright beasts, walking on their hind legs, baying at electric moons.” Except for a few, they are in their twenties and on the brink of proper adulthood. There is an engaging urgency in their lives and in Taylor’s new novel, his second after Real Life (2020), a Booker Prize finalist. The book, a novel-in-stories, deftly weaves the lives of students from the university with the community around it—Obama-era Iowa City—depicting where the two collide and recoil back into […]

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5 Questions for the Writer’s Block

by ZYZZYVA

Not everyone visiting Las Vegas is obligated to go gambling. There are, in fact, other ways to spend one’s time—such as browsing in the Writer’s Block, a refined and whimsical downtown bookstore. The Writer’s Block, started in 2014, has been at its current 6th Street address since 2019. It houses more than 20,000 books—and hundreds of artificial birds that are up for “adoption.” We spoke with Drew Cohen, who owns the store with his husband, Scott Seeley. Seeley is the former head of 826NYC, the creative writing nonprofit founded by Dave Eggers, and he drew on his experience there to […]

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5 Questions for Mrs. Dalloway’s

by ZYZZYVA

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” Inspired by the first line of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel, Mrs. Dalloway’s sells not only a wide range of books but also gardening merchandise and plants. This is fitting for a bookstore that’s nestled in the leafy surroundings of Berkeley’s Elmwood District. Founded in 2004 by Marion Abbott and Ann Leyhe, the store has been owned by Eric and Jessica Green since 2021. We spoke with Carolyn Hutton, a longtime bookseller at Mrs. Dalloway’s. ZYZZYVA: What’s the coziest spot in your store for reading? CAROLYN HUTTON: We often see kids hunkered […]

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‘Moldova’

by Ruth Madievsky

Sasha and I landed in Kishinev as the sun was rising and took a bus from the tarmac to our terminal. I hadn’t slept on either of the flights and felt the edges of reality ungluing. The bus was stuffed to the windows with blue-eyed children waving American coloring books, women in sweatsuits carrying knockoff

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5 Questions for Bookshop Santa Cruz

by ZYZZYVA

Bookshop Santa Cruz has deep roots in its earthy California seaside community. The downtown store opened in 1966, and was later bought by the Coonerty family, who are celebrating their fiftieth year of ownership. We spoke with Casey Coonerty Protti, who currently runs the bookshop and has fond memories of playing in the store as a child. ZYZZYVA: What’s the coziest spot in your store for reading? CASEY PROTTI: When booksellers say that they are the community’s living room, it conjures up the dream of curling up with a great book, a comfy blanket, and a cup of tea in […]

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Q&A with Karin Lin-Greenberg, author of ‘You Are Here’

by Valerie Braylovskiy

Karin Lin-Greenberg’s first novel, You Are Here (288 pages; Counterpoint Press), tells the story of how five lives intersect within a suburban mall that is about to shut down. The characters are seemingly unrelated in their identities and experiences, ranging from Ro—an old woman whose regrets make her bitter—to Jackson, a young boy with aspirations of becoming a magician. Greenberg not only employs a strong sense of place to connect their experiences but uses the common thread of struggling with one’s dreams and reality. Embracing everyday aspects of life, the book provides a blueprint on how community can be fostered […]

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5 Questions for Parnassus Books

by ZYZZYVA

A dozen years ago, two bookstores closed in Nashville. Tennessee’s largest city, the Athens of the South, was suddenly without a bookshop. Thankfully, the novelist Ann Patchett came to the rescue. Along with publishing industry veteran Karen Hayes, Patchett founded Parnassus Books—fittingly named for Mount Parnassus, Greece’s mythic source of creative inspiration. We spoke with Sarah Arnold, marketing and communications director for Parnassus, about the bookstore. ZYZZYVA: What’s the coziest spot in your store for reading? SARAH ARNOLD: There’s a bench by the front window in our cookbook nook that gets nice and warm in the sun in the midafternoon. […]

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