Fiction remainders

  • I wanted to include A.L. Kennedy’s Paradise — a woman’s alcoholism story that “has its roots … in the pontificating first-person voice of a century of hard-drinking Scottish male writing” — on my 2004 Newsday best-of list. But while I bought the U.K. edition online last fall, the book is only now appearing in the U.S. I’ll try to say more about Paradise soon, but for now read Jessica Winter’s admiring review in the current Village Voice.
  • A new George Saunders story appears in the current issue of Harper’s. You can read an excerpt online. Saunders’ political fable, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, is forthcoming from Riverhead later this year. (Via Bookslut.)
  • David Foster Wallace’s latest abomination — oh, I kid; he’s generally better than David Mitchell, anyway, and I haven’t even read the new DFW piece yet — appears in the current Atlantic. (Via TEV.)

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