Chris Lehmann argues that a new biography of William Maxwell rests partly on a “jargon-laden claim” that is “simultaneously grandiose and banal — and more to the point, oddly irrelevant to Maxwell’s writing.”
Marilynne Robinson’s Gileadhas won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
Jane Austen continues to occupy the popular imagination. If Bride and Prejudice and a novel about a Jane Austen book club weren’t evidence enough, along comesBecoming Jane Austen, a film about the author.
“Have Scotland’s theatres exhausted the world dramatic repertoire? I only ask because, in recent weeks, we have seen stagings of prose fictions by Graham Greene, Christopher Brookmyre, Evelyn Waugh and Leo Tolstoy.”
