The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30pm and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please send details to lauren [at] maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication, with the event’s date in . . .
The Office has the realities of cubicle life covered, right? And after so many disappointing fictional treatments of the subject, the last thing we need is a debut novelist throwing his 375-page effort into the ring? I get where you’re coming from, but hold on a minute: Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to the End is a stunning first novel. . . .
Cuba has ordered correspondents for the Chicago Tribune, BBC, and El Universal to stop reporting from the island, leaving the Sun-Sentinel the sole U.S. newspaper with a Cuba bureau.
A New York Times Book Review editor revealed the publication’s secrets at Harvard last week. Gawker reports.
Praising Remainder, Rupert Thomson found “echoes of Beckett, Flann O’Brien too,” but also “a precision, a surreal logic and a sly wit” all author Tom McCarthy’s own. The book is just out here.