Dana Spiotta Talks About ‘Wayward’
In Dana Spiotta’s new novel, “Wayward,” a woman named Sam buys a dilapidated house in a neglected neighborhood in Syracuse, leaving her husband and her daughter in order to face down big midlife quest...
13 Aug 202155min
Katie Kitamura Talks About ‘Intimacies’
The slightly directionless, unnamed narrator of Katie Kitamura’s fourth novel, “Intimacies,” takes a job as a translator at an international criminal court. On this week’s podcast, Kitamura talks abou...
6 Aug 20211h 5min
Echoes of a Fairy Tale in a Devastating Novel
Omar El Akkad’s new novel, “What Strange Paradise,” uses some fablelike techniques to comment on the migrant crisis caused by war in the Middle East. El Akkad explains that he thinks of the novel as a...
30 Jul 20211h
A Heartbreaking Novel About Mothers, Daughters and Secrets
The latest pick for Group Text, our monthly column for readers and book clubs, is Esther Freud's “I Couldn’t Love You More,” a novel about three generations of women grappling with secrets, shame and ...
23 Jul 202156min
S.A. Cosby on 'Razorblade Tears'
On this week’s podcast, S.A. Cosby says that a writer friend once told him: “I think you’re like the bard of broken men.” In Cosby’s new novel, “Razorblade Tears,” the fathers of two married gay men w...
16 Jul 202158min
The Lives of Flies
The subtitle of Jonathan Balcombe’s new book, “Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects” leads to the first question on this week’s podcast. Why “successful”?“Their diver...
9 Jul 202144min
An Outsider Finds Suspense in Hollywood
The actress and thriller writer Catherine Steadman visits the podcast this week to talk about “The Disappearing Act,” her new suspense novel about the absurdities of Hollywood. Steadman was drawn to t...
2 Jul 202158min
Clint Smith on ‘How the Word Is Passed’
Clint Smith’s “How the Word Is Passed” is about how places in the United States reckon with — or fail to reckon with — their relationship to the history of slavery. On this week’s podcast, Smith says ...
25 Jun 20211h 13min
