Fresh Complaint

I was in Austin this past weekend doing a panel for Nasty Women, but I had the first day of the festival all to myself. One of the big events I’d been dying to attend was the panel with Jeffrey Eugenides and Claire Messud. It’s a six hour drive from South Texas up to Austin,

Quickies: Home & The Virgin Suicides

Home by Toni Morrison Publisher/Year: Knopf, 2012 Format: Hardcover Pages: 160 Source: Purchase What it is: A novella about a traumatized Korean War veteran’s return home — both literally and figuratively — upon hearing disturbing news about his sister. Why I read it: Toni Morrison is one of my favorite authors. What I thought: It’s been a while since I’ve read a

The Marriage Plot

To say that Jeffrey Eugenides’ latest novel, The Marriage Plot, has an air of pretension would probably be an understatement. It revolves around the lives of Brown University students. Pages upon pages are devoted to literary criticism, semiotics, religious theory, and biology. One of the main characters, an intelligent man battling manic depression, wallows in narcissistic