“Historical novel” isn’t quite the right term for this book, which strips that particular genre down to bare bones… To this portrayal of enslavement at its most brutal, Ward adds an element of the fantastic, using it—like recent writers from Colson Whitehead and Kaitlyn Greenidge to adrienne maree brown and Alexis Pauline Gumbs—to ask questions […]

Strijd en de man, dat bezingt de Romeinse dichter Vergilius al vanaf de eerste woorden in zijn Aeneis: arma virumque cano…. Twee millennia later wordt de gewapende strijd niet meer volmondig door dichters ­geroemd, en ook over de centrale rol van de man worden vragen gesteld. De Amerikaanse schrijver Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) werd […]

…Claire Dederer’s refusal to give Manhattan a free pass leads her deep into questions of representation, honesty, what it means to be an artist, what it means to love art. She takes the reader along with her—in my case, back to my sense of baffled repulsion when I saw Allen’s film in 1979. The love […]

Kleine ode aan een groot auteur: Neske Beks legt uit hoe je Toni Morrison leest Het genie van Toni Morrison (1931-2019) is makkelijk te ervaren, maar lastig te doorgronden. Haar poëtische taal, gelaagde verhalen en thema’s als identiteit, familie, liefde, verbondenheid en uitsluiting zorgen ervoor dat de betekenissen in haar romans zich ver onder het […]

I reviewed After Sappho, by Selby Wynn Schwartz, for 4Columns https://4columns.org/phillips-julie/after-sapphoat a time when I was staying with and helping a beloved older relative and was absorbed in the bodily and emotional intimacy of care. Although I was very aware of that as an aspect of friendship among women, I thought more when I was […]

“The haunted mansion stands for an abusive partner, the vampire reminds you of your emotionally draining housemate, the alien is you.” I write about the power of the fantastic and the women who imagine it in my review of The Future Is Female! Volume Two, the 1970s: More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, edited […]

Your mileage may vary, but I Ioved A Visit from the Goon Squad and I love Egan’s new book, The Candy House, even more. It keeps verging on being another boring dystopia and then, happily, going off into a much more interesting space. Read more at 4columns.org.

Lack of confidence is not what characterizes Bette Howland’s work. It’s more like an underlying assumption that she isn’t quite the right person: an anxiety of identity that first creates writers and then undermines them. It’s a second-guessing game…

I reviewed Erdrich’s stunning The Night Watchman for Trouw. “Layer by layer, incident by incident–a kiss, a funeral, a political meeting–Erdrich builds an intimate and powerful narrative about American history in all its troubled beauty.”