Critical Notes

Heller McAlpin reviews Junot Diaz’s short-story collection This Is How You Lose Her, for the Barnes & Noble Review. Colette Bancroft reviews Dennis Lehane’s novel Live by Night for the

Lia Lee, the subject of Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the winner of the NBCC’s 1997 nonfiction award, died last month. The New York Times'

Seven-time NBCC finalist (and one-time winner) Philip Roth took to the New Yorker’s Page Turner blog to ask Wikipedia to correct its entry on his novel The Human Stain. On

We can’t enter the fall without at least two more essays about the role of the critic and the obligation to be unflinchingly honest: Daniel Mendelsohn’s “A Critic’s Manifesto” at

How polluted are online review sites with paid positive notices? The New York Times takes a look at one site that turned $28,000 a month that way; an expert estimates

The discussion about harsh reviews continues apace: On the heels of Jacob Silverman’s “Against Enthusiasm,” Dwight Garner writes “A Case for Critics Who Are Actually Critical” for the New York

Anne Morris reviews Vaddey Ratner’s novel In the Shadow of the Banyan for the Dallas Morning News. Gregg Barrios recalls the life and work of pioneering film critic Judith Crist,

At Slate, Jacob Silverman argues that online book culture risks making critics too nice; Ron Charles responds at the Washington Post’s Style Blog. Morris Dickstein discusses Gore Vidal, who died

Kick off the week with two Olympic-themed reviews: Craig Seligman on Chris Cleave’s novel Gold for Bloomberg, and Carolyn Kellogg on Leanne Shapton’s memoir, Swimming Studies, for the Los Angeles

“A literary prize is, at best, one way of drawing readers to a book that deserves more serious attention than it might have gotten without a prize.” In a two-part