Books

New reviews

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• Meat is murder

• Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer

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• The novelist who gave us Everything Is Illuminated returns with a nonfiction exposé of the modern slaughterhouse.

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• Grim fairy tales

• There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

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• In these short stories, the boundaries among reality, dreams and the afterlife are porous.

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• Haunted headcase lit

• Invisible, by Paul Auster

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• Paul Auster's latest starts off in familiar territory, and then pushes you somewhere profoundly peculiar.

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• The definitive textbook

• Jazz, by Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux

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• Jazz, which comes with four CDs, teaches you not just what to listen for, but how to listen.

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• Dry humor

• Lit, by Mary Karr

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• This new memoir of drunkenness, motherhood and sobriety crackles with wit and seductive insights.

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• Boxing, showbiz and more

• Sweet Thunder, by Wil Haygood

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• This bio of welterweight Sugar Ray Robinson augments its story with sketches of midcentury black entertainers.

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• Just embarrassing!

• The Humbling, by Philip Roth

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• An older man strikes up an affair with a young lesbian in Philip Roth's latest.

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• Suburban blight

• Living Room, by Rachel Sherman

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• This exquisitely written novel brims with teenage humiliation, family secrets and brutal descriptions of deep suburbia.

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• Questionable narrative structure

• The Interrogative Mood, by Padgett Powell

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• Powell pens a strange and inquisitive book.

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• Post–Emily Post

• How to Be Inappropriate, by Daniel Nester

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• Nester's hilarious latest is more than just fart jokes.

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• Alt-history

• Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, by Mitchell Zuckoff

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• Zuckoff uses a cacophony of voices in an homage to Altman.

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• Ode to the professional geek

• Chronic City, by Jonathan Lethem

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• Jonathan Lethem explores the possibilities of fiction as pop-culture reference library.

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• Portrait of an elusive artist

• Hold on to Your Dreams, by Tim Lawrence

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• Disco scholar Tim Lawrence captures a maverick New York musician who refused to be defined.

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• Mourning excercises

• Nocturnes, by Kazuo Ishiguro

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• Ishiguro's latest collection of stories are concerned with loss, isolation, disappointment and music.

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• Magnificent obsessions

• The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

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• This collection captures 30 years of a master stylist and a sui generis storyteller.

Author profiles

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• Oh brother!

• Novelist Jonathan Tropper offers front-row seats to a family meltdown.

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• Espresso, the humanity!

• Michael Idov satirizes a rich couple that opens a hip café on the Lower East Side.

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• Lib through this

• Kate Walbert looks at suffragists, activists and modern-day moms in her new multigenerational saga.