Miranda Cowley Heller’s novel The Paper Palace tells the story of Elle, a woman whose life is both troubled and complicated. She must choose which man to share her life […]
Books & Poetry
LITERARY LIFE
New Owner Sought for Provincetown Bookshop
The shop was a haunt for a host of famous people during its long tenure
PROVINCETOWN — The well-loved bookstore where Norman Mailer and Robert Motherwell could frequently be found browsing will soon close unless some bibliophile steps forward to carry on the business. The […]
BOOK REVIEW
Opening Up With Anne Peretz
Reimagining family therapy for those most at risk
“I knew I had to write this book because I’m the only one who knows the story from beginning to end,” says Anne Peretz from her Truro home. The book […]
BOOK REVIEW
A Descending Spiral of Violence and Injustice
Marc Bookman writes of the barbarism of the death penalty
It’s uncomfortable to feel entertained at the expense of those sentenced to death. It is less uncomfortable when most of this entertainment is at the expense of police, prosecuting attorneys, […]
BOOK REVIEW
Sarah Schulman’s Mesmerizing, Messy History of ACT UP
How an alphabet soup of affinity groups fought an epidemic
How do you tell the story of a movement without simply chronicling the lives of a few supposed leaders of that movement? Sarah Schulman tackles this question head-on in Let […]
BOOK REVIEW
Looking Back With Empathy
A gay man connects with his late dad as a soldier
Much has been made of the Greatest Generation and World War II, mostly by Baby Boomers, looking back on the sacrifices of their parents. In the 1960s and ’70s, during […]
BOOK REVIEW
Alison Bechdel Finds Enlightenment in Exercise
The author of Fun Home gets beyond transcendence
One of the pleasures of reading a memoir is witnessing a character make the same mistakes over and over again. Novels rarely leave room for this. By the last page, […]
BOOK REVIEW
Marga Vicedo Dismantles the Myth of the ‘Refrigerator Mother’
Her biography of Clara Park is also a history of autism
Teaching English to G.I.s returning to peacetime America after World War II, Clara Park wrote her mother of her frustration with Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Her students, she noted, “had […]
WRITERS
The Tarnished Legacy of the Sacklers
Patrick Radden Keefe takes on a dynastic family
“I like a well-turned story,” says Patrick Radden Keefe. “I try to write stories that are engaging, the kinds of stories that you might not have an interest in at […]
BOOK REVIEW
Understanding The Man Who Ate Too Much
A biography of James Beard takes on new pandemic meaning
About a month ago, my husband Christopher and I were invited to dinner at my in-laws — our first dinner party since the world fell apart last year. While enjoying […]
COMIC STRIP ART
Karl Stevens Turns His Penny Strip Into a Graphic Memoir
The book’s peerlessly inked pages are on view in Provincetown
Most anyone who spends time with a cat will ask what goes on behind the impenetrable stare of its almond-shaped eyes. The Boston-based comic artist and painter Karl Stevens posits […]
BOOK REVIEW
Reassuring the First-Time Gardener
Jessica Sowards’s book is the cure for ‘analysis paralysis’
Sometime in the last year, as one does in a pandemic, I began cleaning drawers. Among the items that I found were unopened packets of seeds. Columbines I’d bought when […]
WRITERS
Hanif Abdurraqib Extols Black Performance
He joins a local reading and talk with Patricia Spears Jones
“I owe Provincetown a great creative debt,” says the poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib. He wrote most of his second book, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, […]
BOOK REVIEW
Finding Tranquility in Water, Wood, and Wild Things
Hannah Kirshner combines drawings, recipes, and personal memoir
Until the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Japanese government made it difficult for outsiders to explore the country. Even with rapid industrialization and modernization, Japan remained a hard place for […]
BOOK REVIEW
Finding Order in the Chaos of Fractals
Oliver Linton’s book is not for the number-phobic
I don’t know what I was expecting when I requested a reviewer’s copy of Oliver Linton’s Fractals: On the Edge of Chaos. The pocket-sized book, published in February, appeared to […]
