How L.A. fuels local literary linchpin Rachel Kushner

Welcome to the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter. This week we speak with novelist and Los Angeles literary linchpin Rachel Kushner, whose new book, “Creation Lake,” has landed on the Booker Prize shortlist, an honor that also went to her 2018 novel “The Mars Room.” We also look at some recent releases reviewed by Times critics and check in with the venerable Los Feliz bookstore Skylight Books. Rachel Kushner’s “Creation Lake” centers on a 30-something American government agent attempting to infiltrate a French anarchist collective. Julie M. Klein reviews Malcolm Gladwell’s “Revenge of the Tipping Point”: “To his adept synthesis of academic research he adds journalistic curiosity, a crisp prose style and a mastery of counter-intuitive juxtapositions.” Lorraine Berry looks at two books that explore the intersection of race and policing: Ron Stallworth’s “The Gangs of Zion” and Jessica Pishko’s “The Highest Law in the Land.” As she writes, “A stock character in American crime stories is the maverick cop, the hero who bucks the system and bends the rules to bring in the bad guys. Intrinsic to the macho stereotype is that his shield is backed up with physical violence, or that his ever-present gun is his ultimate claim to authority.” Hamilton Cain writes about two new studies of Impressionism’s radical roots: Sebastian Smee’s “Paris in Ruins” and Jackie Wullschläger‘s “Monet: The Restless Vision.” “While they differ in scope,” he writes, “both are graceful, fluent, resonant additions to art history.” And Scarlett Harris digs into Ashley Spencer’s “ Disney High,” the story of the rise and fall of Disney Channel.