Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. In her impressive collection of debut fiction shorts, The Juvenile Immigrant, Namrata Verghese identifies the cracks, the minute fissures that occur when the two separate worlds of ‘Indian’ and ‘American’ collide in the lives …
NEW YORK — Louise Glück’s next book was as unexpected for her as it will likely be for the Nobel laureate’s readers. Marigold is already forming a story in her head, while looking upon the “calm self-confidence” of her twin and reasoning that “Together they included everything.” In chapters with such titles as “Sharing with Bunnies” and “Rose and the …
NEW YORK — Joan Didion, the revered author and essayist whose precise social and personal commentary in such classics as “The White Album” and “The Year of Magical Thinking” made her a uniquely clear-eyed critic of turbulent times, has died. Tiny and frail even as a young woman, with large, sad eyes often hidden behind sun glasses and a soft, …
Seven years ago, when Michelle Zauner was a 25-year-old indie rocker finding her way in the Philadelphia DIY scene — working three part-time jobs to afford her $300-a-month rent and save for self-booked tours — her bassist delivered heart-rending news: He was leaving her scrappy four-piece, Little Big League, for another band that was certain to become, in his words, …
