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Photo: Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times/NTB For many, childhoods aren’t dreamy. It’s a coin toss after all; who we get for parents, where we get to live, the time/era of our birth, our genetics. There are many chances for a sub-optimum experience when, as children, we are at our most vulnerable. For those of us who are lucky, we mustn’t forget fate’s substantial leg-up. Shuggie Bain is one of the unlucky ones. In Douglas Stuart’s semi-autobiographical novel by the same name, Shuggie is in a tough position. He’s an effeminate little boy born into Glasglow’s working class in the cruel 1980’s, when theRead More →

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We think they don’t move, but they do. We think they don’t communicate, but we are wrong. They live on a different time frame, that’s all; one that takes in the great vistas from an age before people. Their gaze is farseeing, beyond us (over our heads, so to speak), and hopefully will persist long after we are gone. That is, if the world is lucky. They are trees and this novel from Richard Powers allows us to get close to something marvellous and infinitely more valuable than the surfaces of our floors, the frames of our houses, and our own front doors. You see,Read More →