“22 Minutes of Unconditional Love,” by Daphne Merkin, muses on the process of making up stories while recounting a young woman’s torrid affair with an older man.
In Robin Wasserman’s new novel, “Mother Daughter Widow Wife,” a young woman found on a city bus has no identification, no memory, and no one looking for her.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a series of novels by Black authors married revolutionary politics with pulp fiction. Their plotlines remain distressingly relevant.
Irving Howe wrote for the Book Review about American literature — “moving from visions to problems, from ecstasy to trouble, from self to society” — on July 4, 1976. “Land of the free? Yes, but also home of the exploited.”