RDew, the protagonist of Claire Way Watkins’ latest novel, has retreated from the world to live in Nothingness Flats, a cinder-block cabin in the Nevada desert. On indefinite leave from her job at an environmental organization, Rose works on her Al-Anon recovery, goes hiking and joins the protests against Yellow Pine of the title: a
AVNI Doshi’s second novel is narrated by an unnamed woman in suburban America who is shocked to hear her husband announce that he is leaving her. She does not truly love him, but she sees their marriage as a structure or “container” for her own existence. A former novelist, his writing has stopped since the
IThe year is 2049 and Daniel Connelly is 75 years old. Cynical and lonely after decades of self-imposed isolation, his existence is “Spartan”, a “relentless search, a longing for the pieces that fit together to form a new whole”. He spends his days making sculptures from broken pottery; Pieces of his life. During a warm
DAve Eggers, author of more than a dozen novels as well as children’s and non-fiction books, wanted to be an artist when she grew up. As a child he took lessons with a Japanese watercolorist, studied painting in college, worked as a magazine cartoonist and illustrator, even directed a New York show featuring works by
wWhen Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the Industrial Revolution and British colonialism were in full swing. Charles Dickens published Hard Times five years ago; Queen Victoria nominally ruled over one-fifth of the world’s population. Science writer Rowan Hooper writes, Darwin devised his evolutionary theory to present what he thought his
wAshington Augustus Roebling, or “Wash”, was the chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, which was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened to the public on May 24, 1883. It was quite an accomplishment, but he didn’t do it alone. On one side was his father, the ascetic and tyrant John Roebling,