Tom Deignan
Tom Deignan has written about books for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Irish Independent. He teaches at CUNY and is working on a book about religious violence in the 1920s.
With a bit of editing, Charleen Hurtubise’s new novel might have read like a fast-paced, Reese Witherspoon optioned thriller, with Jennifer Garner or Jessica Alba attached to a rumored adaptation. Trim some of the big ideas about art.
Irish author Megan Nolan has written two novels now, the titles of which neatly represent fatal flaws that set nearly all fiction in motion. Nolan’s latest, Ordinary Human Failings brings to mind the regrets of inaction—mundane sufferings, paralysis by analysis.
“By her life within the home, woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.” It is perhaps with this fraught context in mind that we should read Nicole Flattery’s debut novel, a coming-of-age chronicle about the past and present, mothers and daughters—and Andy Warhol.
It so happens Magee’s much-hyped novel—see the glowing write-ups not just in The Guardian but also Kirkus Reviews and Publisher’s Weekly—is coming out just in time for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreements, which brought to the North a fragile calm, if not promised prosperity.
It could be argued that Jennifer Egan, in 2010, took it upon herself to find a cure for what Zadie Smith once called “our ailing literary culture.”
