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Tag Archives: Pulitzer Prize
“I am going to write about all this one day, I told her, and she smiled at me.”
This is the final sentence of Hua Hsu’s memoir. He is thanking his therapist for helping him deal with the death of his best friend. I imagine his therapist smiled because she knew that writing a memoir based on trauma … Continue reading
“Mom, I don’t know who to trust!”
Elizabeth Strout’s new novel — a Christmas gift of the first order – is her most enigmatic. Reviewers have drawn wildly different conclusions about the book’s message. For me, the book explores what happens when you don’t know who you … Continue reading
Posted in fiction
Tagged a favorite author, Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea, Pulitzer Prize, trust
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“Thorny people. They don’t always follow the etiquette.”
What do you think a story about a thorny family would include? If it’s by Anne Tyler, and if it covers a period of sixty years, you can expect to see that things don’t always work out. For example, the … Continue reading
Posted in fiction
Tagged a favorite novelist, Anne Tyler, French Braid, Pulitzer Prize, subversive
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“The power of the mighty industrial overlords of the country had increased with giant strides, while the method of controlling them . . . remained archaic . . .”
Presidents Roosevelt and Taft – both Republicans – worked “as stewards of the public welfare” to check the power of huge corporations by supporting anti-trust legislation. These two men were both willing to argue with members of their own party … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction
Tagged Bully Pulpit, Doris Kearns Goodwin, government, Pulitzer Prize, regulations, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft
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“He felt as if he was never again going to know the reason for anything he did.”
Why read novels? Jonathan Franzen argues in a Harper’s essay that people are drawn to strong fiction because they like to engage in complex stories that don’t have simple resolutions. In Anne Tyler’s first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, the … Continue reading
Posted in fiction
Tagged Anne Tyler, If Morning Ever Comes, Jonathan Franzen, no easy answers, Pulitzer Prize
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“But what could possibly go wrong?”
Think of the funniest books you’ve ever read. Did any of them win literary awards? No? As the Washington Post points out, there has long been a “critical resistance to comic novels.” Until now. The 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction … Continue reading
“Michael reciting the Declaration of Independence was an echo of something that existed elsewhere.”
In The Underground Railroad, Michael is a slave in Georgia in the 1850s who was taught to recite, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” This is one of many powerful scenes in this … Continue reading
Posted in fiction
Tagged Coleson Whitehead, difficult book, National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, Race, The Underground Railroad
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“Until recently, we simply didn’t know how immense this problem was, or how serious the consequences, unless we had suffered them ourselves.”
When Matthew Desmond was growing up, money was tight. Sometimes the gas got shut off, and his parents eventually lost their home to foreclosure. This week, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his nonfiction book Evicted, which is about eight … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction
Tagged Evicted, Housing subsidies, Matthew Desmond, poverty, Pulitzer Prize
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“Can you taste what I’m saying?”
The poem continues: “It is onions and potatoes . . . it is obvious. . .” This is how Philip Levin conceptualizes truth in the poem “The Simple Truth.” I’m often reminded of this gritty, elegant poem when I scrub … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged gritty elegance, Philip Levine, Pulitzer Prize, The Simple Truth, U.S. Poet Laureate
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“We understand ourselves, our lives, retrospectively.”
This is an interesting statement, considering it’s from someone who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her column “Public and Private,” in which she explored different ways to understand her life and the world at large in the heat … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged Anna Quindlen, Kierkegaard, layers of insight, Lots of Candles, Memoir, Nuanced, Plenty of Cake, Pulitzer Prize
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“We can’t chose what we want and what we don’t want and that’s the hard lonely truth.”
At 771 pages, this is a long novel. Is it worth it? Many of the 57 commentators on the Kirkus review didn’t think so. However, I love the way Tartt develops big themes. And she has sentences that are works of … Continue reading
Posted in fiction
Tagged art, Donna Tartt, lonely, Pulitzer Prize, recommended, The Goldfinch, understand the human heart, what we want
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