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Three books that render the world from an arresting new perspective.
Inspired by the intriguing subject of a Vermeer portrait, Tracy Chevalier became a bestselling author with the publication of Girl with a Pearl Earring in 1999. Having studied under such literary figures as Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain, the novelist has let her imagination wander into some of the most intriguing scenarios history has to offer, from the creation of elaborate tapestries in medieval France to the life of the enigmatic poet William Blake. Her latest story, Remarkable Creatures, follows a pair of women as they build an unlikely friendship hunting for fossils at the dawn of the 19th century. The writer shared with us three of her favorite books.
By Colm Tóibín
"How do such plain, unadorned sentences manage to pack such an emotional punch? The story of an Irish girl who emigrates to New York in the 1950s, this seems like a simple story, yet Tóibín builds lots of little details into a moving, resonant novel about what it means to be a stranger in a strange land, and make a new life there."
By Barbara Gowdy
"This is one of those novels that make you look at the world from a completely new angle. It's about a herd of African elephants threatened by poachers, and it's told from their point of view. Gowdy brilliantly imagines life from inside an elephant's head, capturing their strange, mystical Otherness while finding common ground with us humans without anthropomorphising her subjects. While reading it I felt sometimes in a dream world, sometimes viscerally shocked and stirred. Amazing stuff."
By Kate Summerscale
"Anyone who has played Sleuth or read an Agatha Christie whodunit will love this story of a sensational English country house murder that rocked 19th-century England, providing a real-life template for generations of detective fiction to come. Though scrupulously researched, it reads like a fast-paced novel, and will have you playing detective alongside Mr. Whicher."
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"The moral and philosophical questions that Henry wrote up as fiction and William as science," Jean Strouse writes of her subject's more famous brothers, "Alice simply lived." It took a biographer of sensitivity and brilliance to give that "simply" the profundity it deserves, and the resulting book, now reissued in the peerless NYRB Classics series, is one of the richest life stories you'll ever read.
The world of Jane Austen's fiction has long been an imaginative playground for writers and readers of a certain stripe. Shannon Hale's Austenland wittily took the next step, setting comic romance in a faux-Pemberly resort for the Darcy-smitten. Her latest returns for more Regency fun, but with a twist: does murder stalk Pembrook Park?
Childlike retreat? Arts and crafts challenge? Frugal and eco-friendly living option? The notion of the "tiny house" has the surprising potential to fire the imagination. In this exuberant volume of sketches, plans, and commentary, the artist Derek Diedricksen shares his infectious enthusiasm for the idea of the micro-mansion.
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