Heller McAlpin
Heller McAlpin is a New York-based critic who reviews books regularly for NPR.org, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.
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With her new essay collection, Jamison reverses the arc of The Empathy Exams by moving from the external to the internal, from others' longings and hauntings to her own.
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R.L. Maizes' new story collection is a quirky mix of humor, gravity and warmth. She's drawn to outsiders who yearn for connection and who display behaviors and feelings they're not proud of.
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Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a painful but extraordinary coming-of-age story, about a young Vietnamese American writer whose fractured family was torn by their experiences during the Vietnam War.
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For decades, Quindlen has been channeling Baby Boomers' concerns, from motherhood and life-work balance to aging and downsizing. Her new book comes with a stern warning: Grandparents, know thy place.
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Leslie Jamison's new book of essays, The Empathy Exams, combines the intellectual and the emotional to explore the humanizing effect of empathy. Heller McAlpin calls it a "soaring performance."
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Nicholson Baker's latest novel, Traveling Sprinkler, revolves around Paul Chowder, a lonely poet who's fascinated by drone warfare and Debussy. Chowder was the star of Baker's 2009 novel The Anthologist, and reviewer Heller McAlpin welcomes his reappearance — though not his political rants.
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Thomas Mallon's new novelization of the infamous political scandal re-imagines the events through the eyes of the perpetrators. Critic Heller McAlpin says Mallon manages to capture both the metastasizing dishonesty and the ludicrousness of this great American tragedy of political ambition run amok.