Liars and Saints

  Curtis Sittenfeld's new collection of stories is uneven. "White Women LOL" tries to be a riff on the Central Park Birder incident, but the piece has very little to say. Also, a "sequel" to "Prep" just meanders and sputters without a payoff. But--elsewhere--certain characters pop off the page. I keep thinking about a woman who has memories of her adolescence. In college, she studied the viola. She was self-conscious about her coed bathroom, so she trained herself to poop before anyone else was awake. But a particularly cruel male neighbor discovered her secret--and made inferences about her self-loathing--and began stalking her during bathroom trips. This is such a strange situation. Everyone poops; the poop itself should not be a source of shame. But the bully has extraordinary power over the violist. I couldn't anticipate where all of this was headed. I also felt caught up in the world of a liberal film producer who has a strange assignment. A c...

On "Romantic Comedy," a new novel by Curtis Sittenfeld:   Early in life, Curtis Sittenfeld began keeping journals; she realized she had thoughts worth recording, and then eventually she discovered she could build a career on these thoughts. Like her hero, Alice Munro, Sittenfeld sees an iceberg "under the surface." For example, many of us might choose to overlook the implications of a quick text exchange. But Sittenfeld makes the exchange into a kind of symphony.  He sent me a dick pic, and I hadn't asked for one. I started to compose a reply, but he resumed writing, even though he must have seen my thought bubble....I deleted my sentence and just wrote, "WOW!" Then....I wrote....."For me? Flattering!!" In her newest novel, Sittenfeld invents a protagonist who writes for "Saturday Night Live." One strength in the book is the fictional sketches Sittenfeld creates. "I noticed that, on  The Voice , the female judge would offer a r...

New Books.... *"Trace Elements" ....A new Brunetti mystery (March). Perfect spring break novel. *"Redhead by the Side of the Road." Coming in April....I admire an artist who sticks with her craft, year after year after year. This is a new Anne Tyler novel, already well-regarded, surely interested in "the muddle of everyday life." People like to announce that Tyler's career is over, but then a new novel makes her "buzzy" again; this happened with "Digging to America" and again with "A Spool of Blue Thread." *"Rodham." Due in June. A Curtis Sittenfeld novel that imagines Hillary's life if she had more consistently, emphatically refused Bill's marriage proposals. Brilliant, pithy title: The word "Rodham" is iconic. What if it weren't attached to the word "Clinton"? Sittenfeld struck gold with "American Wife"--which was partly about Laura Bush--and I imagine she...

Nell and Henry always said that they would wait until marriage was legal for everyone in America, and now this is the case--it's August 2015--but earlier in the week Henry eloped with his graduate student Bridget. Bridget is twenty-three, moderately but not dramatically attractive (one of the few nonstereotypical aspects of the situation, Nell thinks, is Bridget's lack of dramatic attractiveness), and Henry and Bridget had been dating for six months. They began having an affair last winter, when Henry and Nell were still together; then in April, Henry moved out of the house he and Nell own and into Bridget's apartment. Nell and Henry had been a couple for eleven years. In the shuttle between the Kansas City airport and the hotel where Nell's weekend meetings will occur--the shuttle is a van--and she is its only passenger--a radio host and a guest are discussing the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. The driver catches Nell's eye in the rearview mirror and say...