Booklist (Starred Review)

Jennifer Cody Epstein

“An absorbing exploration of friendship, betrayal, and coming to terms with the past.”

By Michael Balmaceda Posted in on Feb 12, 2019

Remembering a Fallen Writer — With Her Own Book
In December of 2017, my good friend and writing colleague Sarah Coleman passed away mere days before the finished versions of her luminous novel The Realist came out. Below is a piece I wrote for Publishers Weekly about how our writing group tried to pick up the mantle. Kafka described writing as “utter solitude, the descent into the cold (...)
The Deplorable Within Us
Here is a piece I wrote for McSweeney’s recently, exploring the origins of my latest novel and the eerie, increasing resonance I felt writing it after 2016: My forthcoming novel Wunderland evolved from an impulse to explore a history that — at first — seemed comfortably removed from my own. I’d long been fascinated by Nazi Germany, not so (...)
Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Art of Subversion
Last January, I wrote a guest post for my late friend Sarah Coleman’s fantastic photography/literature blog The Literate Lens. Its themes seem strikingly relevant today, so I thought it was worth reposting. In the run-up to the presidential election last November, few of Donald Trump’s proposals sparked quite as much alarm as his idea for a Muslim “registry.” The idea (...)