Don’t let the title fool you — Rivka Galchen’s second novel “Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch” is as far from contemporary popular fantasy as the Earth is from the sun. Based on an assemblage of historical documents from the seventeenth century, “Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch” is a fictionalized account of the real-life story of astronomer Johannes Kepler’s mother, Katharina Guldenmann Kepler, an accused — and acquitted — witch.
On Jan. 1, 2021, all copyrighted works published in 1925 entered the public domain in the United States. Among these were Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway,” Ernest Hemingway’s “In Our Time” and the Great American Novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” A crop of “Gatsby” adaptations have since sprung up, including more lighthearted versions like the parody novel, “The Great Gatsby: But Nick has Scoliosis,” and an adult coloring book. The rendition garnering the most buzz, however, came from Michael Farris Smith, recipient of the 2014 Mississippi Author Award for Fiction. Smith’s prequel, “Nick,” focuses on the eponymous Nick Carraway’s life before meeting eccentric millionaire Jay Gatsby, expanding on Nick’s childhood and time in the army. Unfortunately, vitiated by a lackluster narrative voice and a trite plot, “Nick” not only fails to live up to its predecessor, but fails to justify its own existence.
BY KATE FLAHERTY ’19
Art, deception, love and murder are the centerpieces of B.A. Shapiro’s historical mystery novel, “The Collector’s Apprentice.” Shapiro, whose 2012 novel “The Art Forger” became a New York Times best-seller, delivers a lyrical and elegant story set in 1920s Paris and Philadelphia. Shapiro weaves in the lives of dozens of historical figures like Henri Matisse and Gertrude Stein, immersing the reader in a world of postImpressionist artists.
BY BEATA GARRETT ’20
Hailed as the new “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Leni Zumas’ third dystopian novel “Red Clocks” takes place in a society where abortion is newly criminalized and adoption is restricted to married couples. The novel explores the intersecting lives of four women and the ways in which they navigate society: Ro, the high school teacher and biographer who desperately wants a child; Mattie, her student who finds herself in an unwanted pregnancy; Susan, a housewife trapped in a loveless marriage and Gin, a “mender” who helps those abandoned by the health care system and finds herself on a modern-day witch trial for doing so.
BY ANDY REITER
J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” is noble in its intent. The author aims to tell a story of his own life as a window into the white, working-class America found in Appalachia, an America that few people truly understand. In the aftermath of the 2016 elections, there is increased interest and even urgency in trying to gain insight into why a large portion of the American people voted for Donald Trump, and the book has thus found a wide audience. Readers will encounter a compelling personal story; however, the social commentary is wanting, full of unhelpful stereotypes, contradictory arguments and flawed conclusions about a way forward.
