Heller McAlpin Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Heller McAlpin

Wintering is refreshingly free of self-pitying navel-gazing and trite exhortations to buck up. In fact, May complains about a culture in which we are "endlessly cheerleading ourselves into positivity while erasing the dirty underside of real life...

Heller McAlpin

Consider yourself kissed — and hugged and understood — by Jessica Stanley's smart, oh-so-relatable tale of a woman who seems to have assembled all the pieces of a happy life but feels like she's lost herself in the process...

Heller McAlpin

Ms. Patchett is a writer of enormous warmth who has written frequently about children struggling to find their place in blended families. In “Tom Lake”…she demonstrates that happy, cohesive families can be just as interesting as unhappy, fractured ones.

Heller McAlpin

A wonderfully immersive... intricate multigenerational saga about the vicissitudes of a passionate but not perfect marriage over a 40-year span... The Most Fun We Ever Had is a deliciously absorbing novel with — brace yourself — a tender and satisfyingly positive take on family.

Heller McAlpin

North Woods manages, impressively, to balance both the narrow and the long view, intimately focusing on the lives of each of the house's inhabitants, yet expansively encompassing American history, natural history, and the relentless march of time and the cycle of the seasons.

Heller McAlpin

Women Holding Things combines so many wonderful elements of Maira Kalman's work: her uncanny ability to balance whimsy and worry, simplicity and depth — and thoughts both mundane and philosophical in spare text and colorful paintings, which often channel Matisse.

Heller McAlpin

In the pantheon of winning books about the Met, it is right up there ... Bringley offers an unusual, insider's vantage point on this vast palace of art ... it's Bringley's reflections on dozens of individual paintings, photographs, sculptures, and ancient artifacts that elevate this memoir into a paean to the power of art.

Heller McAlpin

There are far more interesting things about Chaudry—and this book—than her weight. Atypical of inspirational weight loss books, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom, is, among other things, a love letter to Chaudry's native cuisine.

Heller McAlpin

Elizabeth Finch is a dual-pronged exploration of both personal and ancient history which asks, "Why should we expect our collective memory — which we call history — to be any less fallible than our personal memory?"

Heller McAlpin

Patchett, beloved bookseller and chronicler of people thrown together in patched families and hostage situations, turns her attention to love — youthful, marital, fleeting, enduring.