Maureen Corrigan Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Maureen Corrigan

[The Poet's House] is a closely observed, droll, coming-of-age story about an insecure young woman drawn into a shimmering clique of poets; it's also a wise story about the corrosive power of shame and the primal fear of sounding stupid, unsophisticated and sentimental.

Maureen Corrigan

Is Less Is Lost as good, as funny, as poignant as its predecessor? ... Yes, at least! There are extended comic passages here about Less' Walloon ancestry and a mediocre gay men's chorus singing Leonard Cohen songs that I read aloud, laughing, to anyone I could waylay.

Maureen Corrigan

Strout's spare sentences and her simple pacing constitute her own idiosyncratic take on Hemingway's famous "iceberg theory," in which a depth of meaning and emotion lurks beneath the surface of the words on the page.

Maureen Corrigan

The Bronx? You gotta be kidding me. That’s how I imagine a lot of people might react to the thought of reading a 500-plus-page history of the Bronx... But read the opening chapter... and I think it’s a good bet that, like a car stuck on the Major Deegan Expressway, you’ll stay put for hours, except voluntarily.

Maureen Corrigan

[Water, Water] delivered beauty, inspiration, and humor—just when I needed them most... [It includes some of] the best poems Billy Collins has ever written.

Maureen Corrigan

The power of Enright's novel derives not so much from the age-old tale of men behaving badly, but from the beauty and depth of her own style. She's so deft at rendering arresting insights into personality types or situations.

Maureen Corrigan

RT @nprfreshair: TODAY: 'Early Morning Riser' by Katherine Heiny and 'Secrets of Happiness' by Joan Silber ruminate on love and family -- p…

Maureen Corrigan

Dream Girl, by Laura Lippman book review - The Washington Post https://t.co/YCHDZ6CFUQ

Maureen Corrigan

Anthony Doerr’s first novel since ‘All the Light We Cannot See.’ https://www.wsj.com/articles/cloud-cuckoo-land-anthony-doerr-review-slipping-the-trap-11632858500?st=0opdpznzdw8fyr8&reflink=desktopwebshare_twitter via @WSJ

Maureen Corrigan

The only "beauty" to be found [in the book] is in the vividness of Moshfegh's language and the cleverness of her plot, which is an elaborate snicker at the gullibility of anyone who thinks ancestry can be reliably traced through birth records.