Lizzie Skurnick
Lizzie Skurnick's reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and "many other appallingly underpaying publications," she says. Her books blog, Old Hag, is a Forbes Best of the Web pick and has been anthologized in Vintage's Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web. She writes a column on vintage young-adult fiction for Jezebel.com, a job she has been preparing for her entire life. She is on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.
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Nathan Englander's latest tells the fraught history of Israel and Palestine with quotidian details that make the story feel not historically accurate, but historically intimate.
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Ayobami Adebayo's debut novel follows a young Nigerian couple struggling to conceive and caught between modern medicine and the traditional remedies — like a new wife — pushed by older relatives.
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Gin Phillips' new novel — which follows a young mother trying to keep her child safe during a mass shooting at a zoo — explores the way violence can be a safe abstraction for kids, or cruelly real.
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The memoir Eat, Pray, Love turned author Elizabeth Gilbert into a phenomenon. Now, she turns again to fiction with The Signature of All Things, a novel that reviewer Lizzie Skurnick calls "one of the best of the year."
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The Borgias are more than just a TV show. Reviewer Lizzie Skurnick says Blood & Beauty by Sarah Dunant shows readers the authentic people behind the pomp and circumstance.
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Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings follows a group of teens who meet in the '70s at an artsy summer camp and remain friends for the rest of their lives. Reviewer Lizzie Skurnick says the book is about changes in the world as well as in the characters.
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Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for her last novel, Olive Kitteridge. Her follow-up, The Burgess Boys, is a sure-handed meditation on a family fractured by tragedy. Reviewer Lizzie Skurnick says Skurnick's "deft touch" comes through in the subtle betrayals of her characters.
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In the 2008 financial crash, a lot was written in newspapers and even books — but there wasn't much fiction out there to help those who like to view life through an imaginative lens. Now author John Lanchester's Capital can fill that void. It describes the crash as seen from London, and Lizzie Skurnick calls it "brilliant."
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In Joyce Maynard's Labor Day, a mysterious stranger enters the life of a single mother and her son for a holiday weekend. Apart from being a successful thriller, the book is a fascinating portrait of what causes a family to founder, and how much it can cost to put it back on the right path. -
Forget the Steven Spielberg fish tale. Author Lizzie Skurnick says she'll take Peter Benchley's salty novel — and its swearing sailors — over its cinematic adaptation any day.
