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WILD THINGS , by Laura Kay There are two things a writer of romantic comedy can tell you about the state of the genre in 2023. First, every reader, editor and publisher desperately wants the next snappy, swoon-inducing, book-club-busting rom-com. Second, the world seems to have forgotten how difficult a great contemporary romantic comedy is to craft. A quality rom-com is a dance: a delicate balancing act of character and pacing, wish fulfillment and relatability, tension and levity, comedic timing and sentimentality. It can be noisy and shiny or cozy and intimate, but it must always be romantic. And — here’s the crucial part many overlook — it must be genuinely funny. Contemporary rom-coms that check all of these boxes seem vanishingly rare, but by Page 7 of “Wild Things,” a new novel by the English author and journalist Laura Kay, I knew I had found one. As our protagonist, an anxious and directionless desk worker named Eleanor, describes her dissatisfaction with her mundane … [Read more...] about Plot Twist: Your Big Secret Crush Is Also Your Housemate

MYSELF AMONG OTHERS A Life in Music By George Wein with Nate Chinen Illustrated. 546 pages. Da Capo Press. $27.50. In the spring of 1962 George Wein held a news conference to announce that he would be returning to Newport, R.I., that summer, after a one-year absence, to produce the jazz festival he had first presented there in 1954. ''The name 'Newport' is synonymous with jazz,'' he declared, ''and signifies the most important single event in the history of jazz.'' There is room for debate about what, if anything, was the most important event in jazz history. There is no room for debate about another statement Mr. Wein made that day: ''The festival is me.'' That claim can be called arrogant, egocentric or even obnoxious; it cannot reasonably be called inaccurate. That's George Wein for you. His chutzpah may grate, but his accomplishments speak for themselves. And as his vastly entertaining autobiography proves, those accomplishments make a terrific story. Mr. Wein … [Read more...] about BOOKS OF THE TIMES; The Guy Who Turned Jazz Into an Outdoor Sport

FARM GIRL A Wisconsin Memoir My grandfather died many years ago, but I still remember his stories of growing up in the Texas Hill Country in the early 20th century, walking two miles each way to a one-room schoolhouse and doing chores that were, to me, unfathomable: making laundry soap out of lard and lye, plucking chickens, hauling water from the well. I thought of him often as I read “Farm Girl,” Carlson’s spare, charming memoir of her Depression-era childhood. Carlson grew up on her parents’ farm outside Plum City in western Wisconsin, where she was born in 1926. (Family lore has it that the doctor who delivered her exclaimed: “Well, this is a nice, big one! Nine or 10 pounds.”) She and her three siblings roamed through “80 acres of beautiful, rich, fertile Wisconsin cropland, pasture and woodlot” while their parents shielded them from the worst economic woes of the period. Her memories, mostly rosy, are punctuated by descriptions of the era’s terrible droughts. … [Read more...] about Three New Memoirs Bring the Farm to the Page

One of the only books about menstruation that I remember reading as a kid was “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” I expect this is the case for a number of others, Generation X or not. The 1970 Judy Blume book became famous for its frank, unapologetic depiction of preteen girls on the verge or in the midst of puberty. As I write this, a film version , starring, among others, Rachel McAdams, has been released in theaters to great critical response. The appearance of the book’s protagonist, Margaret Simon, on the big screen makes you wonder what took Hollywood so long to turn to one of the most famous of Blume’s books. I strongly suspect that the male executives who make up, and take up, most of Hollywood had a lot to do with it: Female bodies, when not idealized or sexualized, are often considered icky, especially with regard to menstruation and childbirth. Times are changing, of course, on all fronts. There is now a robust discussion about menopause, which seems to have gone … [Read more...] about Period Fiction: 2 Middle Grade Books About Menstruation and the Politics Beyond It

THE HOUSE OF BROKEN ANGELS Luis Alberto Urrea’s sorrowful and funny new novel, “The House of Broken Angels,” is one of those epic books about a complicated family that typically begin with a family tree to help the reader make sense of the relationships. Fortunately, this novel does not have such a tree. Instead, the reader has to do what any guest visiting such a family for the first time must do: Be alert, be attentive, be appreciative. And there is much to appreciate in Urrea’s highly entertaining story of Big Angel, the de La Cruz family’s patriarch, who buries his mother even as he himself is dying and as his family gathers to celebrate his 70th, and last, birthday. Dispelling the notion held by some Americans that all Mexicans have just crossed the border, Urrea creates a rambunctious de La Cruz family that lives in San Diego and “has been around here since before your grandparents were even born.” Urrea is intent on both celebrating the particularities of Mexican-American … [Read more...] about July’s Book Club Pick: A Novelist’s Exuberant Love Letter to a Mexican-American Clan

See the article in its original context from October 22, 1991 Section Page Buy Reprints View on timesmachine TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Time's Arrow Or, The Nature of the Offense By Martin Amis 168 pages. Harmony Books. $18. The idea behind Martin Amis's latest novel, "Time's Arrow," is this: the life story of a former Nazi doctor named Tod T. Friendly is told in a reverse chronology, beginning with his incognito existence in an American suburb in the present and moving back to the days when he was a doctor in the … [Read more...] about Books of The Times; Time Runs Backward To Point Up a Moral