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      Molly on 2 Alternatives to Certain Current Events

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      An underground party memoir; an argument for nonhuman life.Bequest of Florence S. Schuette, 1945Dear readers,For reasons that need not be stated, here are two books that represent an alternative to the pace of the news. Enjoy at whatever speed suits you.—Molly“Health and Safety: A Breakdown,” by Emily WittNonfiction, 2024When I say this book is breathtaking, I am not trotting out a metaphor; it really did alter my respiration! Sometimes in the direction of excited quickening, other times toward a sorrowful (temporary) arrest. “Health and Safety” is a memoir in the form of fieldwork; its topic is a specific pre-pandemic party scene in New York that revolved around music, dance, sex, design and consciousness-altering drugs.Witt, a staff writer at The New Yorker, takes pleasure seriously in a way that few contemporary American writers do. The book laces strands of history and brain chemistry and auto-anthropology into her account of a lapsed fairyland — a smattering of clubs and illegal venues in 2010s Brooklyn that attracted people who were keen on losing their minds in a specifically connoisseurial way.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Horror for Readers Who Want to Be Completely Terrified

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      Curdle CreekBy Yvonne Battle-FeltonThe town at the center of Yvonne Battle-Felton’s new novel, CURDLE CREEK (Holt, 292 pp., $27.99), is a small, all-Black, separatist community with a strict population policy: “One in, one out.” To keep the enclave safe, there are many yearly rituals required of residents, including Moving On, Warding Off, the Calling and the Running of the Widows.Osira has always lived in Curdle Creek, but she fears her standing because her children broke the town’s rules and ran away. Then her father’s name is called for a murderous ritual, but rather than submit, he flees. With her position jeopardized, Osira is forced to prove herself by traveling into different realms to answer for Curdle Creek’s sins and make things right … whatever that means.“Curdle Creek” explores the sacrifices people are willing to make for safety, and how surrendering freedom for the common good can sometimes morph into self-immolation. Power struggles, pettiness, violence perpetrated in the name of religion, along with dark secrets hidden in the fabric of the community, make life in the small town a repressive, stressful nightmare. With tight dialogue, elegant writing and a startling ending, this is a wonderful novel about the worst monsters of all: people.Nether StationBy Kevin J. AndersonIä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Rejoice, Cthulhu devotees, Kevin J. Anderson’s NETHER STATION (Blackstone, 308 pp., $27.99) is a fun, pulpy mix of science fiction and cosmic horror that clearly admires, and pays homage to, H.P. Lovecraft.Cammie Skoura is a neurodivergent astrophysicist who investigates wormholes. She and a professor have spent years studying one wormhole in particular, Nether, but after losing an important research probe, they had to abandon the project.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      2 Novels About Complicated Nuns

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      An atheist in a convent; a bloodthirsty reality show hostess.Slawomir Kaminski/Agencja Gazeta via ReutersDear readers,What a joy to begin this column from a place of abundance! Forbidding, austere, often terrifying, occasionally ecstatic abundance!I’m talking, of course, about nuns in literature.Though I come from a mixed-faith family, I have basically zero real-life experience with Catholicism and its servants. So my research for this newsletter has been eye-opening. I knew about Muriel Spark’s allegorical treatment of Watergate enacted by a cunning abbess (only you, Muriel). Ditto Denis Diderot’s “La Religieuse,” which began as an extended literary prank and somehow became a proto-Enlightenment cri de coeur.But there’s more. I dare you to remain unmoved by the correspondence between the 12th-century philosopher-nun Héloïse and her illicit husband, Abelard, who was castrated after he impregnated her. (For good measure, both were then cloistered.) Nor can we forget Teresa of Ávila, exhaustive chronicler and enthusiast of mortifications of the flesh.So, yes, nuns have provided a true buffet, even for us spiritual mongrels. Were this a semester-long seminar I could reach back to some of the very first women of God in literature (Chaucer’s Prioress, Margery Kempe) — but to meet the moment, here are two more recent treatments of literary sisters.—JoumanaWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Safekeep’ Is a Story in the Shadow of Anne Frank

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      In Yael van der Wouden’s debut novel, “The Safekeep,” the writer spins an erotic thriller out of the Netherlands’ failure to face up to the horrors of the Holocaust.The author Yael van der Wouden stood in her slippers at the front door of a canal house in the Dutch city of Utrecht. “Let me prepare you for the journey ahead,” she said, smiling. “There will be a lot of stairs.”She turned and led the way through a long darkened hallway, up a narrow staircase, to another winding hallway, and up more stairs to reach her attic-level apartment in the back of the building.“My landlady calls it ‘het achterhuis,’” said van der Wouden, once inside the cozy interior with slanting roof beams, decorated with books and bric-a-brac. “She’s about 90, and I don’t think she quite understands what that means to me.”“Het Achterhuis,” is the Dutch title of Anne Frank’s famous World War II diary. In English, it is often translated as “the secret annex,” referring to the storage space where the teen diarist and her family hid to escape the Nazis for more than two years. But “achterhuis” is also just a term for the back part of a house, and van der Wouden, who is Israeli and Dutch, does not fault her landlady for missing the reference.“It feels like just another part of existing invisibly, where no one quite thinks about the full effect of their words,” van der Wouden said.“The Safekeep,” van der Wouden’s debut novel and one of six books shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, is full of such clashing perspectives. Words that mean one thing to a character can hold explosive charge for another. Seemingly innocuous objects like silver spoons, or a single shard of broken china, become emotional land mines.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Australian Ballet’s ‘Oscar,’ Ventures Into New Romantic Territory

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      The Australian Ballet’s premiere of “Oscar,” based on the life of Oscar Wilde, explores the love relationship between two men.Boy loves girl. Prince enchanted by princess. Or swan queen, sylph, fairy, doll, peasant girl or courtesan.The central narrative elements of the full-length story ballets familiar to audiences mostly share a single element: The central romantic relationship is between male and female characters. Since many of these ballets (“Giselle,” “Swan Lake,” “The Sleeping Beauty”) date from the 19th century, that’s not surprising. But well into the 21st century, ballet — unlike opera, film or theater — has been slow to take up the challenges of telling other kinds of tales.That changed last month, with the Australian Ballet’s premiere of “Oscar,” about the life of Oscar Wilde. Choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon and set to a score by Joby Talbot, it is the first full-length narrative ballet that makes a gay hero and his love for another man its central subject.In a video call, Wheeldon pointed out that Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake — which featured an unhappy, repressed prince falling in love with a fiercely alluring male swan — was a groundbreaking forerunner, although not a classical ballet. But since then, he said, almost no narrative dance work has put a gay romance at its heart. David Bintley’s 1995 “Edward II” depicted something of the king’s relationship with Piers Gaveston, the Earl of Cornwall, but even the Yuri Possokhov-Kirill Serebrennikov “Nureyev” at the Bolshoi almost entirely skirted the issue of the dancer’s sexuality.It was time for something more. “I wanted us to be a company that tells stories that resonate, to be bold in our storytelling,” said David Hallberg, the artistic director of the Australian ballet. “Oscar Wilde wrote these beautiful tales, but was persecuted in a way that is still true for many people today.”Wheeldon, a major choreographer, clearly likes a narrative challenge. He has created the full-length “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Winter’s Tale” and “Like Water for Chocolate” for the Royal Ballet, and directed and choreographed (and won Tony Awards for) two Broadway shows, “An American in Paris” and “MJ: The Musical.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      14 Book Titles Are Hidden in This Text Puzzle. Can You Find Them?

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      “Today, we’re going to look at life from the inside out and write about ourselves,” said Mr. Wilcox, pausing as several hands shot up. “The floor is open for questions.”“We’re just kids and most of us don’t have any heavy baggage to write about yet,” said Lucy. “I’m super boring just as I am.”“Oh, I’ve always been really good at making a scene and have lots of horror stories,” piped up Graham. “I can give you some of my spare bits and pieces. Maybe just the funny parts.”Mr. Wilcox sighed. “Maybe we need a definition of autobiography so we’re not redefining realness here.”“Today, we’re going to look at life from the inside out and write about ourselves,” said Mr. Wilcox, pausing as several hands shot up. “The floor is open for questions.”“We’re just kids and most of us don’t have any heavy baggage to write about yet,” said Lucy. “I’m super boring just as I am.”“Oh, I’ve always been really good at making a scene and have lots of horror stories,” piped up Graham. “I can give you some of my spare bits and pieces. Maybe just the funny parts.”Mr. Wilcox sighed. “Maybe we need a definition of autobiography so we’re not redefining realness here.”“Today, we’re going to look at life from the inside out and write about ourselves,” said Mr. Wilcox, pausing as several hands shot up. “The floor is open for questions.”“We’re just kids and most of us don’t have any heavy baggage to write about yet,” said Lucy. “I’m super boring just as I am.”“Oh, I’ve always been really good at making a scene and have lots of horror stories,” piped up Graham. “I can give you some of my spare bits and pieces. Maybe just the funny parts.”Mr. Wilcox sighed. “Maybe we need a definition of autobiography so we’re not redefining realness here.” More

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      2 Unexpected Books for Spooky Season

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      A haunted author; haunted dolls.Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesDear readers,I don’t require a dedicated ghost-story season. To me, that would be like loving people only on Feb. 14, or pretending canned tomatoes don’t exist. Besides, as I understand it, ghosts don’t work on schedule.But in case you’re stricter than the undead and I, here are two less explicit examples of the uncanny that take the definition of “haunting” and bend it like the sad, stale Laffy Taffy at the bottom of your trick-or-treat pumpkin. Of course, they can be read at any time of year — in costume, if you see fit.—Sadie“I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys,” by Miranda SeymourNonfiction, 2022For the past few months, this terrific biography of Jean Rhys has been my insomnia companion: a substantive piece of nonfiction to dip into when I wake up at 2 a.m. and only an hour’s reading will put me back to sleep. (Unlike Sally Rooney, I love biographies of writers.) Yet it’s anything but lulling — rather, it feels like the kind of book whose charms are thrown into relief by the privacy of sleeplessness.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More