Heller McAlpin
Heller McAlpin is a New York-based critic who reviews books regularly for NPR.org, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.
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In Five Weeks in the Country, author Francine Prose imagines a distressing, ill-timed visit to Charles Dickens' home in 1857 — offering a memorable twist on the classic English country house drama. -
Departure(s) explores several of Barnes' lifelong obsessions — mortality, memory, and time. It's slim but weighty, digressive yet incisive. Barnes, who just turned 80, says it will be his last. -
America's literary highways may be plenty crowded with middle-aged runaways fleeing lives that increasingly feel like a bad fit. But Ben Markovits adds a moving tale to the collection. -
The punk rock star has produced several books that braid thoughts on her newest endeavors with memories and photographs of her lost lovers and friends. Bread of Angels is her most autobiographical. -
In this follow-up to her hit novel, Catherine Newman reprises her beloved Rocky, a sharp-witted, neurotically doting mother. -
This novel stands apart from other tales of mothers stretched too thin. Jessica Stanley weaves family frustrations with British politics and global events because our life and our times are connected. -
The Secret Life of a Cemetery is a paean to the renowned Parisian cemetery, Père Lachaise. There, 10,000 visitors a day seek the graves of some 4,500 notable figures. -
Didion's book is an intimate chronicle of the author's struggle to help her daughter, even if it meant digging into her own long-unexamined neuroses. -
Rooney's fourth novel is a story about learning to accept loss. And though it has its share of grief and strife, it's happier and less disturbing than Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You. -
Richard Powers' latest novel brims with love for humanity and the planet. He makes clear that while humans have made this planet our amusement park, we have not always taken proper care of our toys.
