Lara Vapnyar is one of the increasingly impressive roster of authors who have emigrated from Russia and other Eastern European countries and are now producing, in graceful and nuanced English that seems like their mother tongue, some of our finest contemporary literary fiction.
NBCC member Carole Goldberg, books editor of the Hartford Courant, reviews Vapnyar’s “Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love:”
“When Nora Ephron wrote her bitterly comic novel ‘Heartburn’ and threw in a few recipes to sweeten the effect, she was devising a recipe for other authors to follow.
“Since then, novelists including Jan Karon, Laura Esquivel, Diane Mott Davidson and others have made food an essential ingredient of their books and included recipes for the avid reader. We can now, happily, add Lara Vapnyar to that list.
“And more important, we also can note that Vapnyar is one of the increasingly impressive roster of authors who have emigrated from Russia and other Eastern European countries and are now producing, in graceful and nuanced English that seems like their mother tongue, some of our finest contemporary literary fiction.
“In ‘Broccoli And Other Tales of Food and Love,’ she captures, with exquisite description and delicately irony, the loneliness of the outsider, grateful to be living here, yet longing to feel at home.”
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NBCC member Colin Burch interviews Margaret Graver about the Stoics, their view of emotions, and the value of their philosphy today.
NBCC board member Geeta Sharma-Jensen reports on Salman Rushdie’s reaction to his Booker of the Booker’s award for Midnight’s Children only hours before a reading in Milwaukee.