Several months after the writer Lucy Jones gave birth to her third child, she purchased a compound microscope, swabbed her underarm, and set out to grow her own bacteria. This might seem like a weird thing to do, but motherhood makes you weird. Since having children, Jones had observed a series of changes in herself: … Read more
Nicholas Kristof started his journalism career as a teen-age reporter for the News-Register, an Oregon county newspaper where he was paid twenty-five cents a column inch. He spent his pocket money on books about how to turn that gig into a career: a textbook on news editing, “The Best of Life,” accounts of White House … Read more
When she died at a hundred and one in January of 2019, Diana Athill had publicly chronicled both ends of her long life in a series of nine memoirs. The first of these, “Instead of a Letter,” was published in 1963 and recently rereleased in the U.S. as part of the NYRB Classics series; it … Read more
“Should I be allowed to make this said?” Blake Butler writes in his new memoir, “Molly.” By the time he asks, it’s too late. He has already written more than two hundred and seventy pages; no turning back now. The question of allowance, of permission to expose, bubbles beneath so much writing, but it is … Read more
