The evasions of smalltown Alabama: The Land of Sweet Forever, by Harper Lee, reviewed
Apprentice stories contain much of the raw material for To Kill a Mockingbird, as Lee tries to reconcile love for home with disgust at its prejudices
Harper Lee’s battle wasn’t with writer’s block but the whisky bottle
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird remains one of the most beloved American novels of all time. Famously, Lee never…
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s little house of horrors on the prairies
In 1932, the Daily Plainsman of Huron, South Dakota, ran a feature about a local woman convalescing in hospital. Grace…
A rollicking satire on the way we live now
Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Purity, comes with great expectations. Its author’s awareness of this fact is signalled by a series…
Snow White or black beauty?
God Help the Child, Toni Morrison’s 11th novel, hearkens back to two of her earliest. Like The Bluest Eye, it…
Bitter, dark and beautiful
Sarah Churchwell on how Eugene O’Neill virtually single-handedly revolutionised American theatre in the first half of the 20th century
