Annalisa Quinn
Annalisa Quinn is a contributing writer, reporter, and literary critic for NPR. She created NPR's Book News column and covers literature and culture for NPR.
Quinn studied English and Classics at Georgetown University and holds an M.Phil in Classical Greek from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Cambridge Trust scholar.
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The narrator of Zadie Smith's new novel is never named — fitting, for a book about the illusions of identity and the ways people try and fail to know and define themselves.
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Anne Carson's unconventional collection of 22 chapbooks can be read in any order, and covers everything from Helen of Troy to H.G. Wells — but mostly, it's about women taking back their own stories.
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Renowned chef Jeremiah Tower focuses on the consumption rather than the preparation of food in Table Manners. The book leans fussy and prim, turning a blind eye to hosts and hostesses short on cash.
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Brit Bennett's new novel focuses on two best friends, both motherless, growing up in a black community in Southern California — and their shifting, lifelong negotiation with the idea of motherhood.
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Eimear McBride's latest follows a young drama student who goes to London and falls for an older man. Her live, wriggling language makes a beautiful account of the ways the self is built and rebuilt.
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Ordinary family life provides all the tension and attraction in Ann Patchett's new book. The story of two families and a fateful party that upends both, it draws on Patchett's own life experiences.
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Ian McEwan's fetal Hamlet is an extravagant spirit confined to the womb while his mother and uncle plot. But he is no sweet prince; the book stumbles over the unborn Dane's grumpy cultural commentary.
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Amor Towles' new novel stars a Russian aristocrat, sentenced by the Soviets to permanent house arrest in a luxury hotel. It's a frothy romp that tends to overlook the reality of life under Stalin.
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Nadja Spiegelman is insightful about the power and malleability of memory in her new memoir, but the book is weighed down by an aggressively artificial poignancy, all ashtrays and meaningful silences.
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Megan Abbott's novel about a talented young gymnast and her mother starts with a mysterious death, but the real mysteries are the characters themselves: You never really know the people close to you.