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Tag: Books and literature

  • The new Children’s Booker Prize aims to reward quality fiction for kids

    LONDON — Britain’s most prestigious literary prize is getting a younger sibling.

    The Booker Prize Foundation announced Friday that it is setting up the Children’s Booker Prize alongside its existing awards for English-language and translated fiction.

    Like its sister prizes, the children’s award comes with a 50,000 pound ($67,000) purse.

    The prize will open for submissions early next year and the inaugural award will be handed out in 2027, with the winner picked by a jury of children and adults led by writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Britain’s current children’s laureate.

    Cottrell-Boyce, whose books include the Carnegie Medal-winning “Millions,” said he was “buzzing” about the prospect.

    “It’s going to be – as they say – absolute scenes in there. Let the yelling commence,” he said.

    Funded by the arts, environment and education charity AKO Foundation, the new award will be open to fiction from any country aimed at children aged 8 to 12, either written in English or translated, and published in the U.K. or Ireland.

    Booker Prize Foundation Chief Executive Gaby Wood said the prize aimed to inspire more young people to read and be “a seed from which we hope future generations of lifelong readers will grow.”

    The original Booker Prize was founded in 1969 and has established a reputation for transforming writers’ careers. Its winners have included Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy and Hilary Mantel.

    This year’s winner will be announced on Nov. 10.

    The International Booker Prize was established in 2005 as a lifetime achievement award. Since 2016 it has gone to a single work of translated fiction, with the prize money split between author and translator. Past winners include Nobel literature laureates Olga Tokarczuk of Poland and Han Kang of South Korea.

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  • Bestselling author Jodi Picoult pushes back after her musical is canceled by Indiana high school

    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Author Jodi Picoult has the dubious honor of being banned in two mediums this fall — her books and now a musical based on her novel “Between the Lines.”

    “I’m pretty sure I’m the first author who has now had censorship occur in two different types of media,” Picoult says. “Honestly, I’m not out here to be salacious. I am writing the world as it is, and I am honestly just trying to write about difficult issues that people have a hard time talking about because that is what fiction and the arts do.”

    The superintendent of Mississinewa High School in Gas City, Indiana, canceled a production last week of “Between the Lines,” saying concerns were raised over “sexual innuendo” and alcohol references in the musical. Jeremy Fewell, the superintendent, did not respond to a request for comment.

    “It’s devastating for us to know that these kids who put in hundreds of hours of hard work had that torn away from them because of the objections of a single parent,” says Picoult.

    “What I know, perhaps better than most people, as someone whose books have been banned, is when one parent starts deciding what is appropriate and what is inappropriate for the children of other parents, we have a big problem.”

    Picoult noted that the same Indiana high school has previously produced “Grease,” where the sexual innuendo and alcohol abuse is much greater, including a pregnancy scare, sex-mad teens and the line “Did she put up a fight?”

    “Between the Lines” centers on Delilah, an outsider in a new high school, who finds solace in a book and realizes she has the power to write her own story and narrate her own life. “It is a very benign message. And it’s actually a really important one for adolescents today,” says Picoult.

    The original work, which features a nonbinary character, had already been edited with licensed changes to make it more palatable for a conservative audience, including removing any reference to the nonbinary character’s gender orientation.

    The production was scheduled for Halloween weekend at the Gas City Performing Arts Center. The show has music and lyrics by Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson, and a story by Timothy Allen McDonald, based on the 2012 novel by Picoult and her daughter, Samantha van Leer. It played off-Broadway in 2022.

    Picoult, the bestselling author of “My Sister’s Keeper” and “Small Great Things,” has also written about the moments leading up to a school shooting in “Nineteen Minutes,” which was banned 16 times in the 2024-2025 school year, according to PEN America, making her the nation’s fourth most-banned author.

    “I had 20 books banned in one school district in Florida alone because of a single parent’s objection and she admitted she had not read any of the books,” said Picoult, a PEN America trustee. “She said that they were banned for ‘mature content and sexuality.’ There were books of mine that did not even have a single kiss in them.”

    The uptick in book banning has spread to stages as well. The Dramatists Legal Defense Fund has documented recently challenged plays and musicals from states including Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio and New Jersey after parents or teachers complained that the works’ social themes weren’t appropriate for minors.

    The Northern Lebanon High School, in Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania, canceled a 2024 production of “The Addams Family,” citing concerns over scenes with violence, children smoking and subtle queer themes. Paula Vogel’s play “Indecent,” which explores a flashpoint in Jewish and queer theatrical history, was abruptly canceled in Florida’s Duval County in 2023 for “inappropriate” sexual dialogue.

    Last year, the Educational Theatre Association asked more than 1,800 theatre educators in public and private schools across the U.S. about censorship. More than 75% of respondents reported pressure to reconsider their play and musical choices during the 2023-24 school year.

    “We are not protecting kids,” said Picoult. “We are robbing them of materials that we use to deal with an increasingly complex world.”

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  • Movie Review: Some tragedy, some romance, and a regretful helping of corn in ‘Regretting You’

    They have cup holders at the multiplex. But as yet, they have not installed Kleenex holders.

    That might have been a good idea once it was clear that director Josh Boone was going to helm another adaptation of a popular YA novel, this time “Regretting You” by Colleen Hoover. As fans may recall, Boone’s “The Fault in Our Stars” sent millions of overactive tear ducts and sniffly noses into overdrive. It would have been good to have a whole box of tissues at hand.

    Of course, that story was about not only about teen love but teen cancer. It was hard not to cry just thinking about it, let alone seeing it. “Regretting You,” a tragicomic intergenerational romance adapted by Susan McMartin, has its share of grief. But the strange way the tears give way to smiles, quips and then full-on rom-com corniness feels a little awkward — and then just weird and annoying. It’s a two-Kleenex ride, at most — definitely not the whole box.

    Allison Williams and Dave Franco play Morgan and Jonah, and when we first meet them in high school, they have definite chemistry (they also look like they’re around 30, despite some de-aging). But Jonah’s dating Morgan’s sister Jenny, and Morgan is with Jonah’s buddy Chris. This prelude, at a teen gathering on the beach, introduces us to the quartet but also informs us of Morgan’s unexpected pregnancy, which she’s just discovered in a convenience store restroom.

    “How did we end up with our exact opposites?” Jonah asks on the beach, as hunky Chris parties and gets drunk, along with Morgan’s fun-loving sister.

    And then 17 years later, we meet the foursome again. We’re more than a little disappointed to know that the couples remained intact — sort of. Did Morgan REALLY marry the boyfriend who told her on the beach that she was more fun when drunk? Yes, Morgan married Chris. And sister Jenny is with Jonah (bespectacled and dark and twisty, as Meredith Grey might say) — but only because a one-night stand has led to a baby, which they’re co-parenting.

    Then there’s the other baby — Morgan’s daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace), about to turn 17, lovely, smart and aiming for drama school. There’s some conflict with her mother about this ambition, though like so much here, it really doesn’t ring true that Morgan, as portrayed by the always-appealing Williams, would oppose such a thing. But whatever. Who are we to question the stuff between teen daughters and their moms, right?

    Then Miller turns up. Known as the coolest guy in school (believable) but also a slightly sketchy sort (not believable), Miller, played sweetly by Mason Thames, enters Clara’s life when he hitches a ride with her. She knows he has a girlfriend, but is smitten. Theirs is a rocky road to love. Kidding! Only a few pesky pebbles stand in the way, seemingly meant to take up pages in a meandering script. (He breaks up with the girlfriend. He reunites with the girlfriend! He breaks up with the girlfriend again. He’s a little angry! He’s fine again.)

    But back to the main event: Everyone is coexisting with a minimum of turbulence … until tragedy happens, leaving a jagged streak of grief that cuts across the family.

    Hoover’s readers will know what we’re talking about. So, partial spoiler alert: An accident cuts down the character list. And throws every single relationship into turmoil.

    It’s hard to discuss much of this without further spoilers, but let’s just say we have the requisite zigs and zags but literally no real suspense. Along the way, the wittiest moment is when Jonah’s baby finds himself on a shopping cart in the supermarket wedged between large bottles of white wine, with which Morgan is self-medicating. Speaking of medication, one assumes the cheery line, “Acetaminophen always helps!” was written before it became a political statement.

    Last year’s adaptation of Hoover’s “It Ends With Us,” directed by Justin Baldoni as you may have heard, was a big hit, and so expectations have been considerable for “Regretting You.” There are some sweet kisses (otherwise, it’s very chaste) and some nice declarations of motherly devotion (credit to Williams for doing her best) but the cheese factor is regretfully high. And the whole thing ends with a wrap-it-all-up scene so corny, I literally felt myself blush in the darkness of the multiplex.

    If there had been a box of Kleenex beside me rather than a Diet Coke, I would have covered my eyes.

    “Regretting You,” a Paramount Pictures release, has been rated PG-13 “for sexual content, teen drug and alcohol use, and brief strong language.” Running time: 117 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

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  • Do You Recognize These Literary References in Modern Pop Culture?

    Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge celebrates allusions to characters and plots from classic novels found in music and television. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books.

    J. D. Biersdorfer

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  • Oprah Winfrey picks Megha Majumdar’s ‘A Guardian and a Thief’ for book club

    NEW YORK (AP) — Megha Majumdar’s “ A Guardian and a Thief,” already a finalist for the National Book Award and Kirkus Prize, is now Oprah Winfrey’s book club pick.

    Set in the near future, “A Guardian and a Thief” depicts a world of drought, flooding, crime and food shortages as it contrasts a woman whose family is about to emigrate from India to the U.S. with the resident of a shelter who has stolen her purse and the passports it contains. It’s Majumdar’s first novel since her acclaimed debut, “A Burning,” came out in 2020.

    “I was spellbound from Page 1,” Winfrey said in a statement Tuesday. “Megha Majumdar is one of those exquisitely skilled authors who takes us into the story of characters and cultural conflicts and leaves us spellbound until the last word and beyond. Who was the ‘Guardian’ who was the ‘Thief’? I’m still thinking about it.”

    Majumdar’s conversation with Winfrey can be seen on Winfrey’s YouTube channel and other outlets where podcasts are available. Winfrey’s book club is currently presented by Starbucks. Other recent picks include Elizabeth Gilbert’ s memoir, “All the Way to the River,” and a novel by Richard Russo, “Bridge of Sighs.”

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  • Project connects Americans to the Dutch people who honor their relatives at World War II cemetery

    DALLAS (AP) — In the decades since June West Brandt’s older brother was killed in World War II, her kind and artistic sibling who loved to play boogie-woogie on the piano has never been far from her mind. So she was delighted to discover he’s also being remembered by a Dutch couple who regularly visit a marker for him at a Netherlands cemetery.

    “It’s wonderful for me to know that someone is there,” said Brandt, 93, who lives near Houston.

    Her introduction over the summer to Lisa and Guido Meijers came by way of a new initiative aiming to increase the number of connections between the family members of those buried and remembered on the walls of the missing at the World War II cemetery and the Dutch people who have adopted each one.

    The project was spurred on by “The Monuments Men” author Robert Edsel, whose newest book, “Remember Us,” tells the story of the adoption program at the Netherlands American Cemetery. His Dallas-based Monuments Men and Women Foundation teamed with the Dutch foundation responsible for the adoptions to create the Forever Promise Project, which has a searchable database of the names of U.S. service members buried and remembered at the cemetery.

    “I’d like us to find and connect as many American families to their Dutch adopters as is possible,” Edsel said.

    Ton Hermes, chairman of the Foundation for Adopting Graves American Cemetery Margraten, said that while each of the about 8,300 graves and 1,700 markers for the missing at the cemetery near the village of Margraten have adopters, only about 20% to 30% of them are in contact with the service member’s relatives.

    When the Meijerses adopted the marker for Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. William Durham “W.D.” West Jr. several years ago, they knew only basic information about the 20-year-old whose body was never recovered after his B-24 bomber was shot down over the North Sea on a mission into Nazi Germany.

    Through talking with Brandt, they’ve learned that West was “quite a creative soul,” Lisa Meijers said.

    “That obviously makes a huge change in how to remember someone,” she said.

    Brandt said her brother loved to paint and played the piano by ear, and even though she was six years younger, they were “big buddies” growing up in the small western Louisiana city of DeRidder.

    “We loved being together, so it was very hard when he left,” Brandt said.

    Brandt’s daughter, Allison Brandt Woods, said it’s heartwarming knowing Meijerses are watching over the marker. Woods met up with them on a recent trip and hopes the connection between their families will continue with future generations.

    The cemetery, Lisa Meijers said, is among many reminders of World War II in the southern Netherlands, which was liberated by Allied forces in September 1944 after over four years of Nazi occupation.

    “We just really feel how extremely important it is to remember these things and to honor the sacrifices these people made for us,” she said.

    The Meijerses, who have a 1-year-old son, visit West’s marker about once a month, bringing flowers.

    Hermes said the program is so popular that there’s a waiting list to adopt a grave or marker.

    Names on the walls for the missing were opened up for adoption in 2008, said Frans Roebroeks, secretary for the Dutch adoption foundation. The formal adoption process for graves began to take shape during a 1945 meeting of the Margraten town council.

    “They were meeting to figure out the answer to the question: How do you thank your liberators when they are no longer alive to thank?” Edsel said.

    Many initial adopters took on the grave of someone they had gotten to know.

    “Once they heard their soldier was killed in action, the Dutch people decided to adopt his grave, to bring flowers and to correspond with the wives or mothers in the United States,” Hermes said.

    Roebroeks said many of the graves have been cared for by the same family since the end of the war, including one that’s been passed down through his family. He said Army Pfc. Henry Wolf had stayed at his grandfather’s farm and became “like a son” to him.

    Wolf’s grave has passed from Roebroeks’ grandfather to his mother and now to his sister, who will pass it to her daughter, he said.

    “That grave stays in the family,” he said.

    Edsel said that so far, over 300 families have asked to be put in touch with their adopters.

    “And we’re just starting,” he said.

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  • Oprah Winfrey picks Megha Majumdar’s ‘A Guardian and a Thief’ for book club

    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Megha Majumdar’s “ A Guardian and a Thief,” already a finalist for the National Book Award and Kirkus Prize, is now Oprah Winfrey’s book club pick.

    Set in the near future, “A Guardian and a Thief” depicts a world of drought, flooding, crime and food shortages as it contrasts a woman whose family is about to emigrate from India to the U.S. with the resident of a shelter who has stolen her purse and the passports it contains. It’s Majumdar’s first novel since her acclaimed debut, “A Burning,” came out in 2020.

    “I was spellbound from Page 1,” Winfrey said in a statement Tuesday. “Megha Majumdar is one of those exquisitely skilled authors who takes us into the story of characters and cultural conflicts and leaves us spellbound until the last word and beyond. Who was the ‘Guardian’ who was the ‘Thief’? I’m still thinking about it.”

    Majumdar’s conversation with Winfrey can be seen on Winfrey’s YouTube channel and other outlets where podcasts are available. Winfrey’s book club is currently presented by Starbucks. Other recent picks include Elizabeth Gilbert’ s memoir, “All the Way to the River,” and a novel by Richard Russo, “Bridge of Sighs.”

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  • The MacArthur Foundation’s ‘genius’ fellows: The full 2025 class list

    The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced its 2025 class of fellows on Wednesday, a prize often called the “genius award.”

    The MacArthur fellows receive a $800,000 prize paid out over five years that they can spend however they choose. The foundation selects fellows over the course of years and consider a wide range of recommendations. Fellows do not apply for the recognition or participate in any way in their selection.

    The 2025 fellows are:

    Ángel F. Adames Corraliza, 37, Madison, Wisconsin, an atmospheric scientist whose research deepened knowledge about what drives weather patterns in the tropics.

    Matt Black, 55, Exeter, California, a photographer whose black and white images investigate poverty and inequality in the United States.

    Garrett Bradley, 39, New Orleans, a filmmaker who leverages many types of material, including archival and personal footage, to tell almost lost and intimate stories, especially about the lives of Black Americans.

    Heather Christian, 44, Beacon, New York, a composer, lyricist, playwright and vocalist who creates complex, immersive musical theater performances that interweave the sacred and mundane.

    Nabarun Dasgupta, 46, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, an epidemiologist who helped create tools to identify unregulated substances in street drugs and designed other harm reduction interventions.

    Kristina Douglass, 41, New York, an archaeologist whose research revealed new understandings of Indigenous conservation practices in places sensitive to climate variability.

    Kareem El-Badry, 31, Pasadena, California, an astrophysicist who developed new approaches to understanding existing datasets that have revealed new knowledge about how stars form and interact.

    Jeremy Frey, 46, Eddington, Maine, an artist whose mastery of Wabanaki basket weaving both carries on traditional practices and finds new possibilities in the materials and techniques.

    Hahrie Han, 50, Baltimore, a political scientist whose research illuminated what helps people participate in civic life and how to help them connect across differences to solve collective problems.

    Tonika Lewis Johnson, 45, Chicago, a photographer and activist who created participatory projects that reveal the consequences and legacy of segregation in her neighborhood of Englewood on the city’s South Side.

    Ieva Jusionyte, 41, Providence, Rhode Island, a cultural anthropologist whose diverse ethnographies investigate the ethical and practical issues that national border policies create for workers and communities who live in border regions.

    Toby Kiers, 49, Amsterdam, an evolutionary biologist whose research helped document how plants, microbes and fungi cooperate to trade the resources that each need to survive.

    Jason McLellan, 44, Austin, Texas, a structural biologist whose research into viral protein structures helped advance the understanding of viruses and helped to develop new vaccines.

    Tuan Andrew Nguyen, 49, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a multidisciplinary artist whose projects in film and sculpture draw on personal testimonies and community archives to document and heal from histories of war and displacement.

    Tommy Orange, 43, Oakland, California, a fiction writer whose books illuminated the experiences past and present of Native Americans in the Oakland area.

    Margaret Wickens Pearce, 60, Rockland, Maine, a cartographer whose maps document the relationships of Indigenous people in North America to their land and that narrate histories, incorporate knowledge and detail the ongoing dispossession of Native people.

    Sébastien Philippe, 38, Madison, Wisconsin, a nuclear security specialist whose research revealed that past nuclear testing by France and the U.S. exposed many more people to radiation than was previously documented.

    Gala Porras-Kim, 40, Los Angeles and London, an interdisciplinary artist whose exploration of museum collections challenged conventions of curation and often highlight what is lost or unknown about cultural artifacts.

    Teresa Puthussery, 46, Berkeley, California, a neurobiologist and optometrist who identified a type of cell in the retina that helps clarify how humans process visual information.

    Craig Taborn, 55, Brooklyn, New York, a musician and composer known for his improvisations and collaborations and whose performances reveal the full range of the piano’s capacity as an instrument.

    William Tarpeh, 35, Stanford, California, a chemical engineer who developed techniques to extract valuable minerals from wastewater that can be turned into fertilizers or cleaning products.

    Lauren K. Williams, 47, Cambridge, Massachusetts, a mathematician whose research is in algebraic combinatorics and also contributed to solving problems in other areas through interdisciplinary collaborations.

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Do You Recognize These Books From Their Plot Descriptions?

    Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s tests your memory of books you may have read during your school days — specifically, the plots of much-loved novels for young readers. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books.

    J. D. Biersdorfer

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  • Jane Austen fans step back in time to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the beloved author’s birth

    LONDON — Ellie Potts goes dancing with her friends most weeks. They don’t put on the latest Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran, though — they much prefer English country dances that were popular more than 200 years ago.

    As the music starts, about two dozen men and women curtsy and bow, extend a gloved hand to their partner, before dancing in circles or skipping in elaborate patterns around each other.

    Like many of her fellow Hampshire Regency Dancers, Potts is a devotee of Jane Austen and all things from the Regency period. Not only have they studied the books and watched all the screen adaptations — they also research the music, make their own period dresses, and immerse themselves in dances Austen and her characters would have enjoyed in centuries past.

    “I’ve been interested in Jane Austen since I was about 8 or 9,” said Potts, 25. “I mainly joined (the dance group) so I can have balls and things to go to in my costumes, but I really got into it. I’ve been surprised how much I enjoy the dancing.”

    There’s no shortage of grand costumed balls and historical dancing this year, which marks the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth. This weekend, thousands of fans who call themselves “Janeites” are descending on the city of Bath for a 10-day festival celebrating the beloved author of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility.”

    The highlight is a Regency costumed promenade on Saturday, where some 2,000 people in their finest bonnets, bows and costumes will parade through the streets of Bath. Organizers say the extravaganza holds the Guinness World Record for the “largest gathering of people dressed in Regency costumes.”

    Bonny Wise, from Indiana, is attending her sixth Jane Austen festival in Bath. This time she’s bringing four period dresses she made, and will lead a tour group of 25 Austen enthusiasts from all over the United States.

    “I started planning a tour four years ago, when I realized this was a big year for Jane,” said Wise, 69. She credited the 1995 adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility” with sparking her obsession.

    “That movie just opened up a whole new world for me,” she said. “You start with the books, the movies, then you start getting into the hats, the tea, the manners … one thing just led to another.”

    Wise said she loves the wit, humor and social observations in Austen’s books. She also finds the author’s own life story inspiring.

    “I admire Jane and what she managed as a woman in that era, her perseverance and her process of becoming an author,” she said.

    The Jane Austen Society of North America, the world’s largest organization devoted to the author, says it has seen a recent influx of younger fans, though most of its members — 5,000 to date — skew older.

    “We’re growing all the time because Jane Austen is timeless,” said Mary Mintz, the group’s president. “We have members from Japan, India. They come from every continent except Antarctica.”

    Many festival-goers will be making a pilgrimage to Steventon, the small village in rural Hampshire, southern England, where Austen was born in 1775.

    The author lived in Bath, a fashionable spa town in the 18th and 19th centuries, for five years. Two of her novels, “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey,” feature scenes set in the World Heritage city.

    Bath is also the filming location for parts of “Bridgerton,” Netflix’s wildly popular modern take on period drama based loosely on the Regency period, the decade when the future King George IV stood in as prince regent because his father was deemed unfit to rule due to mental illness.

    Thanks to the show, Austen and Regency style — think romantic flowing gowns, elegant ballrooms and high society soirees — have become trendy for a new generation.

    “I think Jane Austen is on the rise,” Potts said. “She’s definitely become more popular since ‘Bridgerton’.”

    In a church hall in Winchester, a few streets away from where Austen was buried, the Hampshire Regency Dancers gather weekly to practice for the many performances they’re staging this year in honor of the author.

    The group selects dances that appear in screen adaptations of Austen’s novels, and members go to painstaking detail to ensure their costumes, down to the buttons and stitching, are authentic looking.

    “We go to a lot of trouble to get things as close to the original as possible,” said Chris Oswald, a retired lawyer who now chairs the group. “For me it’s about getting a better understanding of what life was like then, and in the process of doing that getting a better understanding of Jane Austen herself.”

    Oswald is passionate about his group’s showcases in Hampshire, or what he jokingly calls “Jane Austen land.”

    “People get quite touched because they are walking where Jane Austen actually walked. They dance in a room that Jane Austen danced in,” he said. “For people who are very into Jane Austen, that’s extremely special.”

    Many “Janeites” say they get huge enjoyment in making Austen’s words and imageries come to life in a community of like-minded people.

    Lisa Timbs, a pianist who researches the music in Austen’s life and performs it on an antique pianoforte, puts it succinctly: She and her Regency friends are “stepping back in time together.”

    “I think it’s an escape for a lot of people,” Timbs added. “Perhaps it’s to escape the speed, noise and abrasiveness of the era in which we find ourselves, and a longing to return to the elegance and indulgent pleasures of what was really a very fleeting period in history.”

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  • Oprah Winfrey selects Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir for her book club

    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Elizabeth Gilbert’s “All the Way to the River,” a memoir that has already stirred up an online conversation, is Oprah Winfrey’s new book club pick.

    In Gilbert’s book, published this week, the author writes of a consuming love affair with the self-destructive and terminally ill Rayya Elias, a onetime friend for whom the author left her husband. Gilbert already has an influential and well-chronicled history of transformation and telling all — starting with her million-selling phenomenon, “Eat, Pray, Love,” a spiritual journey that ends with Gilbert marrying the man (Jose Nunes) she will divorce to be with Elias.

    “With ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ Elizabeth Gilbert started a movement,” Winfrey, who interviewed Gilbert in 2012 for “Eat, Pray, Love,” said in a statement Tuesday. “This new memoir is just as powerful — raw, unflinching, and deeply healing. She bares her soul, sharing her truth so openly, she offers readers the courage to face their own.”

    Winfrey recently interviewed Gilbert at a Starbucks in Seattle; the Starbucks chain is the current presenter of her club. Their conversation can be seen on Winfrey’s YouTube channel and other video outlets.

    Gilbert’s book was well publicized before Winfrey’s endorsement. Last week, New York magazine’s The Cut ran an excerpt and The New Yorker released a review by staff critic Jia Tolentino that led to widespread comments on social media, notably about Gilbert’s confiding that she thought of killing Elias, whose addictions the author feared would destroy them both. (Elias died in 2018.)

    “Gilbert frames her journey with Rayya as a sort of test strip for the universe: take a love affair for the ages, dip it in an unbelievable amount of mutual suffering, and see what color everything turns,” Tolentino wrote.

    Like dozens of book club choices before her, Gilbert learned of the news through an unexpected call from Winfrey.

    “I’d been told by my publisher to expect a phone call at a certain time and date that week, but I thought I was going to be talking to my editor about book business,” Gilbert said in a statement. “There is nothing in the world that can prepare you to receive such a call. I instantly felt like a teenager all over again, watching ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ after school, and learning that there is a much, much bigger world out there than I knew.”

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  • Atlanta Journal-Constitution to stop printing as it transitions to all-digital news

    ATLANTA — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will stop providing a print edition at the end of the year and go completely digital, marking a dramatic change for a storied newspaper that was founded just a few years after the end of the Civil War.

    The decision will make Atlanta the largest U.S. metro area without a printed daily newspaper, although some smaller metro Atlanta newspapers continue printing.

    Publisher Andrew Morse made the announcement Thursday, saying the news organization will continue to report news using online, audio and video products.

    “The fact is, many more people engage with our digital platforms and products today than with our print edition, and that shift is only accelerating,” Morse wrote in a letter to subscribers posted on the Journal-Constitution’s website. The AJC has about 115,000 total subscribers, of whom 75,000 are online only; Morse has set a goal of gaining 500,000 online subscribers.

    The newspaper is privately owned by descendants of the Cox family. Former Ohio Gov. James Cox bought The Atlanta Journal in 1939 and The Atlanta Constitution in 1950. The Atlanta Constitution was founded in 1868 only a few years after the Civil War left Atlanta in ruins and was the platform of famous editors including New South booster Henry Grady and anti-segregationist Ralph McGill.

    Morse said The Journal-Constitution will offer a new mobile app by the end of the year and will provide an electronic replica edition for subscribers who prefer the experience of the paper edition.

    Many smaller newspapers have stopped printing, while others have cut back their days of publication. For example, The Tampa Bay Times, which serves Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida, prints only two days a week. But it’s been unusual until now for major metropolitan newspapers to entirely abandon print. The highest profile example is The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey. Once the top-selling newspaper in New Jersey, it stopped printing in February. The Newhouse family, which owns the Star-Ledger, has also stopped printing other sizable newspapers in New Jersey and Alabama.

    The Cox family has invested in the news organization since Morse, a former CNN executive, became publisher in 2023. The Journal-Constitution has hired reporters in the Georgia cities of Athens, Macon and Savannah, expanded an offering focused on Black culture, and pushed new audio and video offerings. The business also moved into a new office in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood, returning inside the city limits from an office in the northern suburbs.

    Company executives said the print edition was still profitable. The Journal-Constitution closed its own printing plants and outsourced printing to another newspaper in Gainesville, Georgia, in 2021. When Morse came on board, he paused a plan to curtail the print edition, but said now the time is right.

    “We will begin the new year as a fully digital organization, committed, as always, to being the most essential and engaging news source for the people of Atlanta, Georgia and the South,” Morse wrote.

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  • Book Review: In ‘All This Could Be Yours,’ a novelist on book tour is stalked by a stranger

    Author Hank Phillippi Ryan has written a crime novel titled “All This Could Be Yours” about an author on tour to promote a crime novel titled “All This Could Be Yours.” As Ryan says in an endnote, it’s very meta.

    The fictional author is Tess Calloway, a woman and mother who quit a well-paying corporate job where she felt “invisible” in order to pursue her dream of becoming a novelist. The hero of Tess’s book is Annabelle, a woman who defies the limitations society places of women in order to do what she wishes with her “one life.”

    As Tess’s book tour opens, her debut novel is already on The New York Times bestseller list. At each stop, she is greeted by adoring crowds, mostly women who chant “One life!” and proclaim that Annabelle inspired them to change their own.

    Nevertheless, the tour is exhausting. Every day takes Tess to a new city, a different hotel, a fresh crowd of admirers. She has to rely on FaceTime to keep in touch with her husband and two young children, and her vivid imagination tortures her with fears about what could be going wrong at home.

    Before long, however, odd things start happening on the tour. She finds a mysterious locket in a hotel room night stand. At another stop, someone breaks into her room and leaves a pair of earrings. A sheet of paper with a vaguely threatening message is slid under her door. Someone takes her carry-on from an airplane overhead bin.

    Worse, Tess starts getting uncomfortable personal questions about her past at bookstore appearances and on social media — uncomfortable because she has long harbored a dark secret. It’s one that she fears would destroy her new career and her family if it were ever revealed.

    In Tess, Ryan has created a likeable, compelling, complex character who struggles to come to terms with her past and finds the courage to confront the danger she faces. The story starts slowly, the tension building page by page toward a series of twists that readers are unlikely to see coming.

    ___

    Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including “The Dread Line.”

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    AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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  • From Stephen King to New Jersey diners, History Press books cover local lore around the US

    NEW YORK (AP) — With deep knowledge of Stephen King’s books and curiosity about their inspirations, writer Sharon Kitchens began a journey around Maine. As she learned about the real-life settings and people behind such fiction as “IT” and “Salem’s Lot,” she arranged them into an online map and story she called “Stephen King’s Maine.”

    “It was amateur hour, in a way,” she says. “But after around 27,000 people visited the site one of my friends said to me, ‘You should do something more with this.’”

    Published in 2024, the resulting book-length edition of “Stephen King’s Maine” is among hundreds released each year by The History Press. Now part of Arcadia Publishing, the 20-year-old imprint is dedicated to regional, statewide and locally focused works, found for sale in bookstores, museums, hotels and other tourist destinations. The mission of The History Press is to explore and unearth “the story of America, one town or community at a time.”

    The King book stands out if only for its focus on an international celebrity. Most History Press releases arise out of more obscure passions and expertise, whether Michael C. Gabriele’s “The History of Diners in New Jersey,” Thomas Dresser’s “African Americans of Martha’s Vineyard” or Clem C. Pellett’s “Murder on Montana’s Hi-Line,” the author’s probe into the fatal shooting of his grandfather.

    A home for history buffs

    Like Kitchens, History Press authors tend to be regional or local specialists — history lovers, academics, retirees and hobbyists. Kitchens’ background includes writing movie press releases, blogging for the Portland Press Herald and contributing to the Huffington Post. Pellett is a onetime surgeon who was so compelled by his grandfather’s murder that he switched careers and became a private investigator. In Boulder, Colorado, Nancy K. Williams is a self-described “Western history writer” whose books include “Buffalo Soldiers on the Colorado Frontier” and “Haunted Hotels of Southern Colorado.”

    The History Press publishes highly specific works such as Jerry Harrington’s tribute to a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor from the 1930s, “Crusading Iowa Journalist Verne Marshall.” It also issues various series, notably “Haunted” guides that publishing director Kate Jenkins calls a “highly localized version” of the ghost story genre. History Press has long recruited potential authors through a team of field representatives, but now writers such as Kitchens are as likely to be brought to the publisher’s attention through a national network of writers who have worked with it before.

    “Our ideal author isn’t someone with national reach,” Jenkins says, “but someone who’s a member of their community, whether that’s an ethnic community or a local community, and is passionate about preserving that community’s history. We’re the partners who help make that history accessible to a wide audience.”

    The History Press is a prolific, low-cost operation. The books tend to be brief — under 200 pages — and illustrated with photos drawn from local archives or taken by the authors themselves. The print runs are small, and authors are usually paid through royalties from sales rather than advances up front. History Press books rarely are major hits, but they can still attract substantial attention for works tailored to specific areas, and they tend to keep selling over time. Editions selling 15,000 copies or more include “Long-Ago Stories of the Eastern Cherokee,” by Lloyd Arneach, Alphonso Brown’s “A Gullah Guide to Charleston” and Gayle Soucek’s “Marshall Field’s,” a tribute to the Chicago department store.

    The King guide, which has sold around 8,500 copies so far, received an unexpected lift — an endorsement by its subject, who was shown the book at Maine’s Bridgton Books and posted an Instagram of himself giving it a thumbs-up.

    “I was genuinely shocked in the best possible way,” Kitchens says, adding that she saw the book as a kind of thank-you note to King. “Every choice I made while writing the book, I made with him in mind.”

    Getting the story right

    History Press authors say they like the chance to tell stories that they believe haven’t been heard, or were told incorrectly.

    Rory O’Neill Schmitt is an Arizona-based researcher, lecturer and writer who feels her native New Orleans is often “portrayed in way that feels false or highlights a touristy element,” like a “caricature.” She has responded with such books as “The Haunted Guide to New Orleans” and “Kate Chopin in New Orleans.”

    Brianne Turczynski is a freelance writer and self-described “perpetual seeker of the human condition” who lives outside of Detroit and has an acknowledged obsession with “Poletown,” a Polish ethnic community uprooted and dismantled in the 1980s after General Motors decided to build a new plant there and successfully asserted eminent domain. In 2021, The History Press released Turczynski’s “Detroit’s Lost Poletown: The Little Neighborhood That Touched a Nation.”

    “All of the journalist work that followed the story seemed to lack a sense of closure for the people who suffered,” she said. “So my book is a love letter to that community, an attempt for closure.”

    Kitchens has followed her King book with the story of an unsolved homicide, “The Murder of Dorothy Milliken, Cold Case in Maine.” One of her early boosters, Michelle Souliere, is the owner of the Green Hand Bookstore in Portland and herself a History Press writer. A lifelong aficionado of Maine history, her publishing career, like Kitchens’, began with an online posting. She had been maintaining a blog of local lore, “Strange Maine,” when The History Press contacted her and suggested she expand her writing into a book.

    “Strange Maine: True Tales from the Pine Tree State” was published in 2010.

    “My blog had been going for about 4 years, and had grown from brief speculative and expressive posts to longer original research articles,” she wrote in an email. “I often wonder how I did it at all — I wrote the book just as I was opening up the Green Hand Bookshop. Madness!!! Or a lot of coffee. Or both!!!”

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  • Try This Quiz on Books That Were Made Into Great Space Movies

    Try This Quiz on Books That Were Made Into Great Space Movies

    Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on fiction and nonfiction works about space exploration that were adapted into popular films.

    Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their movie versions.

    J. D. Biersdorfer

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  • ABBA, Radiohead and The Cure musicians sign AI protest letter against ‘unlicensed use’ of works

    ABBA, Radiohead and The Cure musicians sign AI protest letter against ‘unlicensed use’ of works

    LONDON — Musicians from ABBA, Radiohead and The Cure have joined actors and authors in signing a protest letter against the mining of their artistry to build artificial intelligence tools.

    Thousands of artists signed the letter released Tuesday — the latest public warning about AI tools that can spit out synthetic images, music and writings after being trained on huge troves of human-made works.

    “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted,” says the petition.

    Among the signatories are Björn Ulvaeus of the Swedish supergroup ABBA, The Cure’s Robert Smith and Thom Yorke and his Radiohead bandmates. Also signing were writers including Nobel-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro and actors Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon and Rosario Dawson.

    Bestselling novelist James Patterson signed Tuesday’s letter and another open letter last year organized by the Authors Guild, which later brought a lawsuit against AI companies that is still proceeding in a New York federal court.

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  • South Koreans are joyful after Han Kang wins Nobel Prize for literature

    South Koreans are joyful after Han Kang wins Nobel Prize for literature

    SEOUL, South Korea — South Koreans reacted with joy and astonishment on Thursday after learning that homegrown writer Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in literature, an unexpected moment that stoked national pride about the country’s growing cultural influence.

    Han, known for her experimental and often disturbing stories that explore human traumas and violence and incorporate the brutal moments of South Korea’s modern history, is the country’s first writer to win the preeminent award in world literature.

    Han’s triumph adds to the growing global influence of South Korean culture, which in recent years included the successes of director Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning “Parasite,” the brutal Netflix survival drama “Squid Game” and K-pop groups like BTS and BLACKPINK.

    “I’m so surprised and honored,” Han, 53, said in a telephone interview posted on the X account of the Nobel Prize.

    As the news spread in South Korea, some online bookstores temporarily froze following a sudden jump in traffic. South Korean social media were flooded with jubilant messages expressing admiration and pride. Some internet users found it meaningful that Han was the first Asian woman to win the award and portrayed it as a statement toward the country’s traditionally male-dominated literature scene.

    “It’s always the women who do the big things,” one Facebook user wrote.

    In South Korea’s parliament, multiple government hearings were paused as lawmakers cheered and applauded Han’s award.

    While visiting Laos for a meeting of Asian leaders, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol issued a statement, congratulating Han on her award, calling it a “great achievement in the history of Korean literature” and a “special moment for the nation.”

    “You converted the painful wounds of our modern history into great literature,” Yoon wrote. “I send my respects to you for elevating the value of Korean literature.”

    Han, the daughter of renowned South Korean novelist Han Seung-won, made her publishing debut as a poet in 1993. She won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for the novel “The Vegetarian,” a story in which a woman’s decision to stop eating meat brings devastating consequences and raises concern among family members that she’s mentally ill. The book sold more than 100,000 in the U.S.

    Another one of Han’s well-known novels is “Human Acts,” which is set in 1980 in her birth city of Gwangju and follows a boy searching for the body of a friend who was killed in a violent suppression of a student protest. South Korea’s former military government that year sent troops to Gwangju for a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left around 200 people dead and hundreds of others injured.

    “The decision came all too sudden. I could also describe it as a feeling of bewilderment,” Han Seung-won, Han’s father, told reporters Friday about the moment he heard the news that his daughter had won the Nobel Prize.

    He praised his daughter’s writing, which he described as poetic and exhibiting unique “fantastical realism,” and also commended British translator Deborah Smith, who translated “The Vegetarian” and “The White Book.”

    “The translator has somehow managed to convey Han Kang’s sentences, bringing to life the delicate and beautiful prose and melancholic sensibility,” he said.

    Han Kang’s award generated excitement among South Korean writers and critics, who in comments to local media expressed hope that it would bring more global attention to South Korean literature. But it remains to be seen whether Han’s stories would become widely popular among casual readers around the world, said Brother Anthony of Taize, a British-born scholar and prolific translator of Korean literature.

    “It’s not always an easy read,” he said, describing how her novels are often complicated stories about communication failures, misunderstandings, “unhappy people and troubled relationships and pain.”

    If Han’s works have anything in common with South Korea’s other cultural products that garnered international acclaim in recent years, it is that they often reflect the dark side of the country’s society. Both Parasite and Squid Game provided biting commentaries on the country’s deepening inequality and other problems that have many young and poor people describing their lives as a hellish nightmare.

    South Korea has one of the largest gaps between rich and poor among developed economies and is grappling with decaying job markets, soaring household debt and a record-low birth rate as struggling couples put off having babies. The country also struggles to deal with the pains of its brutal transition from dictatorship to democracy.

    “Korean society is rather dark and it’s probably the aspect that resonates,” Brother Anthony said.

    Jung Yoon-young, a 49-year-old resident in Seoul, said Han’s triumph was a refreshing moment for the country during depressing times.

    “It’s a miraculous event and really a breath of fresh air,” she said. “I’m grateful and proud.”

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  • Nobel Prize in literature is awarded to South Korean author Han Kang

    Nobel Prize in literature is awarded to South Korean author Han Kang

    STOCKHOLM — South Korean author Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for what the Nobel committee called “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

    Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson praised Han’s “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters.

    “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose,” Olsson said.

    Nobel literature committee member Anna-Karin Palm said Han writes “intense lyrical prose that is both tender and brutal, and sometimes slightly surrealistic as well.”

    Han becomes the first Asian woman and the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel literature prize. She also becomes the second South Korean national to win a Nobel Prize, after late former President Kim Dae-jung won the peace prize in 2000. He was honored for his efforts to restore democracy in South Korea during the country’s previous military rule and improve relations with war-divided rival North Korea.

    Han wins the Nobel at a time of growing global influence of South Korean culture, which in recent years has included the success of films like director Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning “ Parasite,” the Netflix survival drama “Squid Game” and the worldwide fame of K-pop groups like BTS and BLACKPINK.

    Han, 53, won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for “The Vegetarian,” an unsettling novel in which a woman’s decision to stop eating meat has devastating consequences.

    At the time of winning that award, Han said writing novels “is a way of questioning for me.”

    “I just try to complete my questions through the process of my writing and I try to stay in the questions, sometimes painful, sometimes – well – sometimes demanding,” she said.

    With “The Vegetarian,” she said, ”I wanted to question about being human and I wanted to describe a woman who desperately didn’t want to belong to the human race any longer.”

    Her novel “Human Acts” was an International Booker Prize finalist in 2018.

    Han made her publishing debut as a poet in 1993; her first short story collection was published the following year and her first novel, “Black Deer,” in 1998. Works translated into English include “The Vegetarian,” “Greek Lessons,” “Human Acts” and “The White Book,” a poetic novel that draws on the death of Han’s older sister shortly after birth. Her most recent novel, “We Do Not Part,” is due to be published in English next year.

    Olsson, the committee chair, called “Human Acts” a work of “witness literature.” It is based on the real-life killing of pro-democracy protesters in Han’s home city of Gwangju in 1980.

    The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers of style-heavy, story-light prose. It has also been male-dominated, with just 17 women among its 119 laureates until this year’s award. The last woman to win was Annie Ernaux of France, in 2022.

    Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. Two founding fathers of machine learning — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the physics prize on Tuesday. On Wednesday, three scientists who discovered powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

    The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award next Monday.

    The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.

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    Lawless reported from London. Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands. Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed.

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  • The Nobel Prize in literature is being awarded in Stockholm

    The Nobel Prize in literature is being awarded in Stockholm

    STOCKHOLM — After three days of Nobel prizes honoring work in the sciences, the literature award is being announced Thursday by the Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy.

    The winner will follow Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who was honored last year for writing in Nynorsk, one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language, that prize organizers said gives “voice to the unsayable.”

    The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers of style-heavy, story-light prose. It has also been male-dominated, with just 17 women among its 119 laureates. The last woman to win was Annie Ernaux of France, in 2022.

    Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. Two founding fathers of machine learning — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the physics prize on Tuesday. On Wednesday, three scientists who discovered powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

    The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.

    The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.

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    Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.

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  • Book Review: Elizabeth Strout brings all her favorite Mainers together in ‘Tell Me Everything’

    Book Review: Elizabeth Strout brings all her favorite Mainers together in ‘Tell Me Everything’

    Full disclosure: Other than a few clips of Frances McDormand as the titular Olive Kitteridge in the 2014 HBO show, “Tell Me Everything” was this reviewer’s first trip to Crosby, Maine. It’s unlikely to be my last.

    “Tell Me Everything” reads like the stories that Lucy Barton shares with Olive throughout the novel. Simple. Relatable. Elegant, even. There is a loose narrative, but mostly it’s just characters Strout fans will have already met, interacting with one another and living their lives. More importantly, sharing their lives. “Tell me everything,” is actually uttered more than once as neighbors converse, swapping information about what’s happening in their town.

    At the center of the story is Lucy Barton, the famous writer who has moved to Crosby with her ex-husband, William. Her frequent walks with Bob Burgess, the town lawyer, are beautiful set pieces that tie the novel’s plot together. Bob is nearing retirement but is pulled into an unfolding murder investigation involving a lonely son accused of killing his own mother. The crime is resolved over the course of the novel, but it’s hardly the main attraction. Lucy and Bob’s relationship is the more interesting plot line.

    Bob is married to Margaret, the town’s unitarian minister, and while Bob is not unhappy in his marriage, Lucy awakens another part of him. After one of their walks, Strout writes: “Bob felt again that just to be in the company of Lucy gave him a respite from everything.” Bob, we’re told by an omniscient plural narrator that Strout employs occasionally — “is not a reflective fellow” — and so he moves through life without dwelling too much on his inner thoughts or acting on his desires.

    Lucy, however, is a storyteller by trade and avocation, and in one of her chats with Olive Kitteridge she introduces the concept of “sin eating,” which she describes as a trait some people have that allows them to unburden others of their sins. It is, according to Lucy, why Bob is a successful lawyer. “I see you around town and everyone who has a problem seems to come to you,” Lucy tells Bob, before adding, “don’t think about it.”

    But Strout’s gift is making readers stop and think about lives — from the exciting to the mundane — and that’s what makes this book so appealing. Other than the resolution of the murder case, not much happens in “Tell Me Everything,” and yet there’s a sense that so much is always happening. It’s best to give Lucy the last word in another one of her conversations with Olive, after Olive finishes telling her a story about one of her late husband’s aunts: “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.”

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    AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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