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Happy New Year! I’ve been on a book binge, and have good things to report. First, Mary Gaitskill’s wondrous novel, The Mare. Ginger is a failed painter, a recovered alcoholic, the survivor of abuse. Now married and living in the country, she yearns to be a mother. Husband Paul is a father, of a college-age

When I first read E. M. Forster’s “Where Angels Fear to Tread” I thought it a twisted comedy. (It is.) I read it again years later and found it sad — still a comedy, but threaded with tragedy. Loss, loss and more loss, complicated by squashed emotions and cultural misunderstanding. Why do we reread? I

My eldest son and I have an ongoing discussion about “The Shelf,” an imaginary but distinctive resting place for the best war literature. He referred to it after I finished Karl Marlantes “Mattherhorn,” a 640 page slog — in the best sense of the word — through the Vietnam War. (We agree to disagree on