Dan Chaon’s “Await Your Reply” (2009) is a beautifully told and highly compelling tale about identity: losing one, stealing others, gaining another (and another, and another). It’s rare that I finish a book and want to start reading it again, to figure out how the author pulled off such a clever feat of storytelling. This

Why do we give authors second chances? Once burned, why invest again? Because books, and their creators, are like lovers: we may have parted but we want to recall the initial attraction. Rose Tremain’s “The Road Home” disappointed. It was so predictable: an immigrant comes to London, sleeps in a corner, lucks into better and

Finishing her umpteenth young-adult novel set during World War II, my ten-year old daughter pranced around the kitchen: “I llllllove the Holocaust.” I choked on my coffee. “You mean, the literature of the Holocaust. Hitler, the Nazis. The ultimate bad guys.” Alex agreed, then told me all about a Danish girl sent by her grandmother