Ah, the year’s first thunk: David Grossman’s “To the End of the Land.” So lauded, so bloated. To invest in ($26.95) and lug around (576 pages) one would expect, and should receive, a Franzen. In its simplest form, this is the story of an Israeli woman who gathers up her son’s father and takes him

The last warm, sun-filled Sunday in September and I was heading to the underground Harris Theater to see Baryshnikov dance. When I mentioned my indoor plans for the afternoon, my neighbor snickered. I worried, too: would the great male dancer embarrass himself? Pas de tout. I’d seen Baryshnikov dance many times, in the mid-to-late 1970s,

A few years ago, my friend J.M. and I went to see Terrence Malik’s mesmerizing film “The Tree of Life.” It is long and dreamy and digressive — other movie goers bailed — but she and I hung in there and were mostly glad we did. All it needed, as J.M. pointed out, was some