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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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.
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Gay Talese conflates the journalist and the voyeur in his new book about a motel owner who spied on his guests. And he makes the readers voyeurs as well: We watch him watching the unwary motel guests.
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Catherine Banner's new novel takes familiar tropes — it's a multigenerational family saga set in Sicily, and yes, there's limoncello and dancing in the piazza — and makes them fresh and inviting.
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In Patrick Flanery's new novel, the border between mental illness and justified paranoia grows porous as average guy Jeremy begins to fear he's under surveillance. But is he? It's never quite clear.
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Annie Proulx's epic new novel is a multigenerational, multicentury epic about the fall of forests before human depredation — just don't think about how many trees went into its 700-plus pages.
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Jessica Valenti's powerful new memoir examines the toll sexism takes on women's lives. Sex Object doesn't offer solutions; instead, it bears witness to the daily grind of harassment and hatred.
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Novelist Ben Lerner takes on poetry in his new book, an academic dissection of the ways we love and hate that ancient art. But sometimes he seems like he's talking about his own thinly-veiled hatred.
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Stephanie Danler's new novel follows a young woman finding herself in the New York City restaurant world. It's voluptuous, ripeness on the verge of rot — but anything more tasteful wouldn't do.