Maureen Corrigan
Stories
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George Saunders' 'Vigil' is a brief and bumpy return to the Bardo
The Bardo is a Tibetan Buddhist idea of a suspended state between life and death. Saunders explored the concept in his 2017 novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, and circles back to it again in his new novel Vigil.
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'Even the Dead' wraps up John Banville's smart, moody mystery series
Originally published under a pseudonym, Banville's Quirke mystery series follows a troubled Dublin coroner who dwells in the basement morgue of a hospital.
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Feeling cooped up? Get out of town with this delightful literary road trip
In The Rest of Our Lives, the narrator drops his daughter off to college — then keeps on driving, leaving his marriage behind. Ben Markovits' novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
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Maureen Corrigan's 10 favorite books of 2025 — with plenty for nonfiction lovers
Fresh Air's book critic says her picks tilt a bit to nonfiction, but the novels that made the cut redress the imbalance by their sweep and intensity. Karen Russell's The Antidote was her favorite.
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A dying woman chooses friends over her husband in 'Some Bright Nowhere'
A woman with a terminal diagnosis asks her husband to leave the house in Ann Packer's new novel. Some Bright Nowhere is an absorbing book about end-of-life care and what the living owe the dying.
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Patti Smith's 'Bread of Angels' serves as both a sequel and a prequel to 'Just Kids'
Smith revisits her childhood and offers insights into her marriage in a new memoir. Bread of Angels offers an intimate, if imperfect, view of the visionary punk poet.
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Lily King's new novel constructs an erotically charged love triangle
Heart the Lover is both a prequel and a sequel to King's 2020 novel Lovers & Writers. It's a story about screwing up, wising up, finding yourself and realizing what you may have lost in the process.
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'The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny' is a terrific, tangled love story
This is an epic novel to be savored. At nearly 700 pages, this multi-character, multi-stranded story explores exile and displacement — not only from one's home, but also from one's own sense of self.
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4 lives are upended by an impulsive kiss in the epic novel 'Buckeye'
Patrick Ryan's novel focuses on two married couples and stretches from pre-WWII to the close of the 20th century, capturing both the sweep of history and the mundane particularity of everyday life.
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Two genre novels offer entertainment -- and plenty of wry social commentary
Dan Fesperman's spy caper Pariah follows a disgraced comic-politician who's recruited by the CIA. The Dancing Face, by Mike Phillips, is a crime caper that confronts the spoils of colonialism.
