What Do Fungi Have to Do with Athens?

What Do Fungi Have to Do with Athens?

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures By Merlin Sheldrake. Random House, 2020. Hardcover, 368 pages, $28. Reviewed by Eve Tushnet. There are fungi that hunt their prey. Fungi can communicate, trade, and defend. They...
A Puzzle-Box Book

A Puzzle-Box Book

The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan translated by Yuri Machkasov Amazon Crossing, 2017. Paperback, 732 pages, $15.95. Reviewed by Eve Tushnet “… The House demands a reverent attitude. A sense of mystery. Respect and awe. It can accept you or not, shower you with gifts...
Retail Heaven

Retail Heaven

Convenience Store Woman: A Novel by Sayaka Murata. Grove Press, 2019. Paperback, 176 pages, $15. Reviewed by Eve Tushnet Keiko just wanted to do the right thing. Eager and goal-oriented to a fault, little Keiko Furukura found the world around her baffling, full of...
Accountancy and Authority

Accountancy and Authority

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Back Bay Books, 2012. Paperback, 597 pages, $18. Reviewed by Eve Tushnet At a certain point you realize that David Foster Wallace is as much a horror writer as Stephen King, and the monsters under his bed are twins: absorption...
Champagne Flute with an Iron Spine

Champagne Flute with an Iron Spine

Dystopia and Providence in Five Novels Eve Tushnet The political upheavals of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries bore all kinds of names, from the euphemistic “people’s republic” to the dystopian “total war.” It’s hard to name precisely what was born of these...