The Book Review

Clare Keegan's slim 2021 novella about one Irishman's crisis of conscience during the Christmas season, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has also been adapted into a film starring Cillian Murphy. In this week’s episode, MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Joumana Khatib, Lauren Christensen, and Elizabeth Egan. Keegan's book was also one of The New York Times Book Review's 100 best books of the 21st century. As we wrote, "Not a word is wasted in Keegan’s small, burnished gem of a novel, a sort of Dickensian miniature centered on the son of an unwed mother who has grown up to become a respectable coal and timber merchant with a family of his own in 1985 Ireland. Moralistically, though, it might as well be the Middle Ages as he reckons with the ongoing sins of the Catholic Church and the everyday tragedies wrought by repression, fear and rank hypocrisy." Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Dwight Garner, Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs — staff critics for The New York Times Book Review — join host Gilbert Cruz to look back on highlights from their year in books. Books discussed: "Intermezzo," by Sally Rooney "All Fours," by Miranda July "You Dreamed of Empires," by Álvaro Enrigue "When the Clock Broke," by John Ganz "Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring," by Brad Gooch "Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood's Hidden Genius," by Carrie Courogen "My Beloved Monster," by Caleb Carr "Rejection," by Tony Tulathimutte "Beautyland," by Marie-Helene Bertino "Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society," by Daniel Chandler "Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs and Opera," by Ricky Ian Gordon Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Following our Top 10 Books of 2024 episode, we are re-running our book club discussion about one of the novels on our year-end list: "Good Material." How to explain the British writer Dolly Alderton to an American audience? It might be best to let her work speak for itself — it certainly does! — but Alderton is such a cultural phenomenon in her native England that some context is probably helpful: “Like Nora Ephron, With a British Twist” is the way The New York Times Book Review put it when we reviewed her latest novel, “Good Material,” earlier this year. “Good Material” tells the story of a down-on-his-luck stand-up comic dealing with a broken heart, and it has won Alderton enthusiastic fans in America. In this episode, the Book Review’s MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Emily Eakin and Leah Greenblatt. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Don't let anyone tell you differently — end of year list time is a wonderful time, indeed. And, as we do every December, we are ready to discuss the 10 best books of the year. Host Gilbert Cruz gathers the editors of the New York Times Book Review to discuss the most exciting fiction and nonfiction of the year. The New York Times Book Review's Top 10 Books of 2024 "James," by Percival Everett "You Dreamed of Empires," by Álvaro Enrigue; translated by Natasha Wimmer "Good Material," by Dolly Alderton "All Fours," by Miranda July "Martyr!," by Kaveh Akbar "The Wide Wide Sea," by Hampton Sides "Everyone Who is Gone is Here," by Jonathan Blitzer "Reagan," by Max Boot "I Heard Her Call My Name," by Lucy Sante "Cold Creamatorium," by József Debreczeni; translated by Paul Olchváry Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The broad outlines of "James" will be immediately familiar to anyone with even a basic knowledge of American literature: A boy named Huckleberry Finn and an enslaved man named Jim are fleeing down the Mississippi River together, each in search of his own kind of freedom. But where Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” treated Jim as a secondary character, a figure of pity and a target of fun, Percival Everett makes him the star of the show: a dignified, complicated, fully formed man capable of love and wit and rage in equal measure. In this episode from May, the Book Review’s MJ Franklin discusses the book, which was recently awarded the National Book Award, with his colleagues Joumana Khatib and Gregory Cowles. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

It begins with one of the most iconic lines in literature: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realist parable of imperialism in Latin America, is a tale of family, community, prophesy and disaster. In this week’s episode, the Book Review’s MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Gregory Cowles and Miguel Salazar. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As part of The New York Times Book Review's project on the 100 Best Books published since the year 2000, Nick Hornby called "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland" one of the "greatest literary achievements of the 21st century." The author Patrick Radden Keefe joins host Gilbert Cruz to talk about his book, which has now been adapted into an FX miniseries. Keefe has now seen his reporting on the life of Irish Republican Army soldier Dolours Price and others make its way from a New Yorker magazine article to an acclaimed nonfiction book to a streaming series. "In terms of storytelling, I try to write in a way that is as visceral and engaging as possible," Keefe said. "But the toolkit that you have when you make a series is so much more visceral. It's almost fissile in its power." Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The works of John le Carré, who died in 2020, are among the most beloved thrillers of all time. For some, books like "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," "A Perfect Spy" and "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" are simply among their favorite works of literature ever. So it was a perilous task that author Nick Harkaway, one of le Carré sons, set out for himself. The author of multiple well-received science fiction novels, Harkaway picked up the torch from his father to write a new tale starring George Smiley, the Cold War spy who has appeared in more than a half dozen novels. According to Harkaway, it took some work to figure out the right period to set the book in. "Smiley's career is a little bit tricky in terms of the continuity because my dad, when he was writing these books, wasn't writing a franchise," Harkaway said. "He was writing one book after another, and each one was the only truth that he cared about." Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Sally Rooney is a writer people talk about. Since her first novel, “Conversations With Friends,” was published in 2017, Rooney has been hailed as a defining voice of the millennial generation because of her ability to capture the particular angst and confusion of young love, friendship and coming-of-age in our fraught digital era. “Intermezzo,” her fourth and latest novel, centers on two brothers separated by 10 years and periods of estrangement, who are grieving the recent death of their father. Peter Koubek is a 32-year-old lawyer with a younger girlfriend, Naomi, and an unextinguished flame for his ex, Sylvia; his brother, Ivan, is a 22-year-old chess prodigy who falls into a relationship with a 36-year-old divorcée, Margaret. In this week’s episode, the Book Review’s MJ Franklin discusses the book with fellow editors Joumana Khatib, Sadie Stein and Dave Kim. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Halloween is just around the corner, so we turned to two great horror authors — Joe Hill and Stephen Graham Jones — for their recommendations of books to read this season. Books discussed: Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Salman Rushdie's "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder," has been nominated in the nonfiction category as part of this year's National Book Awards, which will take place in mid-November. This week, we are running Rushdie's conversation with Ezra Klein from earlier this year. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The actor-director-producer Stanley Tucci is also, famously, an avid eater, who has explored his enthusiasm for food through his travel show “Searching for Italy” and through two books: “Taste,” in 2021, and now a food diary, “What I Ate in One Year." In this week’s episode, Tucci discusses his new book with host Gilbert Cruz and talks about bad meals, his food idol and his path to tracking a year’s worth of eating. “The people at Simon & Schuster wanted me to write another book after ‘Taste,’ and I really didn’t know what to write,” Tucci says. “My wife said, Just write what you eat. So I did, because I do everything she says. And it actually ended up being such a pleasure to write. It just flowed very easily. As you start to write about the mundane, you start to mine all this stuff that you didn’t know you were thinking about, or that was happening. And that’s what the book is. It’s, in essence, the passage of time through the prism of food.” Also on this week’s episode, Gilbert chats with Joumana Khatib about the National Book Award finalists in fiction and nonfiction. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In 2021, the novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz had a hit with “The Plot,” a book that was partly a mystery, partly a thriller and entirely a delicious sendup of the publishing industry. It told the tale of a once-promising writer, Jacob, who steals somebody else’s story idea and reaches undreamed-of levels of success before things go very badly for him. Korelitz’s new novel, “The Sequel,” is — yes — a sequel to “The Plot.” It follows Jacob’s widow, Anna, who has unexpectedly become a writer herself, only to be confronted with her own dark secrets. On this week’s episode, Korelitz talks with the host Gilbert Cruz about the writing life, the shape of her career and her decision to write a sequel to “The Plot.” We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Jo Hamya’s novel “The Hypocrite” follows a famous English novelist as he watches a new play by his daughter, Sophia, in London. The lights go down in the theater, and immediately the novelist realizes: The play is about him, the vacation he took with Sophia a decade earlier and the sins he committed while they were away. The novel is an art monster story and a dysfunctional family saga that explores the ethics of creating work inspired by real life. In this week’s episode, the Book Review’s MJ Franklin discusses the book with editors Joumana Khatib and Lauren Christensen. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This weekend marks the official start of autumn, so what better time to take a peek at the fall books we’re most excited to read? On this week’s episode, Gilbert Cruz chats with Joumana Khatib and Anna Dubenko about the upcoming season of reading and the books on the horizon that they’re looking forward to most eagerly. Books mentioned in this week’s episode: “Intermezzo,” by Sally Rooney “Playground,” by Richard Powers “Sonny Boy: A Memoir,” by Al Pacino “Cher: The Memoir, Part One,” by Cher “The Sequel,” by Jean Hanff Korelitz “Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” by Ina Garten “We Solve Murders,” by Richard Osman “Creation Lake,” by Rachel Kushner “V13: Chronicle of a Trial,” by Emmanuel Carrère “Absolution,” by Jeff VanderMeer “Lazarus Man,” by Richard Price “Rejection,” by Tony Tulathimutte “Colored Television,” by Danzy Senna “Health and Safety,” by Emily Witt “Patriot: A Memoir,” by Alexei Navalny “The Message,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates “The Serviceberry,” by Robin Wall Kimmerer “Revenge of the Tipping Point,” by Malcolm Gladwell “From Here to the Great Unknown,” by Lisa Marie Presley “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” by Haruki Murakami Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Robert Caro’s 1974 biography “The Power Broker” is a book befitting its subject, Robert Moses — the unelected parochial technocrat who used a series of appointed positions to entirely reshape New York City and its surrounding environment for generations to come. Like Moses, Caro’s book has exerted an enduring and outsize influence. This week, Caro joins the podcast and tells the host Gilbert Cruz how he accounts for its enduring legacy. “People are interested in power,” Caro says. “This is a particular kind of power. Robert Moses’ power was unchecked power. We all live in a democracy where we think that power comes from our votes at the ballot box. He was a man who was never elected to anything and he held on to power for 44 years, almost half a century. And with the power, this man who wasn’t elected to anything shaped New York and its surrounding suburbs. So I think, if you’re interested in government, you have to say, as I said maybe 55 years ago when I started this, How did he do it? What happened here?” Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The British writer Kate Atkinson has had a rich and varied career since her debut novel, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum,” won the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 1996; her 14 subsequent books have included story collections, historical fiction and an inventive speculative novel, “Life After Life,” that landed on the Book Review’s recent survey of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. But she may be best known for her Jackson Brodie series of crime novels, which began with “Case Histories” in 2004 and was later adapted into a British television show. The sixth book in the series, “Death at the Sign of the Rook,” has just been released, and from the title to the plot to the cast of characters it pays winking homage to the golden age of English cozy mysteries. Atkinson visits the podcast this week to discuss her new novel, and tells The Times’s Sarah Lyall how she approached her tribute to an earlier era. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As part of its recent "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" project, The New York Times Book Review is interviewing some of the authors whose books appeared on the list. This week, Isabel Wilkerson joins host Gilbert Cruz to discuss "The Warmth of Other Suns," her sweeping history of the movement of Black Americans from the south to points north over the course of the 20th century. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This July, The New York Times Book Review published a list of The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. The top choice was “My Brilliant Friend,” by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein. The book is the first novel in Ferrante’s so-called Neapolitan quartet, which tracks the lifelong friendship between Lenù and Lila, two women from a rough neighborhood in Naples, Italy, even as family, relationships and work pull their lives in different directions. In this week’s episode, MJ Franklin discusses the book with fellow editors Joumana Khatib, Emily Eakin and Gregory Cowles. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As part of its recent 100 Best Books of the 21st Century project, The New York Times Book Review is interviewing some of the authors whose books appeared on the list. This week, Jennifer Egan joins host Gilbert Cruz to discuss her Pulitzer-winning novel about the music industry, “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” and talks, among other things, about the early challenges it faced in finding an audience, the meaning of its title and her initial reluctance to decide whether the book was a novel or a story collection. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.