Bookworm

A close look at the waves of passion and neutrality that comprise the style of this elegy on the death of Jamaica Kincaid's brother.

All Around Atlantis (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) This unusual writer, who takes a full year to complete each story, has completed seven -- enough to fill her third book.

The Runaway SoulTwo interviews: Brodkey discuses life, literature and his new novel.

This final book of Edmund White's trilogy about gay life in New York provides gossip, tragedy and, of course, brilliant writing. 

Cal Bedient, Candy Necklace (Wesleyan) This book, the poet's first, comes as the culmination of years of criticism and teaching. Here, an in-depth discussion of one poem leads to a conversation about modernism, metaphor and madness.

Blood Lake (Boaz) Jim Krusoe 's stories locate us between an episodic and choppy daily life and an interior world of unimaginably constant anxiety. How does this acrobat of comedy and anguish maintain his balance?

The Gettin'Place (Anchor) Susan Straight , chronicler of the underclass, can be counted on for rich character delineation and lots of atmosphere. In The Gettin Place , She faces the demands of a complex plot. Can she tell a story?

Helen Vendler The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets (Harvard) Surprising and accessible, Vendler, one of America's most respected critics, separates the lovelorn Shakespeare who appears in the sonnets from the masterful poet who wrote them.

A Regular Guy (Vintage) The search for family in Mona Simpson 's novels is nearly a sacred quest...

The God of Small Things (Random House) Arundhati Roy talks about the price of success in India's literary circles - and about the &quotsmall; things" that compensate for disaster.

Round Rock (Knopf) Michelle Huneven brings the worldly realism of John Steinbeck up to date in a new novel: a story of growth, compassion and knowledge.

The Saskiad (Houghton Mifflin) Brian Hall, the author of one of the great novels of adolescence, speaks about the sexual awakening of his narrator.

How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not A Novel (Pantheon) The &quotStendhal; of the dating scene" Alain de Botton talks about French literature, the virtues of moderation - and happiness.

Poet Ron Padgett discusses his selected poems.

Steve Erickson 's novels dramatize the disintegration of the American dream, using a prose style that is itself dreamlike.

The Nature of Blood (Knopf) In her latest novel, Caryl Phillips contrasts slavery and genocide in the lives of Jews and Africans over several centuries. A discussion about the parallel history of prejudice.

Guide (Grove). With an aesthetic reflective of hallucinogenic disorientation and the sensory overload of rock and roll, Dennis Cooper talks about the transformation of chaos into art.

Blessed Is the Fruit (Holt) Robert Antoni, the Caribbean novelist on place, aesthetics and gender, plus a spellbinding reading from his novel.

Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism (Random House) The ever-provocative Alice Walker discusses the nature of a writer's social responsibilities.

Van Gogh's Bad Cafe (Morrow) Frederic Tuten, the author of Adventures of Chairman Mao on the Long March talks about his Pop Art novel of the sixties and the history of the Art novel through the nineties.

Plain Water (Knopf); Glass, Irony and God (New Directions) A truly intimate interview about the value of intelligence in the face of passion. Canadian poet Anne Carson has found a new boundary for poetry to explore.

Nuclear energy, nuclear family: does the metaphor of fission apply equally to both? Rick Moody on the disintegration of values and the reintegration of fiction.

The Passion Dream Book (Harper Collins) Whitney Otto, author of How to Make an American Quilt, discusses her new novel and the competing demands of family life and art.

Roads to Santiago (Harcourt, Brace) The European award-winning novelist Cees Nooteboo m explores the metaphysics of travel...

The Gospel According to the Son (Random House) Norman Mailer reads "Lazarus Raised from the Dead" and discusses his version of The New Testament as told by Jesus himself.