Tuesday Night Links: New Books Edition

- Margaret Atwood has a new book out. It's called Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, and in it, according to this Star article, Atwood "freely mixes autobiography, literary criticism and anthropology in an examination of debt as a concept deeply rooted in human – and even, in some cases, animal – behaviour." -Dennis Lehane's new book, The Given Day, is an epic tome of historical fiction about the Boston police strike of 1918. Bookslut thinks it ought to be taught in schools as an example of "the finest kind of literary ambition." -Michael Goldstein's new book, Hurry Down Sunshine, receives a huge vote of approval from Oliver Sacks in the New York Review of Books. The book is about the author's daughter who, at 15, suffered a weeks-long bout of manic psychosis and Sacks writes that "In its detail, depth, richness, and sheer intelligence, Hurry Down Sunshine will be recognized as a classic of its kind, along with the memoirs of Kay Redfield Jamison and John Custance… What makes it unique is the fact that so much here is seen through the eyes of an extraordinarily open and sensitive parent—a father who, while never descending into sentimentality, has remarkable insight into his daughter's thoughts and feelings, and a rare power to find images or metaphors for almost unimaginable states of mind." More new books in later blog posts. Stay tuned!