Lynn Neary

Same Streets, Different Lives In 'NW' London

Lynn Neary — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 07:51:00 +0000

Writer Zadie Smith burst onto the literary scene with her first novel White Teeth more than a decade ago. Set in the Northwest London neighborhood where she grew up, White Teeth captured the diverse, vibrant rhythms of a city in transition. Smith returns to the neighborhood in her new novel, NW, but this is a sobering homecoming.

Smith's mischievous sense of humor is still on full display in NW as is her playful love of language. But this is an older, perhaps wiser, writer than the young woman who dazzled readers with her first book.

In The 'Shadow' Of Death, Stories Survive

Lynn Neary — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:32:00 +0000

When she was just 5 years old, Vaddey Ratner's comfortable and protected life as the child of an aristocratic Cambodian family came to an abrupt end, as Khmer Rouge soldiers entered the capital, Phnom Penh. They banged on the gates of the family compound and ordered them to leave — it was the start of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror, which left hundreds of thousands of Cambodians dead, including all of Ratner's family except her mother.

She tells a fictionalized version of her story in her first novel.

'Age Of Desire': How Wharton Lost Her 'Innocence'

Lynn Neary — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 20:11:00 +0000

Jennie Fields was well into her new novel about Edith Wharton — and her love affair with a young journalist — when she heard that a new cache of Wharton letters had been discovered. They were written to Anna Bahlmann, who was first Wharton's governess and later her literary secretary. Bahlmann had never been considered a major influence on Wharton, but Fields had decided to make her a central character in her book, The Age of Desire, even before she heard about the letters.