A BRILLIANT LIFE
by Rachelle Unreich (Hachette, $34.99)
THE POSTCARD
by Anne Berest (Hachette, $34.99)
A few weeks ago, I attended a discussion at Princeton University between distinguished American authors AM Homes and Joyce Carol Oates about the state of the novel in contemporary times. It was the day the Nobel Prize in Literature was announced and Oates, a perennial contender, waxed humbly yet rhapsodically on the importance of the novel as a vehicle for personalising historical experience through the empathetic capacity of the writer. Both authors proclaimed that the great gift of the novelist is the wonder and awe of imagination. Yet now, it seems many authors are being confined to write about only what they have personally experienced. Both said this was a tragedy, to which Homes added, “Now that the youngest of the Holocaust survivors are
