Sentimental but true The Old Romantic By Louise Dean (Riverhead Books, $25.95) It’s easy to imagine readers being scared off by the all-saturating Englishness of Louise Dean’s novel “The Old Romantic,” published last year in the U.K. and this month in America. Start with unfamiliar references to Selfridges, Wade Whimsies, Maltesers and the Krankies (which are, respectively, a department stor...

When, at 6:15 a.m. on Feb. 11, 2008, Joyce Carol Oates saw her 77-year-old husband, Raymond Smith, eating breakfast, she did not ― could not ― know that he would be dead within a week. Still, she acknowledges in “A Widow’s Story,” her memoir of his death and its aftermath, she had the feeling that all was not right. “There is an hour, a minute ― you will remember it forever ― when you know instin...

No author in his right mind would kill off a main character in the prime of a promising new series. Intellectually you know this. How, then, does David Ellis, author of the compelling new legal thriller “Breach of Trust” (Putnam), pull it off? How does he write a scene in which Jason Kolarich ― the two-fisted, headstrong hero of a crime novel set in a city that’s a dead ringer for Chicago ― look...

Popular tech-savvy novelist Kim Young-ha quit Twitter and blogging after a series of controversial online debates with literary critic Cho Young-il. The debate centered around the systemic problems in Korea’s literary scene and the tragic death of aspiring screenwriter Choi Go-eun, Kim’s former student at Korea National University of Arts (KNUA). Kim on Monday closed his Twitter account, which ...

Winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for one’s first published book promises a loyal readership and an eventual body of work that one can look back on with well-earned pride. That’s exactly what Ariel Sabar achieved with his first book, “My Father’s Paradise” (also deemed a “Best Nonfiction Book of 2008” by the Christian Science Monitor). Sabar wields his storytelling talent again in t...

At the end of “Eat Pray Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert found herself, against all odds, in love again. This time, though, she was determined not to marry. It was the difficult collapse of her first marriage, after all, that sent her on the yearlong odyssey that resulted in that book (and, later, the blockbuster movie). But visa problems forced her hand. After 9/11, her Brazilian lover, “Felipe” (his r...

PARIS (AP) ― Andree Chedid, an Egyptian-born French poet and writer known for giving lyrical expression to everyday experiences and celebrating cultural diversity, has died, her publisher said. She was 90. Chedid died in Sunday in Paris, where she settled after the end of World War II, the Flammarion publishing house said. The prolific Cairo-born writer of Lebanese descent wrote volumes of poe...

Love is a many hindered thing. It’s thwarted at every turn, imperiled every second, and the fact that it works out for anybody anywhere for any length of time whatsoever is an absolute miracle ― yet here we all are, fools for love, chasing the emotion as if it were a runaway puppy heading for the highway at rush hour. While it can produce pain and frustration, love also produces something else:...

The unknown wartime celebration Imperial Japan at its Zenith By Kenneth J. Ruoff (Cornell University Press, $39.95) In spite of its war with China along with deteriorating relationship with the U.S., Japan was more than excited to commemorate the year 1940. It was the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of the Empire of Japan. There were new public monuments, visual culture, and carefully ch...

Love, life and death Between Heaven and Earth By Yun Dae-nyeong (Jimoondang, 5,000 won) The winner of the Yi Sang Literature Prize in 1996, Yun Dae-nyeong’s “Between Heaven and Earth” delves into themes of life and death through a story of two strangers. The protagonist, who is on his way to attend his aunt’s funeral, runs into a young woman. Somehow feeling the “shadow of death” on her fac...

Trent Reedy was an American soldier providing security for the reconstruction of Afghanistan when he saw her. The girl was 13, her cleft lip so deformed that her teeth stuck out straight from her mouth. Her upper lip was split in two. Her nose was distorted. Shock was Reedy’s reaction when he first saw the girl he came to know as Zulaikha ― a girl who became the inspiration for, and centerpiece ...

LONDON (AP) ― He had a reputation as a literary recluse, but a trove of previously unseen letters written by J.D. Salinger to a British friend reveals a sociable man who took bus trips to Niagara Falls, ate fast-food hamburgers, enjoyed watching tennis and claimed always to be writing new work. The 50 letters and four postcards have been donated to a British university, which made them public Th...

A total of 552 billion won ($493 million) has been earmarked for opening 66 public libraries and 114 small libraries, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Wednesday. The move is part of the government’s “Library Development Comprehensive Plan,” set for 2009-2013 to promote reading. The 552 billion won includes a 188 billion won budget from the central government, 349 billion won fro...

Comic strip journalist calls it quits after 70 years of reporting Brenda Starr was born June 30, 1940, full-grown into a big-city newspaper office where she was an oddity, a female reporter. Also gorgeous, a fiery redhead, as they say, with a glamorous if out-of-place wardrobe. Straight away Brenda Starr demanded respect in a man’s world, insisting on hard-hitting news assignments. Hers was a ...