This week’s story, “ Between the Shadow and the Soul ,” is about a fifty-year-old woman named Eliza who has taken early retirement from her job. For the first time in her life, she finds herself with nothing to do. How destabilizing is this moment for her? Eliza has a lot of me in her—so […]
The British realist director Mike Leigh loves the term “character actor,” which he uses often and with zeal. To him, it’s a term of great respect, meaning a performer who’s highly skilled, versatile, creative, smart—qualities especially important for Leigh’s actors, who create his films with him, from plot to dialogue. His new film, “Hard Truths,” […]
The illustration shows geometric fragments of eight book covers and one black-and-white author photo on a light blue background. What is it about marriages that makes them enduringly fertile material for the thriller treatment? Is it that we’re all incurably curious about the lives of others? Is it the schadenfreude of learning that an outwardly […]
