Elena Lappin

May 15, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Elena Lappin

Colm Tóibín has an unhurried way of inviting the reader into his fictional world, like a perfect host who spoils you with delicious food and drink but at such a gentle pace you never feel overfed. Quite the opposite: When the feast is over, you are instantly ready to return for more.

Dec 8, 2023 | washingtonpost.com | Elena Lappin

CommentSaveIt is a universally acknowledged myth that fiction written by women from previous generations is personal rather than political, and romantic rather than socially aware. But the Italian novelist Alba de Céspedes, who died in 1997, wrote novels in the 1940s and 1950s that were radically contemporary, both then and now. Born in Rome in 1911, she was of Cuban Italian descent and a granddaughter of the first president of Cuba. She married at 15, but it did not last.

Sep 15, 2023 | msn.com | Elena Lappin

Family bonds can be broken or whole, visible or hidden, forgotten or rediscovered, numb or forever raw. Anne Enright’s wondrous new novel, “The Wren, the Wren,” brilliantly explores the lasting impact of a father abandoning his critically ill wife and two young daughters. His departure reverberates through three generations of women, leaving them with a knotted legacy of pain, mystery and confusion — but also love. All kinds of love.

Sep 15, 2023 | washingtonpost.com | Elena Lappin

Family bonds can be broken or whole, visible or hidden, forgotten or rediscovered, numb or forever raw. Anne Enright’s wondrous new novel, “The Wren, the Wren,” brilliantly explores the lasting impact of a father abandoning his critically ill wife and two young daughters. His departure reverberates through three generations of women, leaving them with a knotted legacy of pain, mystery and confusion — but also love. All kinds of love.

Aug 12, 2023 | fredericknewspost.com | Elena Lappin

Aharon Appelfeld, who died in 2018 at age 85, was one of the greatest and most revered Israeli writers of his generation, widely read in many translations. Yet when he arrived in Palestine in 1946 as a 13-year-old Holocaust survivor, he was a boy without a language. To be precise, he was a boy with many languages hidden so deep within him that he appeared to be mute.