Heller McAlpin

1 month ago | wsj.com | Heller McAlpin

In 1895, newspapers around the world carried shocking photographs of a derailed steam engine that had smashed through the parapet of Paris’s Montparnasse Station. In “The Paris Express,” the Irish Canadian writer Emma Donoghue tracks the catastrophe-bound train in that photo on its seven-hour journey on Oct. 22, 1895 from Granville, on the Normandy coast, to Paris.

2 months ago | wsj.com | Heller McAlpin

Robert Seethaler, a writer born in Vienna in 1966, is an exquisite miniaturist whose concise novels depict the quotidian struggles of ordinary, hardworking Austrians in the 20th century. His interest is in how these small-scale lives fit into the larger picture of a country subject to dizzying changes through the decades before and after World War II. Mr. Seethaler’s quietly beguiling eighth novel, “The Café With No Name,” is his most uplifting to date.

2 months ago | csmonitor.com | Heller McAlpin

In times of great stress, people often find comfort in the natural world, sometimes by forging unexpected connections with wild creatures. This has resulted in a bounty of beautiful books, including Helen Macdonald’s “H is for Hawk,” Amy Tan’s “The Backyard Bird Chronicles,” and Catherine Raven’s “Fox and I,” along with Craig Foster’s documentary film, “My Octopus Teacher.” Chloe Dalton’s “Raising Hare” is a welcome addition to these stories of transformative, interspecies trust-building.

Feb 10, 2025 | csmonitor.com | Heller McAlpin

Anne Tyler’s 25th novel, “Three Days in June,” is a valentine to readers. It’s funny and touching. The story features a divorced couple thrown together by their daughter’s wedding – one ex-spouse is incorrigibly spontaneous, the other rigid – plus an old, overweight rescue cat. This may be Tyler lite, not as complex as “A Spool of Blue Thread” or “French Braid,” but there isn’t a wrong move in it. It’s the literary equivalent of a box of chocolates with no duds.

Jan 24, 2025 | wsj.com | Heller McAlpin

In 2022 David Wright Faladé published an essay in the New Yorker about his complicated parentage called “The Truth About My Father.” He’d grown up in the U.S. thinking he was the son of Jack Wright, an African-American GI whom his French mother had met and married in Paris in the 1950s. His parents divorced when he was 3, and years later, when young David was still a teenager, his mother told him that his biological father was actually Max Faladé, whom she’d met at the same time.