Wendy Smith Journalist Profile

Articles

Review | John Steinbeck stole her thunder, but Sanora Babb was unstoppable

Oct 14, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Wendy Smith

Sanora Babb at the Arvin camp for Dust Bowl refugees near Bakersfield, Calif., with Tom Collins. (Courtesy of Joanne Dearcopp, literary executor of the Babb estate)Review by Wendy SmithOctober 14, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. EDTIn 1939, Sanora Babb was a modestly successful poet and short-story writer with a novel under contract with Random House.
Review | A new novel about Oscar Wilde offers an alternative ending to his story

Sep 17, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Wendy Smith

(Algonquin)Review by Wendy SmithSeptember 17, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. EDTConstance Wilde knows how she appears to the public after her husband Oscar’s 1895 conviction for so-called acts of gross indecency. “The poor little waif, the blinkered wifey,” Constance says bitterly in “The Wildes,” a new novel by Louis Bayard.
Review | ‘To & Fro’ is an ingenious puzzle of a novel

May 21, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Wendy Smith

Democracy Dies in DarknessBooksBook Reviews Fiction Nonfiction May books 50 notable fiction books BooksBook Reviews Fiction Nonfiction May books 50 notable fiction books Leah Hager Cohen’s book follows two young girls, each in search of something she can’t quite defineMay 21, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. EDT(Bellevue Literary Press)CommentSaveLeah Hager Cohen’s seventh novel, “To & Fro,”is a literary jewel with multiple facets.
The unexpected gift in the midst of grief

Feb 2, 2024 | medium.com | Wendy Smith

I knew I would get on with Jenny* the first time I met her. As she walked into my home, she laughed and told me she had had to have a ‘sharpener’ before she arrived. It was very understandable and refreshingly honest. She was my ex-husband’s girlfriend and we had never met. I had invited them to dinner to allay any fears that I was a threat and slightly less altruistically, I wanted my friendship with my ex to continue.
Review | The shocking scars of the Civil War live on in ‘Night Watch’

Sep 15, 2023 | washingtonpost.com | Wendy Smith

The lasting damage inflicted by war has preoccupied Jayne Anne Phillips’s fiction since her first novel, “Machine Dreams,” which came out nearly 40 years ago. In that debut, she grappled with World War II and Vietnam, then with Korea in “Lark and Termite” (2009). Now she turns her attention to the Civil War in the beautiful, mournful “Night Watch.”This novel follows 12-year-old ConaLee and her mother through the year 1874 as they struggle to recover from the long-lived traumas of the war.
With a Little Help From Her Friends

Aug 1, 2023 | kirkusreviews.com | Wendy Smith

When Ann Patchett told her friend Tom Hanks (yes, that Tom Hanks) she was writing a book that takes place in a cherry orchard, he said, “Tell me there are three sisters!” There are indeed three sisters in Tom Lake(Harper, Aug. 1), and quotations from The Cherry Orchard are brandished in a central scene.
LI's Tessa Bailey talks about 'Unfortunately Yours'

Jun 27, 2023 | newsday.com | Wendy Smith

By Wendy SmithSpecial to NewsdayJune 27, 2023 5:00 am “Unfortunately Yours” (Avon, $18.99), the latest of Tessa Bailey’s more than three dozen romance novels, takes place in a small winemaking community in California's Napa Valley — about as far from Long Island as you can get within the continental United States. Nonetheless, says the veteran author, her move to Floral Park from Brooklyn almost a decade ago, has had an ongoing impact on her work. “When I started, all my books were city-based.
Book World: An imaginative thriller with quintessentially Russian trimmings

Jun 7, 2023 | lmtonline.com | Paul Goldberg |Wendy Smith

- - - Veteran journalist Paul Goldberg wrote two nonfiction books about the human rights struggle in the U.S.S.R. before he turned his efforts to fiction. His debut novel, "The Yid" (2016), drew on the knowledge he gained in those earlier books to make the Soviet Union's police-state atmosphere the backdrop for a historical thriller grounded in fevered debates on politics, religion and the meaning of life.
Review | An imaginative thriller with quintessentially Russian trimmings

Jun 6, 2023 | washingtonpost.com | Wendy Smith

Comment on this storyCommentVeteran journalist Paul Goldberg wrote two nonfiction books about the human rights struggle in the U.S.S.R. before he turned his efforts to fiction. His debut novel, “The Yid” (2016), drew on the knowledge he gained in those earlier books to make the Soviet Union’s police-state atmosphere the backdrop for a historical thriller grounded in fevered debates on politics, religion and the meaning of life.
The terrors of climate change are front and center in 'Blue Skies'

May 27, 2023 | fredericknewspost.com | Wendy Smith

The title of T.C. Boyle’s latest novel is darkly ironic: There are no blue skies in “Blue Skies.” In Florida, where half the action takes place, skies are gray, swollen with clouds that shower near-perpetual rain on an already sodden landscape. In California, the skies are white with heat, and the earth below bakes in a drought that has been going on for four years.