Roz Chast Reads

3.7 stars

The Age of Innocence is an intimate portrayal of East Coast American society in the 19th century—and the human lives that came into conflict with it. Newland Archer is heir to one of New York City's first families, and his bride-to-be is everything he ever hoped. Then his fiancee's older cousin leaves her European husband and appears in New York, where she refuses to conform to society and her family's wishes. Archer is at first angered

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4 stars

Franz Kafka's 1915 novella of unexplained horror and nightmarish transformation became a worldwide classic and remains a century later one of the most widely read works of fiction in the world. It is the story of traveling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. This hugely influential work inspired George Orwell, Albert Camus, Jorge Louis Borges, and Ray Bradbury, while continuing to unsettle...

3 stars

"Rachel Cusk's Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinners and discourse. She goes swimming with an elderly Greek bachelor. The people she encounters speak, volubly, about themselves: their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and...