For nine years Lucy has been working as a part-time librarian at a small Arizona university and struggling to complete a Ph.D. program in classic literature.
At first glance, the timing of New York Review Books Classics’ rerelease of Helen Weinzweig’s Basic Black with Pearls is almost as intriguing as the novel itself.
It is said that imitation is the purest form of flattery. Be that true, the question becomes what hold does a feeble imitation of a literary classic have on flattery.
Fiction writers exist in their imagination as they search for ideas to put into a novel. Liza Cole, with one bestseller to her credit, is frustrated with her editor.
“From Italy’s agricultural heartland, largely an autodidact, Walter Ferranini doubts the sincerity of claims for the dignity accorded labor by ideological spokesmen for the post-war communist regim
