Amanda Holmes Duffy
Amanda Holmes Duffy is the author of a novel, I Know Where I Am When I'm Falling. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Moxie, the Christian Science Monitor, Rattapallax, Northern Virginia Review, Main Street Rag, Our Stories, Phoebe, So To Speak, and elsewhere. She has edited for "Goings On" at the New Yorker, evaluated scripts for NBC, worked as a bookseller at Politics and Prose, and taught writing at Emerson College, the American University of Rome, Lenguas Vivas in Buenos Aires, and at Northern Virginia Community College. She currently runs two book clubs for Fairfax County Public Library and hosts a weekly podcast, "Read Me A Poem," for the American Scholar.
104 entries by Amanda Holmes Duffy
…and reading a little Balzac while I do it.
How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978-1998
By Helen Garner
A stellar introduction to an author more Americans should know.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
The Immortal Woman: A Novel
By Su Chang
A Chinese expat navigates cultures in this ambitious, uneven debut.
Reflections on ending a long-running club.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
Why the novel Stoner should speak to us all.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
How poetry soothes us in troubled times.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
Why old houses make some of the best literary characters.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
On writing a story for my granddaughter during my mother’s final days.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
Books for times of bereavement.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
The tale of Mr. Pig and the stuck ewe.
The spectral, searing power of Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
Reflections on memorabilia and curating an archive.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
On family life and a regional Australian magazine to feed the soul.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
Exploring ways to foster creative energy.
New collections to make life more lyrical.
On rereading James Salter’s Light Years.
What a little French shop taught me about bandes dessinées.
Our Wives Under the Sea
By Julia Armfield
A woman struggles to make sense of her partner’s decline.
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Some thoughts on Fitzgerald, Tolstoy, and the war in Ukraine.
How to save the planet? Start in your own back yard.
Understanding the region through the words of James Still.
The Red Balcony: A Novel
By Jonathan Wilson
A young Jewish barrister faces turmoil public and private in British Palestine.
Declaring women’s rightful place in the canon.
What we can learn about ourselves and others from the books we re-read.
The Singularities: A Novel
By John Banville
This witty yet vexing mashup seems meant for the author’s longtime fans.
Discovering the works of Annie Ernaux.
Savoring open-ended works of quiet simplicity.
What Alberto Giacometti and W. Somerset Maugham can teach us about it.
Our Wives Under the Sea: A Novel
By Julia Armfield
A woman struggles to make sense of her partner’s decline.
Finding common threads among recent readings.
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Exploring First Nations writers during a stay in Sydney.
Ocean State: A Novel
By Stewart O’Nan
A story of adult infidelity told, oddly, through the lives of teens.
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Once upon a time, I worked at the New Yorker.
City of Incurable Women
By Maud Casey
Tales of female hysteria and its many dubious remedies.
Why Charlotte Brontë’s lesser-known Villette deserves its own place in the canon.
Luckenbooth
By Jenni Fagan
A brooding Edinburgh tenement bears witness to a century's worth of strange doings.
An Impossible Love
By Christine Angot; translated by Armine Kotin Mortimer
The long shadow of incest shatters a mother-daughter bond.
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How D.H. Lawrence both fueled and fought Mabel Dodge Luhan’s ascendance.
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Exploring my love-hate relationship with Zorba.
Mona at Sea
By Elizabeth Gonzalez James
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A luckless, snarky Millennial finds herself at loose ends.
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Elizabeth Bowen’s relatable novel makes a fine fellow traveler.
As we emerge from our pandemic year, spiritual stories resonate anew.
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Discovering the savage beauty of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
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Serendipity leads to a poetic discovery.
The journalist talks Icebound, polar bears, and the utter darkness of Arctic nights.
The Delivery: A Novel
By Peter Mendelsund
An anonymous courier comes fully to life in this deceptively rich tale.
Saltwater
By Jessica Andrews
A young Englishwoman seeks to shake the legacy of alcoholism in this poetic coming-of-age tale.
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Rethinking the legacy of Edward Thomas.
A look at four recent novels by immigrant authors.
A beloved festival flourishes online.
Revisiting Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey.”
You may not get to every great title, so here’s where to begin.
Bunny
By Mona Awad
A darkly funny, sinister story set in a cliquish MFA program.
Pandemic dispatches from far-flung friends
A conversation with poet Carolyn Forché
Barker House: A Novel
By David Moloney
In this prison story, most of the hardship happens on the outside.
Discovering the immersive world of Magda Szabó.
Saltwater: A Novel
By Jessica Andrews
A young Englishwoman seeks to shake the legacy of alcoholism in this poetic coming-of-age tale.
The joy of being read to.
The Floating Feldmans: A Novel
By Elyssa Friedland
When an eccentric family embarks on a cruise, hijinks (unfortunately) do not ensue.
Bunny: A Novel
By Mona Awad
A darkly funny, sinister story set in a cliquish MFA program.
An American Marriage
By Tayari Jones
Incarceration, injustice, and infidelity plague a couple's tenuous union.
The Wreckage of Eden: A Novel
By Norman Lock
A lack of passion derails this otherwise clever imagining of Emily Dickinson's love life.
The Mars Room: A Novel
By Rachel Kushner
Dark and intense, this story of the imprisoned is hard to shake.
An American Marriage: A Novel
By Tayari Jones
Incarceration, injustice, and infidelity plague a couple's tenuous union.
The Dog’s Last Walk (and Other Pieces)
By Howard Jacobson
A canny, curmudgeonly assortment of essays from a prize-winning Brit.
Broken River: A Novel
By J. Robert Lennon
This haunted-house story gets too caught up in a misguided critique of the publishing industry.
Still Here: A Novel
By Lara Vapnyar
A poignant story of immigration and technology.
The Turner House: A Novel
By Angela Flournoy
Family ties — and the misunderstandings that threaten to sever them — lie at the heart of this wonderful tale.
Flying Shoes
Lisa Howorth
Characters enrich this tale of a reopened murder inspired by real events in the author’s life.
This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel
By Wiley Cash
A deadbeat dad kidnaps his two daughters from foster care following the death of their mother.
Longbourn: A Novel
By Jo Baker
The Bennets take a backseat to their servants in this homage to Pride and Prejudice.
Archangel
Andrea Barrett
The triumph of discovery and the sense of loss that scientific progress can bring are explored in this new collection of short stories.
The First Rule of Swimming
Courtney Angela Brkic
The yearning for and promise of refuge are symbolized by a fictional Croatian island in this novel about two devoted sisters, survivors who learn that the first rule of swimming is to stay afloat.
The Hope Factory
Lavanya Sankaran
This Indian “Upstairs Downstairs” parallels the lives of a Bangalore manufacturer and his maid as industrialism undermines tradition and family expectations.
The Woman Upstairs
Claire Messud
In yet another tour de force novel, the award-winning author poses questions about life, love and the meaning of art.
Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles: A Novel
By Ron Currie Jr.
Loss, love, and the line between truth and fiction.
The Snow Child: A Novel
Eowyn Ivey
In the magical world of the Alaskan wilderness, is the captivating girl who frolics in the landscape real or imaginary?
Mudwoman: A Novel
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates dissects the layers of a troubled woman’s self, revealing both her tender heart and the raw, sometimes ugly truth of her being.
