Literature is often concerned with “the way we live now,” as Anthony Trollope memorably put it, but this week we recommend three books that focus more narrowly on where we live — as in real estate. There’s Gu Byeong-mo’s novel “Apartment Women,” about a group-living experiment in South Korea, and Charif Majdalani’s novel “A History of the Big House,” about a grand estate subject to the changing tides of Lebanese history, and Patrick Hutchison’s charming memoir “Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures With a Clueless Craftsman.” Those three authors could pull up a seat at the bar with Paul, the real estate novelist in Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” and commiserate about their Zillow valuations.
Elsewhere we recommend a posthumous essay collection by the anarchic anthropologist David Graeber, a biography of the revolutionary 19th-century doctor Mary Putnam Jacobi and a study of “Giant,” Edna Ferber’s 1952 novel about Texas. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
APARTMENT WOMEN
Gu Byeong-mo
This novel by a South Korean writer, translated by Chi-Young Kim, imagines an experimental government-funded commune of young families, each of whom arrives bearing secrets and short tempers.
CABIN:
Off the Grid Adventures With a Clueless Craftsman
Patrick Hutchison
In 2013 Hutchison left his city life in Seattle to live an urbanite’s rural dream, buying a $7,500 cabin on Craigslist from a guy named Tony and spending his weekends learning the skills to renovate and update it. The rest, as narrated in this thoughtful and appealing memoir, is funny, philosophical, chainsaw-wielding history.
GIANT LOVE:
Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film
Julie Gilbert
Gilbert, the biographer and great-niece of the Pulitzer-winning novelist Edna Ferber, here revisits Ferber’s 1952 novel “Giant” and its journey to the screen in what was to become James Dean’s final film. The book is enlivened by Gilbert’s personal memories and by her loving efforts to shift the spotlight off of Hollywood and back onto Ferber’s monumental work.
A HISTORY OF THE BIG HOUSE
Charif Majdalani
Translated by Ruth Diver, this Lebanese novel traces the fortunes of the Nassar family in the early 20th century, as what is now Lebanon changes hands from Ottoman rule to French mandate. At the heart of the story is Wakim Nassar, the narrator’s grandfather, whose grand estate earns a reputation as a haven for men fleeing the Ottoman draft or simply locals in need.
THE ULTIMATE HIDDEN TRUTH OF THE WORLD …:
David Graeber; edited by Nika Dubrovsky
This posthumous essay collection by a noted anthropologist and activist, edited by his widow, confirms his reputation as a bold thinker whose original arguments were dramatic, exhilarating and instinctively appealing even if they could also strain credibility. The 18 pieces collected here showcase the range of Graeber’s interests, along with his recurring preoccupations: inequality and capitalism, bureaucracy and creativity.
THE CURE FOR WOMEN:
Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever
Lydia Reeder
In 1868, the future Mary Putnam Jacobi (a daughter of the prominent New York publisher George Palmer Putnam) became the first woman admitted to the Sorbonne’s medical school. Over the following decades, back in America, she became a fiercely uncompromising professor of medicine and practitioner of women’s health care, revolutionizing her field along the way. Reeder’s biography is a valiant and timely effort to change the fact that 120 years after Putnam Jacobi’s death, few people remember her today.
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