The Book Review

Admit it: It's fun to look at other people's marriages — and all the more fun if those marriages are messy. In a new group biography, "Lives of the Wives: Five Literary Marriages," the author Carmela Ciuraru peers into some relationships that are very messy indeed: the tumultuous marriages of Kenneth Tynan and Elaine Dundy; Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal; Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard; Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge; and Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante. As Ciuraru's title suggests, the book focuses especially on the role — and toll — of being a wife, stifling one's own creative impulses for the sake of a temperamental artist.

On this week's podcast, Sadie Stein — an editor at the Book Review, who commissioned the literary critic Hermione Hoby to write about Ciuraru's book for us — talks with the host Gilbert Cruz about "Lives of the Wives."

"They're all complicated people," Stein says. "I don't want to oversimplify it. Everyone knows you can't see inside anyone else's marriage. But these couples, you can see a little more. And in some cases, a little more than maybe you want to."

"It's a very gossipy book," Cruz says. "And I, to my own embarrassment, was not as up on 20th-century European literary gossip as maybe I should have been. So a lot of this stuff came as a total surprise, total shock to me. ... It's so juicy, but it also made me feel bad in a certain way."

And that, we can all agree, is good.

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Times’s staff book critics — Dwight Garner, Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs — do a lot of reading over the course of any given year, but not everything they read stays with them equally. On this week’s podcast, Gilbert Cruz chats with the critics about the books that did: the novels and story collections and works of nonfiction that made an impression in 2023 and defined their year in reading, including one that Garner says caught him by surprise.

“Eleanor Catton’s ‘Birnam Wood’ is in some ways my novel of the year,” Garner says. “And it’s not really my kind of book. This is going to sound stupid or snobby, but I’m not the biggest plot reader. I’m just not. I like sort of thorny, funny, earthy fiction, and if there’s no plot I’m fine with that. But this has a plot like a dream. It just takes right off. And she’s such a funny, generous writer that I was just happy from the first time I picked it up.”

Here are the books discussed on this week’s episode:

“Be Mine,” by Richard Ford

“Onlookers,” by Ann Beattie

“I Am Homeless if This Ia Not My Home,” by Lorrie Moore

“People Collide,” by Isle McElroy

“Birnam Wood,” by Eleanor Catton

“Biography of X,” by Catherine Lacey

“Madonna: A Rebel Life,” by Mary Gabriel

“The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune,” by Alexander Stille

“The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions,” by Jonathan Rosen

“Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State,” by Kerry Howley

“The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight,” by Andrew Leland

“Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience, and Family Secrets,” by Burkhard Bilger

“King: A Life,” Jonathan Eig

“Larry McMurtry: A Life,” Tracy Daugherty

“Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey,” by Robert “Mack” McCormick

“Roald Dahl, Teller of the Unexpected: A Biography,” by Matthew Dennison

“The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality,” by William Egginton

“Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World,” by Naomi Klein

“The Notebooks and Diaries of Edmund Wilson”

“Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair,” by Christian Wiman

“Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals,” by Oliver Burkeman

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Dwight Garner, Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs — staff critics for The New York Times Book Review — join host Gilbert Cruz to look back on highlights from their year in books.

Books discussed:

"Intermezzo," by Sally Rooney

"All Fours," by Miranda July

"You Dreamed of Empires," by Álvaro Enrigue

"When the Clock Broke," by John Ganz

"Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring," by Brad Gooch

"Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood's Hidden Genius," by Carrie Courogen

"My Beloved Monster," by Caleb Carr

"Rejection," by Tony Tulathimutte

"Beautyland," by Marie-Helene Bertino

"Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society," by Daniel Chandler

"Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs and Opera," by Ricky Ian Gordon

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The early part of a year can mean new books to read, or it can mean catching up on older ones we haven’t gotten to yet. This week, Gilbert Cruz chats with the Book Review’s Sarah Lyall and Sadie Stein about titles from both categories that have held their interest lately, including a 2022 biography of John Donne, a book about female artists who nurtured an interest in the supernatural, and the history of a Jim Crow-era mental asylum, along with a gripping new novel by Janice Hallett.

“It’s just so deft,” Stein says of Hallett’s new thriller, “The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels.” “It’s so funny. It seems like she’s having a lot of fun. One thing I would say, and I don’t think this is spoiling it, is, if there comes a moment when you think you might want to stop, keep going and trust her. I think it’s rare to be able to say that with that level of confidence.”

Here are the books discussed in this week’s episode:

“Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne,” by Katherine Rundell

“The Other Side: A Story of Women in Art and the Spirit World,” by Jennifer Higgie

“The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels,” by Janice Hallett

“Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum,” by Antonia Hylton

(Briefly mentioned: "You Dreamed of Empires," by Álvaro Enrigue, "Beautyland," by Marie-Helene Bertino, and "Martyr!" by Kaveh Akbar.)

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Stephen King’s first novel, “Carrie.” In the decades since, King has experimented with length, genre and style, but has always maintained his position as one of America’s most famous writers.

On this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks to the novelist Grady Hendrix, who read and re-read many of King’s books over several years, writing an essay on each as well as King superfan Damon Lindelof, the TV showrunner behind shows such as “Lost” and “The Leftovers.”

Some of the books discussed in this episode: "Carrie," "Cujo," "Duma Key," "From a Buick 8," "The Tommyknockers," "The Stand," and "The Long Walk."

Some of the articles referenced:

• Grady Hendrix's Stephen King essays
• When Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and J.J. Abrams met Stephen King
• Stephen King reviews Tom Perrotta's "The Leftovers"

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.