The Book Review

Matt Haig was already several books into his career as a writer by the time he published “The Midnight Library” in 2020. One of those books, the 2015 memoir “Reasons to Stay Alive,” had even been a best seller in England, his home nation. Yet, “The Midnight Library” was a true breakout phenomenon. The novel, about a depressed woman who, after deciding to end her own life, ends up in a magical library in which every book presents her with an alternative life, eventually sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.

The author’s new book, “The Midnight Train,” takes place on a parallel track. In it, an older man dies and finds himself on a train, able to revisit key moments in his life on his way to the hereafter. Like its blockbuster sibling, the book is concerned with questions of gratitude, regret and perspective.

Haig joined the “Book Review” podcast and spoke to the host, Gilbert Cruz, about his new book and why he returned to the world of “The Midnight Library.”

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

Books Discussed on This Episode

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Credits

The “Book Review” podcast is hosted by Gilbert Cruz and produced by Sarah Diamond, Amy Pearl, and Patricia Sulbarán. The show is edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado.

Special thanks to MJ Franklin, Dahlia Haddad, and Brooke Minters.

Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Andrew Testa for The New York Times

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“Angel Down,” a grisly novel about World War I told in a single, almost 300-page-long sentence, was awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In a review for The New York Times, Ben H. Winters described it as a “thunderous gallop” that captures the “cruel and self-perpetuating logic of war.” (It was also one of the Book Review’s Top 10 books of 2025.)

The day after the Pulitzers were awarded, the book’s author, Daniel Kraus — who has written horror, fantasy and young adult novels — spoke to the Book Review’s editor, Gilbert Cruz, about putting together his semi-experimental story.

Cruz also spoke with Patricia Cornwell, a best-selling author who rose to prominence in the 1990s with novels about the character Kay Scarpetta, a chief medical examiner. A Scarpetta series starring Nicole Kidman debuted this year on Amazon.

Cornwell has released a new memoir, “True Crime,” in which she tells the surprising story of her childhood and the events that led her to become a novelist.

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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.

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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].

Credits

The “Book Review” podcast is hosted by Gilbert Cruz and produced by Amy Pearl, Sarah Diamond and Patricia Sulbarán. The show is edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado.

Special thanks to Dahlia Haddad and Brooke Minters.

Illustration by The New York Times; Inset cover: via Grand Central

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Since its first episode in April 2006, the “Book Review” podcast has played host to hundreds of authors talking about their new works and possibly as many conversations about the best (and sometimes worst) that books have to offer. In this anniversary episode, the Book Review editor Gilbert Cruz is joined by the deputy editor Tina Jordan and the critic Dwight Garner to look back at some of the titles, trends and turning points that have helped define the last two decades in publishing.

They revisit blockbuster hits, literary movements and industry-shifting moments, starting with an unforgettable Oprah-related controversy and moving through several hit genres and literary trends. To close out this two-decade retrospective, Cruz puts his colleagues’ literary memories to the test with an only slightly grueling quiz.

Books discussed on this episode:

“A Million Little Pieces,” by James Frey

“Eat, Pray, Love,” by Elizabeth Gilbert

“The Hunger Games,” by Suzanne Collins

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” by J.K. Rowling

“The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy

“Twilight,” by Stephenie Meyer

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” by Stieg Larsson

“My Struggle,” Book 1, by Karl Ove Knausgaard

“How Should a Person Be?,” by Sheila Heti

“My Brilliant Friend,” by Elena Ferrante

“The Story of the Lost Child,” by Elena Ferrante

“Wolf Hall,” by Hilary Mantel

“Bring Up the Bodies,” by Hilary Mantel

“The Mirror and the Light,” by Hilary Mantel

“Life,” by Keith Richards with James Fox

“Just Kids,” by Patti Smith

“Born to Run,” by Bruce Springsteen

“Chronicles: Volume 1,” by Bob Dylan

“Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E.L. James

“Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn

“The Sellout,” by Paul Beatty

“Where the Crawdads Sing,” by Delia Owens

“American Dirt,” by Jeanine Cummins

“Crying in H Mart,” by Michelle Zauner

“Blood, Bones & Butter,” by Gabrielle Hamilton

“Heat,” by Bill Buford

“Dirt,” by Bill Buford

“The Song of Achilles,” by Madeline Miller

“We Were Liars,” by E. Lockhart

“A Court of Thorns and Roses,” by Sarah J. Maas

“Fourth Wing,” by Rebecca Yarros

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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.

We Want to Hear From You

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].

Credits

The “Book Review” podcast is hosted by Gilbert Cruz and produced by Sarah Diamond and Amy Pearl with help this week from Alex Barron. The show is edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado.

Special thanks to MJ Franklin, Dahlia Haddad and Brooke Minters.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Dilara, the heroine of Kenan Orhan’s debut novel, is a Turkish exile living in Italy and undergoing a routine bathroom renovation that turns out to be not so routine: When the contractors leave, she steps into the refurbished space and finds herself somehow transported to an actual cell in Istanbul’s infamous Silivri Prison.

Initially dismayed, she soon grows resigned and even magnetically attracted to the cell, which offers a connection in its way to the lost homeland where her father — now dying of Alzheimer’s disease — was labeled a dissident by the ruling government. Is this strange portal a retreat or a trap, a bridge to the country she misses or a gateway for the danger she fled? And what will she sacrifice for a taste of home?

On this episode of the Book Review Book Club, host MJ Franklin discusses “The Renovation” with fellow editors Joumana Khatib and Dave Kim. 

Other books mentioned in this episode:

“Man of My Time,” by Dalia Sofer

“The Spare Room,” by Helen Garner

“The Trial,” by Franz Kafka

“The Disconnected” and “Waiting for the Fear,” by Oguz Atay

“The Anthropologists,” by Aysegul Savaş

“What We Can Know,” by Ian McEwan

“Exit West,” by Mohsin Hamid

“The Memory Police,” by Yoko Ogawa

“We Do Not Part,” by Han Kang

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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How is it that a seven-book series written in Danish about a single day repeating over and over has become something of a sensation among the literary set? Since the English translations of Solvej Balle’s “On the Calculation of Volume” series were first published in the United States in 2024, they have been nominated for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award.

With the latest volume to be translated into English, Book IV, out this week, Gilbert Cruz sat down with A.O. Scott, a critic at large, and Joumana Khatib, a Book Review editor, to talk boredom, stuckness and time loops. Plus, the books in translation you should read next.

Books discussed on this episode:

“On the Calculation of Volume,” by Solvej Balle

“The Director,” by Daniel Kehlmann

“Tyll,” by Daniel Kehlmann

“Breasts and Eggs,” by Mieko Kawakami

“Heaven,” by Mieko Kawakami

“Sisters in Yellow,” by Mieko Kawakami

“King Kong Theory,” by Virginie Despentes

The “Vernon Subutex” trilogy, by Virginie Despentes

“Time Shelter,” by Georgi Gospodinov

“Territory of Light,” by Yuko Tsushima

“The Betrothed,” by Alessandro Manzoni

“Kairos,” by Jenny Erpenbeck

“Go, Went, Gone,” by Jenny Erpenbeck

“In Search of Lost Time,” by Marcel Proust

“Ulysses,” by James Joyce

“Anna Karenina,” by Leo Tolstoy

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Patrick Radden Keefe joins “The Book Review” to discuss his new book, “London Falling,” which begins when a family loses a 19-year-old son, Zac Brettler, under mysterious circumstances. His parents eventually discover he had been living a secret life, posing as the son of a Russian oligarch.

Speaking with the host Gilbert Cruz, Keefe describes the moment he first heard the story and how he immediately knew it would become his next major project. He talks about gaining the trust of the young man’s parents, Matthew and Rachelle Brettler, and following the threads of their son’s life into a world of wealth, influence and deception in London.

The conversation also explores how the book moves beyond the night of Zac’s death and into a broader story about ambition, reinvention and the uneasy question at its center: How well can we ever know the people closest to us?

Books discussed on this episode:

“Say Nothing,” by Patrick Radden Keefe

“Seasons of Fury,” by Rozina Ali

“The Emperor’s Children,” by Claire Messud

“Out of Sheer Rage,” by Geoff Dyer

“Middlemarch,” by George Eliot

“In Cold Blood,” by Truman Capote

“The Power Broker,” by Robert A. Caro

“Far From the Tree,” by Andrew Solomon

“Chatter,” by Patrick Radden Keefe

“The Last Samurai,” by Helen DeWitt

Listen to and Follow ‘The Book Review’

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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.

We Want to Hear From You

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].

Credits

“The Book Review” podcast is hosted by Gilbert Cruz and produced by Amy Pearl and Sarah Diamond. The show is edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado.

Special thanks to MJ Franklin, Dahlia Haddad and Brooke Minters.

Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Erik Tanner for The New York Times

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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We have made it to April. We survived the snowstorms and the cold, and now that the days are getting longer, there’s more time to read. So this week, if you are looking for some books to tide you over until summer, our Book Review editors Gilbert Cruz and Joumana Khatib have got you covered.

Also on this week’s episode, the former United States poet laureate Ada Limón joins us to talk about her new book, “Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry.” And she reads two of her poems.

Books discussed on this episode:

“Transcription,” by Ben Lerner

“This Land Is Your Land,” by Beverly Gage

“The Witch,” by Marie NDiaye

“London Falling,” by Patrick Radden Keefe

“Prophecy,” by Carissa Véliz

“Ghost Town,” by Tom Perrotta

“From Life Itself,” by Suzy Hansen

“The Calamity Club,” by Kathryn Stockett

“Dog Days,” by Emily LaBarge

“The Midnight Train,” by Matt Haig

“The Land and Its People,” by David Sedaris

“On the Calculation of Volume (Book 4),” by Solvej Balle

“Famesick,” by Lena Dunham

“The Sane One,” by Anna Konkle

“On Witness and Respair,” by Jesmyn Ward

“John of John,” by Douglas Stuart

“The Things We Never Say,” by Elizabeth Strout

“Yesteryear,” by Caro Claire Burke

“Arsenio,” by Arsenio Hall

“Five Weeks in the Country,” by Francine Prose

“The Ending Writes Itself,” by Evelyn Clark (V.E. Schwab and Cat Clark)

“Go Gentle,” by Maria Semple

“True Crime,” by Patricia Cornwell

“Against Breaking,” by Ada Limón

Listen to and Follow ‘The Book Review’

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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.

We Want to Hear From You

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].

Credits

“The Book Review Podcast” is hosted by Gilbert Cruz and produced by Amy Pearl and Sarah Diamond. The show is edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado.

Special thanks to MJ Franklin, Dahlia Haddad and Brooke Minters.

Illustration by The New York Times; Inset photos: Scribner; Viking; Spiegel & Grau

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Tayari Jones’s new novel, “Kin,” follows two orphaned girls, Annie and Niecy, who grow up together in Louisiana in the 1950s. Annie was abandoned as a baby when her mother ran away to Memphis, while Niecy was orphaned when her father murdered her mother. The girls grow up under the shadow of loss, but at the very least they have each other, two “cradle friends” so close they’re practically sisters.

After high school, though, they take different paths: Niecy sets out for Spelman College to try to make a name for herself, while Annie flees to Memphis to seek the mother she never knew. Along the way, each must confront major questions about love and family, including what sacrifices are acceptable to achieve them.

On this week’s episode, host MJ Franklin talks about “Kin” with his colleagues Lauren Christensen and Elisabeth Egan.

Other books mentioned in this episode:

“An American Marriage,” “The Untelling” and “Silver Sparrow,” by Tayari Jones

“Clutch,” by Emily Nemens

“This Is Not About Us,” by Allegra Goodman

“Lonely Crowds,” by Stephanie Wambugu

“The Vanishing Half,” by Brit Bennett

“The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois,” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

“Sula,” by Toni Morrison

“Beaches,” by Iris R. Dart

“Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?,” by Lorrie Moore

“Cat’s Eye,” by Margaret Atwood

“The Calamity Club,” by Kathryn Stockett

“South to America,” by Imani Perry

“Witness and Respair,” by Jesmyn Ward

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Andy Weir’s first time at the Hollywood rodeo was a singular trip. His debut novel, “The Martian,” went from self-published project to blockbuster, best picture-nominated film starring Matt Damon.

His most recent book, “Project Hail Mary,” was also a sensation, and its adaptation, starring Ryan Gosling as a middle school science teacher tasked with saving humanity from slow extinction, charts warmly familiar territory: a lone man, stuck in space far from Earth, solving science problem after science problem with many a humorous aside.

Weir joined the Book Review’s podcast and spoke to the host, Gilbert Cruz, about the similarities and differences between Mark Watney and Ryland Grace (the main characters of “The Martian” and “Project Hail Mary”), his second novel, “Artemis,” and the alien character that readers have fallen in love with.

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].

“The Book Review Podcast” is hosted by Gilbert Cruz and produced by Sarah Diamond and Amy Pearl. The show is edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado.

Special thanks to MJ Franklin, Dahlia Haddad, and Paula Szuchman.

Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Since the publication of her first novel, “Love Medicine,” in 1984, Louise Erdrich has written fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children’s books. Her work has earned multiple awards, including the National Book Award (“The Round House”) and the Pulitzer Prize (“The Night Watchman”).

On this week’s episode, Erdrich talks with Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, about her new short story collection, “Python’s Kiss.” She reflects on some of the formative experiences that shaped her as a writer, including watching “Planet of the Apes” and growing up in North Dakota, a state that housed hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

She says that writing has been her “only real way of processing” her experiences and that her creative process is full of mystery.

“There’s really no way to control everything that happens in a piece of art. Some of these stories — I wasn’t sure that I had written it,” she said, adding: “And yet, obviously, it was in my handwriting.”

Plus, Erdrich recommends the one book that always puts her to sleep.

Books discussed on this episode:

“Animal Farm,” by George Orwell

“Brawler,” by Lauren Groff

“Winter in the Blood,” by James Welch

“The Pillow Book,” by Sei Shōnagon

“The Death of the Heart,” by Elizabeth Bowen

“Save Me, Stranger,” by Erika Krouse

“The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison

“Austerlitz,” by W.G. Sebald

“The Rings of Saturn,” by W.G. Sebald

“Whistler,” by Ann Patchett

“Make the Golf Course a Public Sex Forest,” published by Maitland Systems Engineering

Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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