New York Times Letter To The Editor

Audiobooks, Translations, and Other Letters to the Editor

Credit... Libby VanderPloeg

March 24, 2022

Heed Up

To the Editor:

As a devoted audiobook listener of literary fiction, I am then disappointed that your audiobook reviews continue to exist nigh nonfiction titles. Is there a reason for this? If you have had a fiction cavalcade that I missed, I apologize, but it would be a rarity. The virtually recent audiobook reviews (March xiii) are more nonfiction.

A great performer can bring a great book to life more magnificently than reading on the page. To wit: Listening to Juliet Stevenson read "Middlemarch" is one of the aesthetic highs of my life. Recent terrific audios of new novels include "The Lincoln Highway" and "Cloud Cuckoo Land."

I am always looking for good fiction audios and would appreciate your suggestions.

Anna Belle Kaufman
Sebastopol, Calif.

Translations Run Aground

To the Editor:

Regarding Pankaj Mishra's By the Book interview (March 6): Equally one exception to Mishra's comment that inappreciably any reader of English knows of Mercè Rodoreda's novel "In Diamond Square," I prepared for my offset trip to Barcelona in 2019 by seeking a book translated from Catalan, and happened upon her volume "The Time of the Doves," in which the protagonist is chosen "little pigeon." Finding on the library shelf another volume of Rodoreda's entitled "In Diamond Square," I started that novel besides, and was surprised to discover it was the same story in some other translation, with the name of the birds she seeks to heighten given as "pigeon," and the adult female'south nickname inverse to "Pidgey." Having in one case lived in a neighborhood teeming with pigeons, this evoked a very unlike, less lovely, image in my mind. What a difference a translator can make! But in either case, this is a marvelous novel, particularly pertinent in today's international context. Diamond Square in Barcelona houses a life-size statue of the protagonist and her birds, every bit well as a wall plaque honoring the author. Both the volume and the urban site are very much worthy of a visit.

Marilyn J. Boxer
Kensington, Calif.

Nightmares and Black Hearts

To the Editor:

In her By the Book interview (March 13), Karen Joy Fowler endorses a strategy of inviting to dinner "authors who were not recognized in their lifetimes," in club to beacon their spirits by letting them know "how well regarded they are now." One of the writers she dreams of including is Franz Kafka. But Kafka famously requested that all of his work exist burned; the widespread circulation and celebration of Kafka's writing is the result of his friend expressly ignoring his wishes. It seems kind of cruel to resurrect Kafka in society to let him know that his nightmare came true. I say let him sleep.

Sarah Aintelope
Irvine, Calif.

♦

To the Editor:

I'thousand delighted to run across that Fowler is reading "The Wolves of Willoughby Chase" to her grandson. I urge her to continue on to "Black Hearts in Battersea," as she has not withal met the redoubtable Dido Twite.

Mary Harriman
Milwaukee

Double Standards

To the Editor:

Walter Kirn, author of "Blood Will Out," certainly seemed out for blood in his review of Heather Havrilesky'south "Foreverland" (March half dozen). The antipathetic tone every bit he roots for the author'due south husband is off-putting from the start ("a marriage betwixt a neurotic perfectionist and a formidably patient man"). Kirn admits, "I know only my own wedlock," merely he would rather keep it "a secret." (This is interesting, as his memoir is about a failed marriage and existence friends with a sociopathic murderer.) I say Havrilesky is brave to share struggles that reflect many marriages but that well-nigh of u.s.a. are agape to expose because nosotros desire the globe to view our relationships every bit beatific. If a reviewer wants to discuss the writing, fine, but don't stab the author just to gleefully watch her bleed.

Donna Marie Merritt
Watertown, Conn.

Correction

A review on May ten, 2020, about Cho Nam-Joo's novel "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" referred incorrectly to the book'southward protagonist, Jiyoung. She has a girl, not a son. This correction was delayed because the error was brought to the attending of editors merely recently.

books@nytimes.com