Has there ever been a better time to write a novel that’s all about space? Always a literal unit of power (see: private property), it now seems to be our preferred figurative metric, too: the most annoying guest at your dinner party takes up too much of it, the most diplomatic participant at your staff meeting is careful to make more of it, and everyone has an opinion about whether it matters if it’s safe. In this contested landscape, Hilary Leichter’s second novel, “Terrace Story” (Ecco), has a suitably small footprint—at under two hundred pages, it won’t strain a Marie Kondo-ed shelf— but turns out to be a capacious container for our space-related concerns.
There’s real estate, of course: you’ll meet Annie and Edward, cash-strapped new parents, in a shoebox city apartment. There’s the metaphoric geography of intimacy, too: you’ll meet George and Lydia in a marriage full of “blind alleys and impasses.” And then there’s the Muskian frontier: you’ll find Rosie in outer space—a futuristic suburb orbiting Earth—because the planet is having some capacity issues.
This story is from the August 28, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the August 28, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
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Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
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Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.