Category: national

  • More Like a Summer Slurpee

    More Like a Summer Slurpee

    NPR critic Maureen Corrigan suggests that El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott (2025) is one of the better summer suspense novels, but I think it barely qualifies as a beach read. Harper, the youngest of three Bishop sisters, is invited by her older sisters Pam and Deb to join a female financial club that seems…

  • Sorry Yet Not

    Sorry Yet Not

    Sorry, Baby takes its title from a comment at its end by Agnes, its protagonist and a full-time college English instructor who had been sexually assaulted when she was a graduate student at the same institution. This movie is organized by chapters as a series of flashbacks interspersed with Agnes’s struggle to overcome the effects…

  • Sensibility and Sense

    Sensibility and Sense

    She Rides Shotgun was better than expected but ultimately unsatisfying. Polly is approached after school by a seeming stranger, who is her biological father, and recently released inmate, Nate. Nate wants to protect her from the gang that has already killed Polly’s mother and step-father, and that is searching for them, by taking her to…