T Book Club Edition

August 1, 2022

This is a special edition of the T List dedicated to T Book Club, which is back for a second season. In this round of the series, we'll be focusing on New York City novels — ones that aren't only set, at least in part, in New York but that have something to say about the city itself. Read more below and R.S.V.P. to the next event — a virtual conversation on Paula Fox's "Desperate Characters" (1970) to be led by the novelist Sigrid Nunez and held on this Thursday, Aug. 4.

The 25 Most Significant New York City Novels From the Last 100 Years

Four writers and one bookseller gathered over Zoom to make a list devoted to fiction in which the city is more than mere setting.

By Rose Courteau, Kate Guadagnino and Miguel Morales

Contemporary Authors on Their Favorite New York City Novels

These writers, who have themselves set fiction in the city, weigh in on novels by others who have done the same.

David Attie/Getty Images

'Desperate Characters' and the Chaos That Lies Beneath

Paula Fox, the author of the 1970 novel, writes Sigrid Nunez, had a keen sense of the thin veneer of civilization, and how little it takes to fall through.

By Sigrid Nunez