The National Book Critics Circle announced their annual literary awards last night . You can find essays on some of the winners in the Slate archives — but to save you the trouble of using our search engine, we’ve included links to the relevant articles below.
Nathan Heller called Blake Bailey’s winning biography of John Cheever “masterful,” noting that it successfully captured the author’s “sweet” and “sour” sides. (You can also read Bailey’s own pieces for Slate — including one on Cheever — here .)
Of Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science , Adam Kirsch said , it “places more faith in science’s ‘beauty’ than its ‘terror.’ ”
David Plotz dubbed Hilary Mantel’s novel about Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall , “pure pleasure to read; a 560-page man crush.” Troy Patterson, John Swansburg, and Jacob Weisberg will be discussing the novel in next Monday’s Audio Book Club — so stay tuned.
