Michiko Kakutani

Critics differed widely from each other in their responses to this novel, beginning with the question how serious and how successful is Smith's foregrounding of the practice and the beliefs of Judaism. The book, however...

This book won the Orange Prize for Fiction (after ZS had twice appeared on its shortlist) and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.Frank Kermode , writing in the London Review of Books...

In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani (who liked best among the contents Lélé by Edwidge Danticat and Donal Webster by Colm Toibin ) wrote that while the stories vary widely in quality—a few...

Like To Bedlam and Part Way Back before it, this was nominated for the National Book Award but did not in the end win. It brought Sexton, however, the award of a travelling scholarship from...

Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times later assumed the air of stating consensus when he wrote that this volume was filled with . . . dross because apart from a few exceptions, Sexton's later...

Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times offered grudging approval: For the new reader, this volume provides a solid introduction to Sexton's work; and for others, it should restore and burnish her reputation as a...

Early reviews in North America were a lot less kind. Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times (while professing admiration for Rowling's gumption in moving on from Harry) called the characters self-absorbed, small-minded, snobbish and...

Michiko Kakutani has said of Heaney's writing: Always, the thrum of history vibrates close beneath the surface.

New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani praised the early stages of the novel, finding them beautifully observed and finely nuanced in their depiction of central characters. But on the whole he found the story unconvincing...

Reviewers were divided in their opinions of the book. Lorna Sage in the Times Literary Supplement praised it as a hilarious mystic farce, while Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times expressed...

This novel received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters . Reviewers in Cosmopolitan, the London Review of Books, The Times, the Financial Times...

Reviews, including those by Lorna Sage in the Times Literary Supplement, Ann Cornelisen in the New York Times Book Review, and Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, were generally positive. They...

This book was hammered by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times as a compendium of inanities. In Britain the Sunday Telegraph more respectfully called it a modern take on the HomerOdyssey in which...

Michiko Kakutani noted in the New York Times that Ruth's final plastic surgery seems to validate the male values she claims to despise. On this point, FW said in an interview with Sybil Steinberg that...