Nell Freudenberger

The Physics of Life and Death

This novel is by no means unique in writing about what happens after the death of someone who has been important in the lives of those they left behind. Recently, by chance, I was reading Anna Quindlen’s After Annie, where the...

Covid Times, in Tahiti and New York

Having enjoyed Fredenberger’s The Newly Weds, The Dissidents, and Lucky Girls, I was quite sure her latest, The Limits, would also be good reading, and I was not disappointed. The Limits is set in the time of the lockdowns in the...

Things Fall Apart

Nell Freudenberger’s Lucky Girls was a wonderful collection of short stories (see Reeta’s review), but it’s a big step from short stories to a full-length novel, and not every novelist can do it well. Freudenberger, however, is one of those...

Lucky Girls, lucky reader

Here are five stories, set in Southeast Asia and on the Indian subcontinent-each one bearing the weight and substance of a short novella-narrated by young women who find themselves, often as expatriates, face to face with the compelling circumstances of...