6 Excellent Things

A power couple t-shirt and six stellar historical novels

The Sisters by Berthe Morisot

1. A famous literary lovers t-shirt I just might buy myself.

2. This “prescription for a healthy life” from a Parisian woman in the forthcoming Anita Brookner bio by Hermione Lee: “Faites de la gymnastique, ou faits-vous baiser”—“Go to the gym, or get yourself a fuck.”

3. One of the great female Impressionists finally gets her due.

4. Over the past month I read every single piece of historical fiction by Geraldine Brooks and boy did it make my middlebrow self happy. (In order: one about the plague; one about the father in Little Women; one about an ancient Haggadah; one about the first Native American to graduate Harvard; one about the Biblical character David; and one about the greatest racehorse of the nineteenth century.)

5. If you loved Belle Burden’s Strangers, dare I suggest this memoir about a child sworn to secrecy about her mother’s wild affair?

6. Fresh Pulitzer winner Yiyun Li has a new novel coming out this year about two ambitious Romantic-era musicians.