Literary Figures: Novelists

The latest novel from best-selling English author Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down, focuses on a group of suicidal people who accidentally meet atop a tall building — and how that meeting changes their fates. He also writes "Stuff I've Been Reading," a column for The Believer magazine. Many of Hornby's novels have been made into films, including About a Boy, High Fidelity and Fever Pitch.

Meg Wolitzer's new novel, The Position, is about a 1970s couple who write a Joy of Sex-style book, complete with illustrations of them making love. Their lives — and those of their children, who get their hands on the book — are never quite the same afterward.

Ian McEwan is the author of the best-selling novel Atonement. His latest novel, Saturday, takes place during one single day of a neurosurgeon's life. It is set in a post-9/11 world.

Writer Frank Conroy died April 6, at 69. He had colon cancer. He was the longtime director of the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop. His 1967 memoir, Stop-Time, became a classic. In 1993, he published his first and only novel, Body & Soul. His other books were a collection of short stories, Midair, and his last book, the nonfiction Time and Tide: A Walk Through Nantucket. Conroy also worked as a jazz pianist in Greenwich Village and Nantucket for many years. (Originally aired Sept. 29, 1993)

Author Saul Bellow died April 5 at the age of 89. His short stories and novels garnered him three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Presidential Award and a Nobel Prize. His books include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog and Humbolt's Gift. (Originally aired Oct. 4, 1989.)

Wagner hangs out with the rich and famous, and then writes satirical novels based on Los Angeles life. His new book is The Chrysanthemum Palace. The three main characters are actors who are the children of wealthy, successful parents. Wagner is known for his dark wit and nasty portrayals of show business elite.

Housekeeping, the first novel from Marilynne Robinson, won a PEN/Hemingway Award. Now 23 years later, she's written a second novel, Gilead. Gilead is written as a letter from a 76-year-old Congregationalist Preacher to his seven-year-old son. Robinson is a Congregationalist, and has served as a deacon in the church.

Novelist Mary Gordon's new book, Pearl, is about a mother's struggle to understand her daughter's public act of martyrdom. Gordon is the author of seven novels, including Final Payments and The Company of Women), and four nonfiction works.

Miriam Toews has written her third book, A Complicated Kindness. One reviewer called it "a kind of Catcher in the Rye for Mennonite girls."

Also we remember mystery novelist Joseph Hansen, who we just learned died last month at the age of 81. He created one of the genre's first gay protagonists, the private eye Dave Brandstetter.