Sandra Newman

For the American judge, see Sandra Schultz Newman.

Sandra Newman
Newman at the 2019 Texas Book Festival
Newman at the 2019 Texas Book Festival
Born (1965-11-06) November 6, 1965 (age 59)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
OccupationWriter
NationalityAmerican
EducationPolytechnic of Central London (BA)
University of East Anglia (MA)

Sandra Newman (born November 6, 1965, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American writer. She has a BA from Polytechnic of Central London, and an MA from the University of East Anglia.[1]

Newman's first novel, The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done,[2] was first published in 2002 and received a nomination for the 2002 Guardian First Book Award.[3] The novel features an American adoptee from Guatemala named Chrysalis Moffat and focuses on events in her and her family's lives using an unusual style reminiscent of notes taken while composing the novel.[2]

Newman's third novel, The Country of Ice Cream Star (2014), was among eighty titles nominated for 2015 Folio Prize,[4] and among twenty works nominated for the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.[5] The novel follows the protagonist, Ice Cream Fifteen Star, through a dystopian future United States while she searches for a cure for her brother's inherited disease.[5]

Her fourth novel, The Heavens (2019), published by Grove Atlantic, tells the story of a woman who lives in the early twenty-first century, but who returns every night in dreams to Elizabethan era England, where she lives as Emilia Lanier, a Jewish poet whose circle of acquaintances includes an obscure poet named William Shakespeare.[6] The New York Times Book Review called it “a strange and beautiful hybrid.”[7]

She is the author of the novel Cake (2008); a memoir, Changeling (2010); and a guide to Western literature, The Western Lit Survival Kit: How to Read the Classics Without Fear (2012). She is the co-author of How Not To Write A Novel (2008) and Read This Next (2010).

Her fifth novel, The Men (2022), published by Grove Atlantic, recounts a story in which all people with a Y chromosome vanish from the face of the Earth.[8] The book was controversial, with some critical of its focus on biology and exclusion of trans women.[9][10] However, in The Telegraph, Claire Allfree cites discussion of trans women in the book, and in Publishers Weekly, David Varno says "The Men is at once accessible and surprisingly complex," and notes that "trans characters do feature in it."[11][12] In a review for The Times, Jessa Crispin described The Men as "the most ill-conceived and badly executed novel of the year".[13] In Financial Times, Erica Wagner wrote that the novel was a "confused and confusing book, a tangled mess of threads that never knit up into a satisfying whole."[14] In The Spectator, Sarah Ditum called The Men "a gripping, haunting novel," and in The Telegraph, Nina Power called it "compelling and enjoyable."[15][16]

Her sixth novel, Julia (2023), published by Granta in the UK and Mariner Books in the US, and written at the request of George Orwell's estate, revisits the events of the dystopian classic 1984 through the eyes of Winston Smith's love interest, Julia. The LA Times called the book "a stunning look into what happens when a person of strength faces the worst in humanity, as well as a perfect specimen of derivative art".[17] The Financial Times called it "a richly envisaged, frightening dystopia, wholly alive to Orwell's text",[18] while Erica Wagner dubbed it a "masterpiece" in The Telegraph.[19]

Bibliography

Novels

  • The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done (2002)
  • Cake (2006)
  • The Country of Ice Cream Star (2014)
  • The Heavens (2019)
  • The Men (2022)
  • Julia (2023)

References

  1. ^ Interview, "The Times of London Magazine," July 10, 2010.
  2. ^ a b Jordan, Justine (August 10, 2002). "Tales from the unhappy childhood museum". Books. The Guardian. London. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  3. ^ "Guardian First Book Award 2002". The Guardian. London. The shortlist. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  4. ^ Flood, Alison (December 15, 2014). "Folio prize reveals 80 titles in contention for 2015 award". Books. The Guardian. London. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  5. ^ a b "Baileys women's prize for fiction longlist - in pictures". The Guardian. London. March 10, 2015. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  6. ^ The Heavens | Grove Atlantic.
  7. ^ Berg, Laura Van Den (February 27, 2019). "A Heroine Who Lives at Once in Elizabethan England and 21st-Century New York". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 28, 2019.
  8. ^ Newman, Sandra (June 14, 2022). The Men. Grove Atlantic. ISBN 978-0-8021-5966-3.
  9. ^ Italie, Hillel (March 24, 2022). "Judges pull award nomination for book by Lauren Hough". Associated Press. Retrieved May 29, 2022.
  10. ^ Mesure, Susie (May 28, 2022). "Sandra Newman on The Men: 'There is no way to write without it being criminal'". The i. Retrieved May 29, 2022.
  11. ^ Allfree, Claire (May 22, 2022). "This sci-fi novel has inspired 2022's most ludicrous trans row". The Telegraph.
  12. ^ "Sandra Newman Envisions Another World".
  13. ^ Crispin, Jessica (May 25, 2022). "The Men by Sandra Newman review — is this the most ill-conceived novel of the year?". The Times. Retrieved May 29, 2022.
  14. ^ Wagner, Erica (May 25, 2022). "The Men by Sandra Newman — a world without the Y chromosome". Financial Times. Retrieved May 29, 2022.
  15. ^ "A flawed utopia: The Men, by Sandra Newman, reviewed | the Spectator". June 2022.
  16. ^ Power, Nina (June 2, 2022). "All men abolished, JK Rowling killed – the trans debate is poisoning literature". The Telegraph.
  17. ^ Patrick, Bethanne (October 20, 2023). "A feminist take on Orwell's '1984' reads like the original — only better". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 7, 2023.
  18. ^ Taylor, Catherine (October 18, 2023). "Julia — Sandra Newman's female-focused take on Orwell". Financial Times. Retrieved November 7, 2023.
  19. ^ Wagner, Erica (October 11, 2023). "Orwell's 1984 gets a feminist retelling – and it's a masterpiece". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved November 7, 2023.