79: Mall Life: Karin-Lin Greenberg

Send us Fan Mail

On this episode we talk about this year's International Literature Festival Dublin which runs from 16-25 May, and where Enda will be interviewing novelists Gethan Dick and Patrick Holloway. We also talk to Karin-Lin Greenberg about Your Are Here, her novel set in a dying mall in upstate New York.

"Lin-Greenberg’s web of characters illustrate the complex lives of ordinary people." —Laura Zornosa, Time

"Like Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, the charm of Lin-Greenberg’s engaging story lies in the sweetness of the characters’ everyday lives." —Becky Meloan, The Washington Post

"Charming . . . The small lies woven into a lifelong marriage, the petty resentments harbored by polite neighbors and, above all, the comic discrepancy between a character’s outer and inner life—all emerge unforced and unadorned in this multifaceted narrative . . . But the everyday reality that Ms. Lin-Greenberg so memorably creates is not easily eclipsed. Compassion and wry understatement remain her strengths, and in You Are Here she captures not only the frayed texture of suburban existence but also the turbulent emotions, immediate and long buried, of protagonists who are ultimately far more than stereotypes." —Anna Mundow, The Wall Street Journal

"Beautifully written and radically sympathetic . . . Among its achievements, You Are Here is a breathtaking depiction of a community—even one at the mall." —Jeffrey Condran, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Absolutely irresistible." —People

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

Support the show