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Hillary Kelly

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Hillary Kelly is a book, television, and cultural critic and, since 2017, a contributor to Vulture, where she has profiled writers like Susan Choi, Rivka Galchen, Emily St. John Mandel, and Olivia Laing; charted the rise and fall of the Literary Jonathans, and the unending rise of the "villainous bitch" trend in literature; and interviewed luminaries like Hilary Mantel and Jenny Offill. She has worked as a books editor at the New Republic, a contributor to Glamour, and a writer for outlets such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and The Atlantic.

  1. book review
    Mum’s the Word: Elizabeth Remains a Cipher in New Biography The Queen: Her LifeAuthor Andrew Morton doesn’t even try to pin his subject down, offering instead Wikipedia-deep chronologies and press-release prose.
  2. overnights
    House of the Dragon Season-Finale Recap: Blood of the DragonThe dragons are about to eat one another alive.
  3. overnights
    House of the Dragon Recap: Pawn, Queen, KingThe king is dead! Long live the king! … If the Hightowers can find Aegon and pull off this coup.
  4. overnights
    House of the Dragon Recap: A Cozy Little MeleeThe Targaryen and Velaryon families are not the kind of kinfolk whose problems can be solved over the dinner table.
  5. overnights
    House of the Dragon Recap: Bastards and Broken NosesThe various dispersed Targaryens descend on Driftmark, and bring with them their genetically endowed abilities to be uniquely awful.
  6. overnights
    House of the Dragon Recap: A Bad EggLike it was for the Starks in early Game of Thrones episodes, the stakes for child’s play are high for these little Targaryens.
  7. a long talk
    Hilary Mantel Thinks the Last Book Is Her Best“I’ve always been very ambitious. But it’s more in my own terms than in other people’s terms.”
  8. overnights
    House of the Dragon Recap: One Wedding and Two FuneralsA pack of new menaces has arrived just in time to broaden the show’s reach.
  9. overnights
    House of the Dragon Recap: The Second SexCongratulations to House of the Dragon for finding a way to make sex actually further the narrative and character development.
  10. overnights
    House of the Dragon Recap: Green-Eyed MonsterViserys may swear to Rhaenyra, “On your mother’s memory, you will not be supplanted,” but Daemon is still out there, waiting in the wings.
  11. overnights
    House of the Dragon Recap: The Westeros WingViserys actually makes pretty good decisions for a Targaryen king, which leads to boring ol’ stable politics. Luckily, there’s a dragon face-off.
  12. overnights
    House of the Dragon Series-Premiere Recap: A Song of Ice and FireA Targaryen-centric prequel begins in typical Game of Thrones fashion: well-acted, violent, revolting, CGI’d to the max, and more than a little horny.
  13. good books
    Oh Look, It’s the National Book Foundation’s Newest ‘5 Under 35’ ListThis year, the honor given to authors for their debut works goes to four novels and a short-story collection.
  14. close reads
    Station Eleven Finds the Sublime in the ApocalypseThis pandemic story’s winter 2021 debut seems almost perfectly wrongly timed, but that’s precisely what makes it so perversely satisfying.
  15. best of 2021
    The Best Books of 2021From radical nuns to gut-wrenching memoir, this year’s books hit us where it hurt.
  16. book review
    In Rax King’s Book Tacky, Lowbrow Is High PraiseA new essay collection celebrating trash culture is less certain about why some things are considered tacky at all.
  17. fall preview 2021
    40 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This FallIncluding Sally Rooney, Colson Whitehead, Tiphanie Yanique, and, yes, Jonathan Franzen.
  18. overnights
    The Handmaid’s Tale Season-Finale Recap: You Can’t Go Home AgainIs revenge the only closure June — and we — can hope for at this point?
  19. overnights
    The Handmaid’s Tale Recap: Trade SecretsInformation is just flying back-and-forth over that Canadian–Gileadean border.
  20. profile
    Rivka Galchen’s Unsettling PowersHer new novel is about a vicious, real-life witch hunt—and she somehow still managed to make it funny.
  21. overnights
    The Handmaid’s Tale Recap: Halo EffectJune fought like hell to get to Canada, but now that she’s there, she may have to sacrifice her most vital relationships in order to enact revenge.
  22. overnights
    The Handmaid’s Tale Recap: Do You Understand Me?The first brilliant episode of the season pushes June into new territory and The Handmaid’s Tale into a distinct new phase.
  23. summer 2021
    35 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This SummerTreat yourself to new reads from Akwaeke Emezi, Rivka Galchen, Paula Hawkins, and more.
  24. overnights
    The Handmaid’s Tale Recap: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger BoatA return-to-form episode frees us from the cycle of catch and release and taps into a far more rewarding emotional tension.
  25. overnights
    The Handmaid’s Tale Recap: Boulevard of Broken DreamsOf all the streets in all the towns in all the world …
  26. overnights
    The Handmaid’s Tale Recap: Come On, Feel the IllinoiseA breather episode moves some pieces around the board and highlights how Janine has sneakily grown into a fitting counterpart to June.
  27. overnights
    The Handmaid’s Tale Recap: Engines of ChangeIn an episode that’s about 75 percent straight-up torture, the biggest emotional wrecking ball comes at the very end.
  28. overnights
    The Handmaid’s Tale Recap: Saint JuneWithout realizing it, June keeps knocking over long lines of dominoes.
  29. overnights
    The Handmaid’s Tale Season-Premiere Recap: Make Me ProudJune has crossed the Rubicon.
  30. the art of ending things
    Why the End of Atonement Is a Triumph for Unreliable NarratorsWhen Ian McEwan’s book came out, the final twist infuriated many readers. Twenty years later, it’s a classic of the form.
  31. behind the scenes
    Pieces of a Woman Hinges on One Heaving, Tremendous Home Birth-SceneThe filmmakers and star Vanessa Kirby explain how the tragic 24-minute shot came together.
  32. 2021 preview
    46 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2021With new novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, Rachel Cusk, and more.
  33. best of 2020
    The Best Books of the Year (So Far)During a difficult year, fiction is rising to contemporary challenges and demands.
  34. windsor woes
    The Crown Found Its Scoundrel in CharlesIf the Netflix series once wanted us to see the prince as a sensitive man dragged along by an unfeeling system, it certainly doesn’t anymore.
  35. overnights
    The Good Lord Bird Finale Recap: He Stirred Shit UpThis story ends exactly how and when it should, but damn, I wish there were more.
  36. overnights
    The Good Lord Bird Recap: LunaticsThe penultimate episode leans into John Brown’s failed raid on Harpers Ferry as a comedy of errors.
  37. overnights
    The Good Lord Bird Recap: Jesus Walks“Hiving the Bees” painstakingly recounts just how exquisitely John Brown fumbled his planning for the raid at Harpers Ferry.
  38. overnights
    The Good Lord Bird Recap: No More WordsAn exquisitely rendered hour of television finally regulates Onion and John Brown’s relationship.
  39. chat room
    Why Daveed Diggs Finally Agreed to Play Frederick Douglass for Good Lord Bird“It’s not a goal of mine to play historical figures … I’m not really interested in the hero worship that we normally do with our biographies.”
  40. overnights
    The Vow Season-Finale Recap: Take Back Your LifeThe Vow concludes having given us only the briefest of glimpses into what culpability really looks like. Then again, there’s always next season.
  41. overnights
    The Good Lord Bird Recap: Meet the DouglassesFrederick Douglass (Daveed Diggs) is introduced in direct dichotomy to Brown in an episode that purposely pushes our buttons.
  42. book review
    DeLillo and Amis’s New Books Are Lazy Versions of Their Greatest HitsIf you’re looking to the old guard for innovation, you’re in for a disappointing reading season.
  43. overnights
    The Vow Recap: Maybe You Should Talk to SomeoneHeading into its endgame, The Vow makes the claim that the poison that destroyed NXIVM at the root was plain-old endemic misogyny.
  44. overnights
    The Good Lord Bird Recap: Divided in HalfA slower, moodier episode pulls back on Brown’s scene-stealing hijinks and switches the narrative from savior-focused to slave-focused.
  45. overnights
    The Vow Recap: The Body Keeps the ScoreA two-pronged episode fills in an important element of Keith’s backstory, as Catherine Oxenberg inches closer to legal action against him.
  46. overnights
    The Good Lord Bird Premiere Recap: What a Beautiful CountryA busy premiere built around one skirmish after another nonetheless admirably strings together a morally complicated situation.
  47. overnights
    The Vow Recap: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed“Honesty & Disclosure” finally catalogues the backlog of other accusations leveled against Keith Raniere & Co. for almost a decade.
  48. overnights
    The Vow Recap: Think and Grow Rich“Class 1 Data” follows the money, and tracks exactly how the defectors pushed their narrative into mainstream media.
  49. overnights
    The Vow Recap: Change Your Mind, Change Your BodyWe see the many ways that the women inside NXIVM were instructed to turn on one another — but always in the name of “helping.”
  50. overnights
    The Vow Recap: Lean InSomehow the day-to-day workings of DOS are even more alarming than Girls’ Night Out, Branding Edition.
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