Durga Chew-Bose

The author of Too Much and Not the Mood on restlessness, heritable belongings and interior life. 

Gus Van Sant's 1995 adaptation of Joyce Maynard's novel revolved around self-control under observation. Two decades later, it feels both prescient and all the more relevant.

"The way she inches towards enormity without overreaching, the crisp appeal of her comic timing, and her sparring temper that dodges any Sandra Bullock-type sweetheart likeness."

Reading The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, Durga Chew-Bose felt a long-abiding familiarity with the novel’s premise—one she recognized from her father’s stories—and with the author, a first-generation Bengali writer who was raised on the East Coast. Here she discovered how it is to read when the emotional stake is not strictly your own.

Though clean by design, Her’s visual vocabulary never feels overly tailored. Its colours and imagery are deliberate, but rather than lapse into bludgeoning metaphor, they prop up a world based on comfort—both the appreciation of and the longing for.