So what defines a Catholic novel? I am still struggling with that question. But I know that that which asks most of us is most worthy of us.

As one reviewer observed, “She began by writing about sidewalks and finished with an account of Western civilization itself.”

In a midtown subway station four silent women, bent over their smartphones, texted or read while an unconscious ragged man sprawled helpless at their feet. I checked to see if he was dead.

A drive along Sunset can be a startling experience, each turn in the road presenting another movie star smiling down from on high.

Told in alternating chapters, the lives of painter, collector and forger blend and echo in ways that none of them could imagine.