Is there a need for shark policy at all?
My position is that there’s no government decision that’s going to stop a shark bite. I always say, it’s the decisions you make, not the decisions governments make, that’s going to determine your level of risk. Secondly, any policy needs to be predicated on the assumption that you share the ocean with sharks. In the U.S., we have “swim at your own risk.” The ocean is the wild; it’s not a pool.
There are some examples of policies where, if you take all of that into account, there are things you can do to really reduce risk. This is the one thing: the Imminent Threat policy doesn’t reduce risk. Culling sharks doesn’t reduce your risk of a shark bite. But in Cape Town, South Africa, they set up a shark spotter program, where they put people on the cliffs with binoculars, and they look down and if they see a shark they signal an alarm and pull people in. That does reduce risk. And at some beaches, where you don’t get big waves, you can set up small, temporary enclosures. There are some things like that that you can do, but you’re really limited, because the ocean is the wild.
This is a tricky one, because scientists say, “Look, it’s an act of nature, you know you can’t prove it wasn’t the same shark without catching it and killing it, but I can tell you that it’s not the same shark, this isn’t the way shark behavior works.” But you can use the “Jaws” theme to overwhelm science.The next winter — she had left him in June, and now his to-do list had no editor — he jacked up the thermostat, let the kids wander barefoot through the drafty rooms, made the sidewalks into clean slates, cleared the snow as it fell, sawed, split, and stacked wood in precise piles on the back porch, and in the still dark mornings, when he stoked the stove into a ridiculously fiery furnace, the children woke up wearing summer pajamas, sat at his feet, bed-headed, sipping cocoa, and he told them story after story about people who’d gotten unexpectedly lost in the cold but had made it home in time, a Christmas miracle.
Dean Bakopoulos is the author of the novels “My American Unhappiness” and “Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon.” His latest, “Summerlong,” will be published in June.
“Arctic Summer,” by Damon Galgut (Europa Editions)
Galgut is the master of loneliness. Nobody else writes so delicately, yet so compellingly, about the subtleties of yearning, about the thrills of intimacy and the ache of desires unfulfilled. I have loved his other novels and I loved “Arctic Summer” too. A fictionalized biography of E.M. Forster, it’s a sustained imaginative leap into the troubled author’s experiences in England, Egypt and colonial India in which every historical detail, and every emotion, rings absolutely true.Meg Wolitzer, author of “Belzhar” (Dutton Juvenile)
“Stone Mattress: Nine Tales,” by Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese)
I have long been a fan of Margaret Atwood, so when I snapped up her new collection of stories, I was not surprised by its deftness, piquancy, darkness and wit. But I was pleased to find that a few of the stories overlap cleverly and in surprising ways; and that big themes of death and aging color much of the book, giving it a thematic resonance and weight. That said, despite the chill of mortality or the exploration of dark impulses, there remains a seemingly-effortless humor at work here, bubbling paradoxically and pleasurably along, from the title story, a murder tale set on an Arctic cruise, to the final, brilliant entry, “Torching the Dusties,” in which the protagonist is an elderly woman living in an old-age community, who finds herself confronted with surreal end-of-life issues. These are smart, swift-reading stories that are both tightly-written and tough; as always, Atwood is a master of the form.
“Without You, There is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite,” by Suki Kim (Crown)
This touching, beautifully written memoir of teaching in an all-male college run by Christian evangelicals is a rare, intimate portrait of life in the world’s least-known country: grinding poverty for the masses, bland tedium for the ruling class, no fun, no freedom, and fear for all.Darcey Steinke, author of “Sister Golden Hair” (Tin House Books)Merritt Tierce, author of “Love Me Back” (Doubleday)Gabrielle Zevin, author of “The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” (Algonquin Books)Nell Zink, author of “The Wallcreeper” (Dorothy, a publishing project)
“The Wallcreeper,” by Nell Zink (Dorothy, a publishing project)
The best new book I read this year was definitely “The Wallcreeper” by Nell Zink. Its intellectual level and sense of humor are exquisitely attuned to mine, and I have no trouble filling in the gaps left by its dishonest narrators. The ending delights and surprises me every time, since it was a last-minute decision. I think I read only six other books published this year in English, and I only liked three of them: “Boy, Snow, Bird” by Helen Oyeyemi, John Clute’s essay collection “Stay,” and “Guide to Troubled Birds,” a novelty item based on a series of refrigerator magnets. That’s what happens when you’re broke and paying for books yourself, I guess. I bought a few paperbacks I thought were new, but I checked and they’re all from last year. Now I have money to buy books, plus in 2015 I’m hoping I’ll turn into one of those newbie sucker micro-celeb authors people expect would be grateful for a blurbing opportunity (I would be grateful!), so this time next year I may have a less self-infatuated answer.
Michele Filgate's work has appeared in The Daily Beast, Vulture, Capital New York, Time Out New York, The Star Tribune, O: The Oprah Magazine, Bookslut, The Quarterly Conversation and other publications
“American Innovations,” by Rivka Galchen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)