Parenting & Families

Jane Gardam has spent her long career writing dry, honest books about British life. Her new novel, The Man in the Wooden Hat, showcases the regrets of a woman never quite sure that marrying her husband was the right choice. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls Gardam the best British writer you've never heard of.

For most of his life, music critic Tim Page felt like an outsider. Restless and isolated, he was uneasy around others. Finally, when he was 45, Page was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist opens up about his experiences as a father to four children and husband to writer Ayelet Waldman in his new book of personal essays, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son.

Your kids are perfect — just don't tell them that. NurtureShock, the new book by Po Bronson, explores how Americans have misunderstood the role of praise in parenting and what we can do to save our kids from ourselves.

Writer and director Cherien Dabis talks about her feature film Amreeka, and the immigrant childhood that inspired it.

Maureen Corrigan reviews Lorrie Moore's most recent novel.

Rafael Yglesias' novel is inspired by his wife, Margaret, who died in 2004. A Happy Marriage spans their three-decade relationship, from their courtship to her battle with cancer.

Seattle director Lynn Shelton's fabulously squirmy film Humpday centers on two seemingly straight men who decide to have sex with each other as part of an amateur porn video competition.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' pays tribute to his father in his Memoir.

Masterpieces make their own rules — and David Edelstein says it's hard to think of a work comparable to Olivier Assayas's hauntingly beautiful film, about cultural tides and the people carried on them.

Four years ago, novelist Ayelet Waldman sparked a controversy — and wound up on Oprah to defend herself — when she wrote in an essay that she loved her husband more than her children.

In her new memoir, When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win: Reflections on Looking in the Mirror, stand-up comedian and Seinfeld writer Carol Leifer recounts her experiences working as a comedian.

Psychologist Richard Weissbourd contends that parents who are obsessed with their children's happiness are ignoring other important values — like goodness, empathy, appreciation and caring — that are necessary to a well-rounded personality.

By refusing to serve up even one likable main character, Zoe Heller's new novel raises implicit questions about readers' expectations about fiction. Reviewer Maureen Corrigan calls The Believers a "smart, caustic novel."

Isabel Gillies grapples with the sudden dissolution of her marriage in the memoir Happens Every Day. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls this "all too-true story" a "compulsive" and "chilling" late-night read.

Fresh Air's film critic reviews Everlasting Moments, the latest from Jan Troell, the 77-year-old Swedish director best known in the U.S. for the '70s epics The Emigrants and The New Land.

Comic actor Danny McBride stars in Eastbound and Down, a new HBO series about a washed-up baseball star who becomes a substitute gym teacher.

Atlantic contributing editor Ta-Nehisi Coates describes growing up with a father who was a member of the Black Panthers in his new memoir, The Beautiful Struggle.