On today’s Bookworm on KCRW, Russell Banks stops by to talk about The Reserve.

Bookworm calls him “one of the great living American novelists.” In the book, “he uses the 1930’s novel of passion and betrayal–with its allied seductions, madness, and adultery–to explore America’s class system; the relationships between art, politics and wealth; and the despoiling of the American Landscape. Although these are classic Russell Banks themes, this novel explodes with a passionate intensity that is exceptional for him.”

Set before the second World War, the book follows Vanessa Cole in a story of love, drama, and suspense. From Barnes and Nobel: “Vanessa Cole is a stunningly beautiful and wild heiress, her parents’ adopted only daughter. Twice-married, she has been scandalously linked to rich and famous men. On the night of July 4, 1936, inside the Cole family’s remote Adirondack Mountain enclave, known as the Reserve, Vanessa will lose her father to a heart attack–and meet Jordan Groves, a seductively carefree local artist whose leftist political loyalties to his working class neighbors are undercut by his wealth and his clientele. Jordan is easy prey for Vanessa’s electrifying charm. But the heiress carries a dark family secret. Unhinged by her father’s unexpected death, she begins to spin out of control, manipulating and destroying the lives of all who cross her path. Moving from the secluded beauty of the Adirondacks to war-torn Spain and fascist Germany, filled with characters that pierce the heart, The Reserve is a passionately romantic novel of suspense and drama that adds a new dimension to this acclaimed author’s extraordinary repertoire.”

You can listen to the interview here.

On this week’s Bookwork, Michael Silverblatt talks to Robert Alter about his book, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary.

From the Bookwork site: “Biblical scholar Robert Alter faces a barrage of questions: What are psalms? Who wrote them? If they are prayers, why does he consider them poems? If they are poems, why are they so repetitive? If repetition is crucial to psalms, how does it go beyond the rhythms of ancient Hebrew to address God and achieve solace?”

You can listen to the interview here.

This week on KCRW’s Bookworm, Michael Silverblatt talks with Veronica Gonzalez about her debut novel, Twin Time: Or How Death Befell Me. This modern fantasy follows Mona, who was “raised in northeast LA by her widowed immigrant father, a baker, [and grew up] believing her mother died minutes after her birth, and her twin brother was simply given away. Stifled by unnamable doubts as a child, when her father dies, Mona sets off on a quest to discover her long-lost twin brother. The journey takes her into the labyrinth of her own fabulations about her parents’ lives, and a dreamy Mexico City that exists only as cultural imagination. In the process she encounters a band of Nordic men, her Chinese double, a lascivious giant, and a tribe of feral children.”

“I found it fascinating because in a certain way, it’s a novel that almost can’t be written,” says Silverblatt. “This is a character who knows nothing factual about her existence. In fact, the reader knows more than she does. Therefore, this book becomes hard to narrate.” Gonzalez explained that she went about by writing the middle of the book first. “But I love the ambiguity of fiction. It was difficult to write, and I had to do a lot of revising to make things make sense.” says Gonzalez. “I’m much more interested in a diffused narrative.”

You can listen to the interview here.