This September will be particularly insane for novels. If it fits a back-to-school theme to have the big literary hits of the fall drop then, it's also confusing. Most people would otherwise read these while lying on the dock over Labor Day weekend. Instead that's a privilege reserved for the humblebraggers who get galleys over the summer.

Helen DeWitt, the author of the wonderful novels The Last Samurai and Lightning Rods (seriously! wonderful!), has an essay in the London Review of Books this week about her experience with a stalker. It's a sobering but necessary read.