I’m one of those oddballs who reaches for the Book Review in the Sunday NYT before anything else (even though it’s almost always disappointing, as I’ve said again and again). It’s fairly rare that I read a book review that actually makes me want to rush in the direction of the nearest bookstore. That’s how I felt reading this piece by Joan Acocella, a review of Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity. I had never heard of Beware of Pity before. I had never heard of Stefan Zweig before. According to the first paragraph, I’m not alone.

Honestly, the only reason I read the review was because of Acocella’s byline. She’s probably my favorite among The New Yorker’s regular critics. She’s all brain. She’s a pleasure. Her energy for distinguishing a work from other works is incredible. The faults she finds are always big and interesting. (I’ll never forget gushing about Zadie Smith’s On Beauty and then flipping open The New Yorker to find Acocella brilliantly describing On Beauty’s failures.)

Also in the current New York Review of Books: Jonathan Raban reviews the new Updike book.