Photo from table at Newtonville Books**
Always a big moment for the author when the first full-fledged review appears in The New York Times Book Review. Today, it's Laila Lalami's turn with the publication of The Secret Son, which Gaiutra Bahadar reviews.
I met Laila through Zoetrope, where she opened a very popular "office" called Short Story Collections prior to publication of her first book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. This led to a strong enough connection that when that book came out, Xujun Eberlein, author of Apologies Forthcoming, also a "member" of Laila's office, and I hosted a luncheon for Laila here at my house. A picture of Laila on that very nice day and big congrats to Laila as word spreads of her talent.
**It's a Zoetrope tradition that we snap pictures of one another's books whenever we see them. This one, from my phone, as usual, sent to Laila about a month ago when she was in Boston on her book tour.
