Nothing Remains the Same

Wendy Lesser’s new book is “an inspired intellectual romp: part memoir, part criticism, though actually a bracing, larkish reinvention of them both” (Lawrence Weschler). Revisiting her favorite books after the passage of twenty or thirty years, Lesser is stirred by the changes she finds—in the books, in herself, and in the wider world. If NOTHING REMAINS THE SAME is a book about reading, it is also a book about time, with rereading as a special form of time travel. From classic novels such as ANNA KARENINA and THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY to a charming tale for young adults called I CAPTURE THE CASTLE, from nonfiction by George Orwell and Henry Adams to poetry by Wordsworth and Milton, from the deeply American HUCKLEBERRY FINN to works in translation like DON QUIXOTE and THE IDIOT, Lesser covers the whole literary spectrum. NOTHING REMAINS THE SAME is a witty and humane exploration of what books can mean to our lives and vice versa, by a writer who “has the gift of enabling a reader to grasp the deeper workings of art forms, both high and low, in the act of describing how they affect her” (James Shapiro, New York Times Book Review).