New Yorker Briefly Noted: Four Book Reviews

The New Yorker's Briefly Noted section reviews four books. John Lanchester's "Look What You Made Me Do" (Norton) is a black comedy about two London women—Kate, a wealthy ex-art historian, and Phoebe, a TV writer—whose lives intertwine when Kate discovers a Netflix show based on her marriage. Shrikant Verma's "Magadh" (Liveright), translated from Hindi by Rahul Soni, is a poetry collection first published in 1984, exploring the ancient kingdom of Magadh as a symbol of empire, caste, and despotism. Xiao Hai's "Adrift in the South" (Granta), translated by Tony Hao, is a memoir of leaving home at fifteen to work in southern Chinese factories, where he began writing poems on the production floor. Steve Brusatte's "The Story of Birds" (Mariner) is a natural history tracing birds' dinosaur ancestry from Archaeopteryx to modern species, blending paleontology with vivid storytelling.