T.C. Boyle’s new novel, “San Miguel,” is written to the natural rhythms of a distant, isolated place, and to the human rhythms of tormented souls. San Miguel Island is a real place, the westernmost of the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California. In Boyle’s book, it’s a patch of earth beyond the end […]

Sarah Rubin grew up on an island off the Maine coast. But if you’re eager for a story about herring gulls, fishing boats and the mystery of the tides, you won’t find it in her new book, “Someday Dancer.” She lives now in Winchester, England. And in this book, you’ll find little hint of that […]

PHILLIP HOOSE

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a much merrier world.” This quote, from J.R.R. Tolkien and written on the dining room wall at Five Fifty-Five in Portland, set the tone for the evening, and because I was dining on the 39th anniversary of Tolkien’s death, […]

“Weatherbeaten: Winslow Homer and Maine” is a show no one should miss. It is an ambitious and handsome presentation of Homer as the mature and indomitable Maine painter of world renown. While the Portland Museum of Art says the point of the exhibition of 38 works is to commemorate the newly restored Homer studio on […]

A gala at the Portland Museum of Art provides a sleek preview of the Winslow Homer exhibition, now open to the public.

Susan Poulin gathers her stage character’s wit and wisdom in a self-help book filled with Maine humor.