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In American fiction, TV and film, suburbia has long stood as shorthand for repression. It's a place of "wide lawns and narrow minds," as Earnest Hemingway put it. But representations of the suburbs have taken on a different shape of late.

Alan Cheuse reviews Half of a Yellow Sun, by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The novel takes place during the Biafran War of the 1960s and follows characters through the turbulent times.

Little Children tracks an affair between a dissatisfied housewife and "the prom king," a stay-at-home dad who avoids studying for the Bar as he visits the playground with his son. Things come to a head when a man sent to jail for exposing himself to children is released and moves into the community.

Infamous tells the story of Truman Capote as he wrote In Cold Blood. If that sounds familiar, it's because a movie about the exact same thing came out a year ago, and it was a better film.

Francis Ford Coppola's first film in a decade is an idea-driven film based on a Romanian philosopher's delicate novella. It's about an aged academic who becomes young again when he's struck by lightning.

Our weeklong retrospective of the year's most entertaining interviews continues with Nancy Cartwright. You've probably heard her work, but you may not have known it was her. She's the voice of Bart Simpson.

Fresh Air's book critic looks back at a busy year and selects the books that linger in memory as the calendar page turns. Her favorite fiction included Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs, Min Jin Lee's Free Food for Millionaires, and Last Night at the Lobster, by Stewart O'Nan.

Filmmaker Brian De Palma has been making movies and stirring controversy for more than 40 years. His films include Scarface and Casualties of War; his new Redacted retells a true story about a rape and murder committed in Iraq by U.S. soldiers.

Our cultural concierge, Jesse Kornbluth, urges revisiting the 1983 comedy, Local Hero. The soundtrack of this overlooked film – about Scottish villagers who thwart an American oil company's efforts to buy their land — is just as entertaining as the premise.

Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, creators of Thirtysomething and executive producers of My So-Called Life, are making news again with a new series. It's called Quarterlife, and it's airing not on TV, but in short, six-to-an-hour episodes on the Web. Some pundits are touting it as an alternative for audiences during the ongoing Hollywood writers' strike. Critic David Bianculli, who's working on the Web himself now at TVWorthWatching.com, has a review.