Creating a short story is a serious and compelling skill, and when it is done correctly, creates a powerful moment for the reader, full of the kind of intensity which can change the way we look at the world. Despite…
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
A review of Death of a River Guide by Richard Flanagan
“In an age where everything can mean anything, perhaps it is only possible to exist as a cipher, as a thin, fragile outline of a hope etched across an infinity of madness.” (309) Flanagan provides his answer – in the…
A review of Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a writer of such greatness that his autobiography has an intrinsic interest on the score both of his greatness and the skill with which he tells his own story. Living to Tell the Tale is the…
A review of Ignorance by Milan Kundera
When Ignorance is good, the novel flows like an insightful and moving non-fiction essay along the lines of Garner’s work. The reader perceives Kundera’s insight and shares in the attempts at returning home. There are also moments of sad beauty…
A review of Love by Toni Morrison
The truth of these characters is something both suppressed and created by the man who has damaged them. Cosey’s influence, his power, is one which sits at the opposing pole to the power demonstrated, especially in the end, by Christine…
A review of The Lost German Slave Girl by John Bailey
Although the story of Sally Miller is fascinating enough to be read purely for the forward thrust of the plot, what makes this book worth a serious look is the way Bailey teases out all of the implications, and allows…
A review of Elizabeth Costello by J M Coetzee
Pointless is, unfortunately, the best adjective for this book. There is no coherence between any of the chapters, we have no feeling for any of Costello’s work, and none of the characters, including Costello, are developed. The potential theme, which…
A review of Middlesex by Jeffrey Euginedes
Middlesex the novel is presented as Cal’s third birth – his artistic creation of the “roller coaster ride of a single gene through time.” Cal’s voice is the heart of the story, which is told in a kind of first…
A review of At Home with the Glynns by Eric Kraft
by Bob Williams At Home with the Glynns by Eric Kraft Paperback: 179 pages Picador USA; Reprint edition (May 1996), ISBN: 031214279X Of the first eight books by Kraft, four of them (Little Follies, Where Do You Stop?, What a…
A review of Yellow Dog by Martin Amis
In the often farcical rollercoaster ride that the book follows, the reader encounters a kind of Quixote tilt at the Windmills of honesty, straining to work out what is real and what isn’t, who is really guilty, and if innocence…