 |
|
|
|
Reviews of books by some of the hottest writers working today, exclusive author interviews, literary news and criticism.
 |
|
|
|
|
Fill out your email address
to receive our newsletter!
|
|
|
|
|
 Get new reviews the instant they are posted to the site with RSS
What is RSS?
|
|
| Search Box (type in author's last name or one key word) |
|
|
|
|
|
 Topic: Literary Fiction ReviewsThe new items published under this topic are as follows.
|
|
|
|
 Brown subtitles his novel "An American Tale". It does indeed take place in Pennsylvania. It is also American in that it deals with a family whose forebear came there to practice religion in his own way. And it is arguably American in its focus on violence. But in another sense, it is curiously remote from the familiar American landscape.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 While sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre was immediately acclaimed, critics had little use for Emily's book. They thought that Heathcliff and Cathy were too "pagan" to appeal to the the British reader. Well, they are pagan, and so is the book as a whole. Established religion, in WH, is reduced to the rantings of a demented preacher in a dream, and the interminable rattlings-on of an old servant. The book is dominated by ghosts, wildness, violence, and (yes!) the darkest side of the human soul.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 The wait at the dentist’s office, or while sitting at the railroad crossing waiting for the train to pass, or stopped as the 4th grader runs back to the classroom for something forgotten. Each tale is told in a few pages, stories are quick paced, filled with language tone, gradation and nuance as only John Howard Reid can create.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 We all of us choose what we do with our lives from a finite set of alternatives; and for Theo, in his darkest moments at any rate, love is not on the menu: ‘If I could love I would have loved by now.’ Happy Baby is about a person for whom love, as a possibility, has been taken away. It isn’t any kind of answer, it cannot be.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Morais keeps the plot both basic—a young man’s journey to become a top French chef—and elegant, as the book’s three main locations (Mumbai, London, and Paris) add a touch of the exotic. Hassan tells us about himself more through his experiences in the kitchen than anywhere else. He lives, he loves, he mourns the losses of his parents and mentors, but his greatest love is his kitchen.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 The tension between presence and absence (the dead sister’s but also humanity’s, the death of the individual and civilizations big thematic aspects of this novel) becomes palpable here in the tension between sound and silence, belief and non-belief, joy and longing, grief and ecstasy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 One of the fun aspects of this novel is the fact that author Lorne Rothman, who holds a doctorate in zoology and research work in ecology, chooses a hero who is a tent caterpillar.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Overall, the stories paint very clear pictures, sometimes reading more like prose poetry, sometimes like anecdotes, sometimes with surprising turns, sometimes just resonating in lush language.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Is Replenishing Jessica literature? Well, perhaps not. But it's not badly written ... and it can be very funny. Actually, it had me guffawing out loud (always a bit embarrassing in public places) -- which I very rarely do in the course of reading.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 One can discern a playful intelligence at work here, behind all the anxiety and uneasiness, though naturally the novel is not entirely a comedy. In certain respects it puts one in mind of Thomas Love Peacock: because the bulk of the novel is rendered in dialogue and because the people (they are too real to be called characters) are so unusual, at least to us, some 85 years later.
|
|
|
|
|
|
