There are many other Nayman hilarities. The sentient kitchen, for example, is so possessive that if a human tries to boil an egg ‘it turns the heat up so much you could melt a pavement.’ Science too gets the treatment.…
Tag: novel
A Review of Liam’s Going by Michael Joyce
So often novels have style but little substance and often there is a struggle to express substance but the project is doomed without style. Here is a book with both in abundance and a sense of poetry that illumines both…
A Review of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
When a novelist wins a prestigious literary prize like the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the Pen/Faulkner, it is interesting to glance back at his first novel–first novels, even those praised, so regularly ignored by the public at large–to discover…
A Review of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
If you are interested in the ‘golden age’ of comic books, are of Jewish, Eastern European origin, have some interest in WWII, or are a New Yorker, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay will have a particular resonance for you. Even…
Slippery Substances: A Review of V S Naipaul’s Half a Life
Slippery Substances: A Review of V S Naipaul’s Half a Life Half a life is set firstly in post-independence India, at the politically protected court of the Maharaja, later in London, then in the pre-independence Africa in a nameless country…
A review of Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection
In the tentative groping of the characters for meaning, the articulation of silence, Grenville creates a story which is a pleasure to read. Reviewed by Magdalena Ball Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most accessible writers. She has her own…
A review of Hanif Kureishi’s Gabriel’s Gift
Gabriel’s Gift follows a few months in the life of Gabriel Bunch, a fifteen year old North London schoolboy in search of his muse. Gabriel’s parents have recently split up, and his father, once the bass player for 70s rock…
A review of Moses Isegawa’s Abyssinian Chronicles
A boy is raised in the land of despots, where the “curried curses of dispossessed property owners” is not necessary to explode into murderous excess. Between his abusive and tyrannical parents, and the abusive and tyrannical dictator Idi Amin, who…
A review of David Malouf’s Dream Stuff
A missing father, a missing uncle, a missing place. David Malouf’s latest book of short stories, Dream Stuff is about longing and nostalgia. A desire to reach across the bridge of time, back to some place which may have never…
A review of Anita Desai’s Diamond Dust
ndividually, the stories in Diamond Dust traverse a wide geographic terrain, moving from the Himalayas to Manitoba, Toronto, Cornwall, Amherst, Massachusetts, Mexico, and Delhi, but throughout the stories there are similarities in the characters, and in the theme; that of…