The community of Another is a bleak one to be sure—a distopia which is all too real. Death is everywhere, and those that hurt you most are those who should be protecting you. The community is empty and disfunctional, and everyone we meet is poor, damaged, and full of ugly pain and scars. It isn’t pretty, but somehow Deane’s exquisite writing contains beauty that transcends its setting, and hope which goes beyond the unhappy ending.
Author:
Interview with Phil LaMarche
The author of American Youth talks about his novel and its positive reception, cultural differences in perception, his characters, his narrative voice, the relationship between teaching and writing, his literary influences, on filming his work, his next project, and more.
A review of American Youth by Phil LaMarche
American Youth is a perfectly rendered novel which manages that difficult balance between absolute topicality—this is a novel for our times—and timeless beauty. This is both a classic piece of literature and an important chronicle of a generation desperate to get out of a downward spiral.
A review of Stranger Than Fiction
However absurd the premise is, Stranger than Fiction is completely believable. However ridiculous the characters are, every one is absolutely realistic and multi-dimensional. Stranger than Fiction is a wonderful film, as easy on the eye and brain as any Hollywood blockbuster, but like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind manages to leave the viewer with more than they arrived with.
Cuban Pianist, International Treasure: Bebo Valdés
t is a mastery, elegant and elegiac, of the “the cultivated and the popular,” in an album of “thirteen pieces exemplifying Cuba’s major musical genres, starting with the emergence of a recognizably Cuban music in the mid-19th century,” in which the songs “are presented more or less chronologically—contradanza, danza, danzón, bolero, guaguancó,” an album that promises to become a pleasure and a defining reference for others, as much as it has been a joy for pianist Bebo Valdés.
Humor, Outrage, Vulgarity, and Intense Rhythm: Fishbone’s Still Stuck in Your Throat
Listening to Fishbone’s Still Stuck in Your Throat, I hear punk rock, jazz, Caribbean rap, rhythm and blues, and even something I might call a ballad, but I hear little that I can recognize, even generously, as funk: which to me signifies not only a heavy, thick musical groove but the most expansive sensuality. Fishbone is a lot of things, including sexual, but sensual? I don’t think so.
A review of Tell No One
The cost of beginning the film with so many curious perplexing events is that some sense has to be given to them at the end. This emphasis on explanation may derive from Coben’s source novel, but perhaps it is simply a characteristic, or failing, of mystery as a genre. Anyway, there is no tolerance for implausibility here, as one might find, say, in the films of David Lynch or the fictions of Harry Mathews and Ben Marcus.
A review of Nights in the Asylum by Carol Lefevre
I believe this is an important Australian novel which addresses the contemporary dilemma of the asylum seeker. The novel comes at a time when the refugee issue is transforming from one of a (frustrating, on my part) general apathy towards ‘queue-jumpers’ around the time of the SIEVX to a burgeoning collective empathy (perhaps guilt) towards refugees genuinely seeking asylum in this country.
Neil Gaiman: Part Two: Short Stories and the Poems
All fiction is fantasy according to Gaiman. This statement is too airy a wave of the hand. It amounts to no more than that only writers with imagination write stories. The combination of the real and the fantastic is not peculiar to Gaiman, but some writers make the combination with notable skill. There is no question in Gaiman’s work. He manages seamless documents for the most part.
A review of Chess Informant 97
Playing over top-quality games such as these, and studying the accompanying notes, provides the best possible grounding for finding out what modern chess is about, whether in the area of attack, defense or positional play. One can see what the best contemporary players are doing, acquire a good appreciation of their various styles and keep up to date with current opening theory as well.