There’s a spare loveliness to Waldman’s prose, infused as it is with loneliness, humour, and a deep sense of irony in the cyclical prison of our nostalgia for the past. Good Americans Go To Paris When They Die manages a delicate, and all too rare, balancing act between entertainment and introspection.
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
A review of God of Speed by Luke Davies
Though Davies’ Hughes isn’t exactly a likable character, the intimacy is so striking and the intensity of the portrait so great that Hughes becomes someone entirely familiar. Not so much the grand aviator with all the superlatives of his status: richest, fastest, most inventive, but instead, a man like any other, pursued by demons and running hard to find a way to live through them.
A review of The New Angel by Ali Alizadeh
Bahram’s is the voice of the newly-arrived immigrant, misunderstood and always alien, at home neither in the country he has come from nor the one he now inhabits. Such people are becoming increasingly common in our globalised society, and their outsider voices need to be heard and heeded if the notion of a ‘global village’ is to ever become a reality.
A review of Tumbuktu by Paul Auster
The overriding desire for meaning beyond this short life is one which infuses the book, but Auster never allows a human narrative voice to interfere with Mr Bones’ perspective. Clever, funny, lighthearted and serious all at the same time, this is a stylistic departure for Paul Auster which nonetheless makes full use of his gifts.
A review of Can You Forgive Her by Anthony Trollope
It is the first book in the Palliser series, so that if you want to tackle this one of Trollope’s two novel-sets, you should start here. And it is a probing and sensitive study of a woman struggling to find her own way, in a society where this was really unheard of, and where it took much more of a battle than it would today.
A review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
There are stereotypes where I wouldn’t have expected them (the strong, fierce, scarred mother Belicia, for example, whose interior life is scarcely present). It is action-packed and invigorating. For a first novel, it contains remarkable writing and invention, but there is plenty of room for development and maturation in his subsequent work.
A review of Be Near Me by Andrew O’Hagan
And Be Near Me is exquisitely written and this in itself prompts another question. Can a book that is exquisitely written condescend to bother with plot, characterization, and, quite simply, the dirty work of novelistic labor?
A review of Beginner’s Greek by James Collins
The problem is that there’s not much substance to this novel. If all you want is entertainment, then this will provide it. It is competently written, but uneven; character development is in need of work. And there is too much manipulation of the reader.
A review of His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
This last sentence so changes the story, that this reader at least, went back and re-read it in its entirety, seeing everything in a different light. I enjoyed it the first time, but found much to reflect on the second – the hallmark of a good novel. Che is believable, both as the eight-year old boy struggling to find himself, and as the older, wiser narrator he becomes by the end of the book.
A review of Magic and Grace by Chad Hautmann
Unlike Billie’s Ghost, the magic in Magic and Grace is all metaphorical. There are visitations though. Chapman’s father materialises temporarily to give Chapman his blessing, there are the ghosts of the ancient Calusa buried below the city of Naples where the book is set (and the ghost of the city as it changes progressively), and of course the ghost of Keats from Chapman’s first novel.