Life, Death & Bialys is a very personal book. Dylan tells us much about himself, and what he tells us is the kind of thing that most of us can’t talk about. Dylan is fearlessly self-revelatory. He strips briskly and without…
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
A review of The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst has talent, and talent for which he has won awards, but his expression of that talent seems limited by the assumptions he has inherited and accepted about the subjects he handles—and also by his consciousness of the effects…
A review of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
But however present the moral question is in this story, it is never directly raised, and Ishiguro resists the urge to make it obvious. If these people are artistic and capable of love, is their tragedy any greater? If they…
A review of Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
What is extraordinary about these stories is the intense fragility of the voice, which has an almost otherworldly texture sometimes. Or rather, no: not otherworldly. Instead, it is a voice that seems able to encompass both the next world and…
A review of King of Cats by Blake Fraina
The book’s merit is in the presentation of a recognizable character, a popular cultural type—a seductive, reclusive, possibly bisexual musician—and the explanation for his character and contradictions and how these things relate to—are made possible by, and influence—the surrounding world.…
A review of North of Sunset by Henry Baum
This is an immensely enjoyable (at least, for those of us who have long ago heeded Bart Simpson’s wise advice: “If you don’t watch the violence, you’ll never get desensitized to it!”) novel that is successful both as a suspenseful,…
A review of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
He is recounting a history which is both still vital and yet already finished. In that sense he is directly aligned with the reader and as this extraordinary novel progresses, the reader has the sense that perhaps, in some way,…
A review of Candy by Luke Davies
Candy is an easy book to read, but not an easy one to deal with. It leaves the reader feeling shattered, as if he or she had been through a similar experience. The verisimilitude in characterisation, setting, and in the…
A review of Ludmila’s Broken English by DBC Pierre
The extraordinary way in which the brothers find their way to Ludmila and the convoluted machinations which everyone takes to get from the beginning to the end of this novel is enough to keep the reader reading, as is the…
A review of King Street Blues by Denis Fitzpatrick
The story is rooted in both the Melbourne and Sydney street life, and rich with the detail of finding food, places to sleep, and coping with law and ignorance while trying to remain artistically productive. It is an honest, and…