This is an interesting collection, as much for the quality of Atwood’s writing, which, in itself, never falters, as for what she tries to say. But it never reaches full fruition. It needs more synthesis, more culling, and more development…
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
A review of In Search of a Brilliant White Cloud by Simon van der Heym
There’s something plodding about some of the recounting of Eric’s business transactions—and yet they’re valuable: I understood his business and his mind better after knowing his management concerns: though he had made mistakes as a husband and father, mistakes involving…
A review of City of Glass by Paul Auster
There is a play on names that runs through this book like a fugue. The putative writer of the book Paul Auster will prove to be another, a writer whose name is not given. Peter is the name of Quinn’s…
A review of W, or the Memories of Childhood by Georges Perec
This is a book of complexities and difficult issues. It finds an imaginative path into the abyss of man’s failure to be human. It is therefore a horror story, but one with unflinching honesty and an ability to extract poetry…
A review of Things: A Story of the Sixties and A Man Asleep by Georges Perec
With merciless persistence Perec pursues the crowd of shallow young men and women with their dissatisfactions which they mistake for pleasures and with their greatest goals both paltry and foolish. They have a need for one another but no loyalty,…
A review of A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
The prose has a deliberate hard-boiled rhythm (the novel’s opening sentences – “Murder didn’t mean much to Raven. It was just a new job. You had to be careful…” – illustrates this as well as anything) and the suspense is…
A review of You Are Going Away edited by Matthew Ward
Most of the stories, and particularly the three winners, have all of those qualities: are tightly structured with a conflict that pulls the reader in and drives the narrative forward, leading carefully and conclusively towards the ending. Interestingly, a large…
A review of The Professor’s Daughter by Emily Raboteau
The stories of Emma, her father Bernard, her brother Bernie, professor Lestor and Meteke form an intricate dance of stories, an impressionistic picture of life through Raboteau’s eyes. The complexity of the picture is too great to be contained by…
A review of King Harald’s Saga and Heimskringla by Snorri Sturluson
This is a vigorous and intelligent account by a man who, although he played the political game badly and with fatal results, understood politics, and was able also to breathe life into his work as very few historians can. Neither…
A review of Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
Barnes has clearly done a tremendous amount of research, and even a reader who comes to this work without the slightest knowledge of Arthur Conan-Doyle will leave with a good understanding of the key events in his life, from his…