Throughout Dead Piano, there is a carefully evoked atmosphere, with recognizable and believable characters, but also strong farcical elements rooted in sudden reversals of conversational tone, with small matters becoming large, and accidents happening, and the establishment and/or subversion of…
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
The Betrayal of a Beautiful Man: Love and Death in Paris in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room
Giovanni’s Room, a book featuring a man who has chosen not to be free, might be considered James Baldwin’s declaration of independence: the book refuses to accept the usual boundaries of nationality, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality, turning these into open…
A review of The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
As a distopia, the story effectively conveys the possibility that history could easily have been different, at the same time highlighting the delicacy of the structure of our current democracy–one that could change with little warning. There is plenty of…
A review of The Turning by Tim Winton
The Turning often makes for painful reading, as we are drawn deeply into the heart of these stunted, unhappy, and sometimes doomed lives, but Winton’s prose is transcendent. Taken together, these stories create their own turning, a sense that life…
A review of Billie’s Ghost by Chad Hautmann
Despite the grief and sadness, Billie’s Ghost is ultimately a tale of hope and redemption. This slim volume will haunt you long after you have turned the last page and make you want to re-discover the music of Billie Holliday…
A review of Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres
The characters age beautifully, and the reader is eager for more of the quirky and believable Eskibahce characters. de Bernieres has a wonderful sense of character and the delight in the eccentric detail which takes the reader deep into the…
A review of Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour by John Blumenthal
The opening monologue is an ill-tempered attack on romantic love. The author is even cynical about the apparent attachment between a human and the pet dog. The momentary discomfort of having a narrator before one has any characters or a…
A review of The Last Song of Dusk by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
Like all good novels, the book raises plenty of questions: Is love enough, or do we need more–support, friendship, companionship, happiness? Is there really no mercy in life? Or are there indeed mercies in little moments, of story, song and…
A review of Oblivion by David Foster Wallace
Wallace’s fiction forces the reader to look beneath the surface. His characters, like most human beings find it difficult to communicate directly. More often than not what they are really concerned with must be parsed out through indirection, as though…
A review of Bright Planet by Peter Mews
This is a fast moving, enjoyable adventure tale which resolutely refuses to become too serious about its purpose. Instead it is a very visual, funny, historically rich, and occasionally silly trip through an Australia that may or may not have…