So often novels have style but little substance and often there is a struggle to express substance but the project is doomed without style. Here is a book with both in abundance and a sense of poetry that illumines both…
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
A Review of Dreaming Water by Gail Tsukiyama
At times the narrative was almost too pretty for its subject – too sentimental. As a reader, I wanted more anger, more pain, more depths into Hana and Cate at least. They are both so good, so radiant, even when…
A Review of J M Coetzee’s Disgrace
David Lurie is a man who has, at fifty two, sorted his life and his sexuality out nicely. He has a tidy job teaching poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, a once a week visit to a discrete…
A Review of Hindustan Contessa by Jane Watson
Part of the tension in the book is created by the fact that we glimpse all of the action through Tillie’s diary – a kind of mini-summation first person narrative. The different threads of the story are revealed separately in…
A Review of Iain Pears’ The Dream of Scipio
Pears is a powerful historian and his research is impeccable. The links between the three stories are handled well, and it is very interesting to watch a similar drama simultaneously playing itself out in very different contexts, albeit on the…
A Review of Wayward Brahmin by Harbhajan Singh Sandhu
Sandhu is a born storyteller with a well-appointed if not always well controlled vocabulary and a sharp tongue. His book tells the story of the Brahmin professor who leaves his native land for the United States and sexual liberation. …
A Review of Maya by Jostein Gaarder
It is a pity that Jostein Gaarder isn’t a better writer. His concepts are so good, and his themes so compelling, that, in this hands of a better fiction writer, he could produce excellent work. As it is, his books…
A Review of Manil Suri’s The Death of Vishnu
The Death of Vishnu takes place on a small stage, with most of the external action occurring in the narrow stairwell of a Bombay apartment building. The characters are all ordinary, from dying alcoholic Vishnu, to the the warring neighbours…
A review of The House of Blue Mangoes by David Davidar
The book is an easy, compelling novel – the kind of book you can take to the beach, or read on a long flight, without unduly straining yourself. In short, it is a good story, albeit not one which lends…
A review of Joan London’s Gilgamesh
It is 1939, just prior to the outbreak of World War 2. A young Australian woman and her baby make the near impossible journey to Armenia to find the baby’s father. It is a journey based on love, and romantic…