Circumstances can call forth a deeper response from a person, from an artist. Irma Thomas takes the traditional song “Another Man Done Gone” and adapts it to life in hurricane country, giving it a rustling beat, and with new words turning it into a news report and a lament.
One Man’s Deep Disturbance: The Skating Rink, a novel by Roberto Bolano
There is a scintillating splendor and a bustling rhythm in “Rainbow Wheel,” with warm long lines of sound from the saxophone, and piano notes amid a quiet interlude, bubbling vibes, and the solitary, subtle quality of the bass. It sounds terribly romantic but “Starbeam” seems music of virtue, music that heals rather than hurts.
A review of Hancock’s Half Hour – The Very Best Episodes: Vol. 3
There’s something quite exciting about the live quality of this show, and it is even more powerful now when we’ve all become used to technological sophistication and smooth packaging in our listening.
Surprising, Thrilling, Troubling: Jericho’s Fall, a novel by Stephen L. Carter
The novel moves fast through conversations and acts, featuring intriguing characters, and often there is believable emotional weight as well as interesting political speculations. Carter’s use of language (in narrative and dialogue) is at a high-level with only of few points of stiffness.
Early American Life, and Slavery: Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and Edward P. Jones’s The Known World
It is a book about civility and savagery, intelligence and stupidity, love and hatred: life and death. It also concerns a theme that may be as timeless: what children do not understand about parents, especially their acts, as well as feelings, within the treacherous churnings of history (thoughtful concern can look like indifference).
Self and Other, Fiction and Fact: Philip Roth’s novels Indignation and The Human Stain
Philip Roth seems to want to enrich our sense of the present by increasing our knowledge of the past—the pagan Greek roots of western civilization, the rigorous intelligence too: we must accept complexity, contradiction, multiplicity, plenitude.
A review of Cut Short by Leigh Russell
One advantage of Steel’s characterization is that we have been spared an extended description and explanation of her taste in music, food or clothes. And nor have we been presented with the odd zany detail: Steel does not have a troupe of cats named after jazz greats, for example, or a friend with a predilection for t-shirts with ‘amusing’ slogans.
A Young Man’s Tenderness: Sam Cooke’s Portrait of A Legend and Nightbeat
Cooke’s songs—whether an affirmation of dance, a wistful call for help, a humble declaration of love, a recognition of prison as a fact, or an expression of sexual assurance—were a young man’s testament and they often carried a young man’s tenderness. Cooke’s phrasing bears traces of the sung spiritual, but his is obviously not a voice that could ever be anonymous, buried within a tradition.
A review of Fast Ed’s Dinner in 10 by Ed Halmagyi
The principle that has made him famous is basically, that you don’t have to spend a lot of time cooking to create a good meal. Fast food doesn’t have to mean bad, unhealthy food. Fast Ed’s second cookbook Dinner in 10 is an elegant offering, and despite it’s casual paperback feel, it’s nicely stylised, with fresh looking line drawings, and large, attractive images of most of the recipes.
A review of Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes
That the book remains elegant, moving, upbeat, erudite, lucid, and calm throughout the morass is due to Barnes’ great skill as a writer. Nothing To Be Frightened Of is, as one would expect from Julian Barnes, a tightly written, and ultimately affirmative piece of work that takes the reader on a journey that ends in exactly the place you’d expect. Black humour notwithstanding, it’s one of those books that will enrich your life, at least while you’ve still got it.