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.
An interview with Mari Strachan
The author of The Earth Hums in B Flat talks about her first novel, her youthful character Gwenni, her star agent, her innovative publisher Canongate, about how we can live more sustainably, her writing Masters, her next novel(s), and lots more.
A review of The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan
There’s a linguistic richness throughout the book that is both intensely detailed, and full of the daily life of this Welsh village with all of its idiosyncrasies. Gwenni’s mind is fast thinking and she doesn’t miss much, but she also sees beyond the surface of things. The reader is always shown, rather than told, what Gwenni feels, as she submerges her emotions into the faces in the peeling distemper on the walls, or the Toby Jugs on the shelves.
A review of The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan
There’s a linguistic richness throughout the book that is both intensely detailed, and full of the daily life of this Welsh village with all of its idiosyncrasies. Gwenni’s mind is fast thinking and she doesn’t miss much, but she also sees beyond the surface of things. The reader is always shown, rather than told, what Gwenni feels, as she submerges her emotions into the faces in the peeling distemper on the walls, or the Toby Jugs on the shelves.
A review of A Journey, A Reckoning and A Miracle by K.J. Fraser
Fraser creates a very human dismantling of prejudices of all kinds, and it is an inherent humanism that drives these other storylines and takes the reader on a journey through many places in and many aspects of a broadly depicted America. It almost makes up for the Condi and Bush stick figure characters, the too often repeated Dick Cheney jokes, and the visiting icons that include the Burning Bush, Jesus, and happy nodding sunflowers.
Testosterone Poisoning: Changing Lanes, starring Ben Affleck and Samuel Jackson
Before the film is over, each character is forced to face the other—to attempt a peace—and also to face his own inner workings, what he does and why he does it and how to become a better man. A change of heart and change of mind are necessary but are made to look easier than they would be in life, where the system—the network of institutions and public beliefs—that rules contemporary American lives is not easily defied or defeated, and remains unchanged though the men have changed.
A Charming Pair: Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen
It’s pleasing to me that work that so vitally concerns us—the strictures of class and gender (the vulnerability of women, particularly those without inheritance), and the unlikely relation of love to many marriages—should be the subject of classic literature and the kind of film that’s seen to have much prestige. It’s an affirmation that important ideas can be presented in graceful ways, besides being a wonderful story that contains some truth about human nature.
The Temptations of Friendship: Y Tu Mama Tambien (And Your Mama Too), starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna
The pacing of the film is natural, as is its look and the acting in it, and this is a very believable story, and it gives us the many quick-changing moods of real life. It makes the calculation—and the lies and partial truths—ordinarily presented in a typical Hollywood film seem even more unnecessary.
The Limits of Palestinian Life: Paradise Now
Paradise Now, directed by Hany Abu-Assad, presents the landscape in which the Palestinians are massed—its rocky hills, its trees, its poor neighborhoods—and shows some of the communal rituals—simple meals of vegetables, bread, and sauces; and smoking a water pipe. When Said comes home late, his young brother talks about how he would have been reprimanded if he’d come in that late; and when the same boy asks if his mother has used a new water filter—he says the water tasted better before—his mother tells him to turn off the radio he swallowed, meaning he’s too smart-talking.
Conspirators, Friends, and Lovers: Triumph of Love, a film inspired by Marivaux
The film is an amusement, and yet it asks provocative questions about love, deception, and justice—and it makes accessible a form of culture (the play by Marivaux) that might otherwise seem distant to us—and it provides us the opportunity to imagine other ways of being in the world, and, not least, the chance to laugh.