This approach frees the narrative from the mainstream pattern of beginning, middle and end. In some ways this is no different from the controlled narrative disclosures of such books as John Banville’s Eclipse or Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But there is in the case…
Tag: fiction
A Review of Seducing Mr Maclean by Loubna Haikal
educing Mr Maclean is full of lush descriptions about Lebanese culture, dancing, music, and in particular, food (you’ll be craving hummous, baclava, and halva for weeks after reading it). It is an enjoyable and funny read which touches on an important…
A Review of Haverleigh by James Cumes
Haverleigh is a well written and engaging story which moves smoothly between the front lines, and the quiet town of Haverleigh, between war at its face, and the impact of war on those left at home. The work is also…
A Review of A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
You are never told exactly where in India this novel unfolds, but the city has the feel of Calcutta. It is fascinating to see the main character, Dina, move through disgust at the men who are working for her, tailors,…
A Review of Julian Barnes’ Something to Declare
A Small Flaubertian Moment: A Review of Julian Barnes’ Something to Declare Barnes’ latest work, Something to Declare is non-fiction, a series of eighteen essays collected over twenty years, covering a range of (mainly gallic) subjects from Richard Cobb’s love and disappointment…
A review of Elizabeth Jolley’s An Innocent Gentleman
Is this Nothing: Elizabeth Jolley’s An Innocent Gentleman As a comedy of manners, An Innocent Gentleman makes for a mildly humorous, and easy to read novel; a brief play which is a kind of light farce. As a commentary on…
A Review of Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
And there is much in Munro about temporary victories, a sensitive adjustment to the fact that facts, although facts, are not necessarily the last answer. Munro uses her own experiences as child and young woman. In this world her mother…
A Review of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a book of moderate length, Kundera provides a richness of content out of all proportion to its length. He achieves this by a use of narrative loops. These loops cover areas that are approximately the same…
A Review of Banana Yoshimoto’s Asleep
A Small Resurrection: A Review of Banana Yoshimoto’s Asleep The combination of very realistic, interesting, and believable characters, with a hint of supernatural epiphany which turns the ordinary into something magic and extraordinary, is very powerful. With delicate strokes of…
A Review of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections
The style is edged in irony as one might expect with such a subject but there are few quotable passages. Franzen is more concerned with the production of a seamless narrative. Although there are no solecisms, a few sentences are…