There is a play on names that runs through this book like a fugue. The putative writer of the book Paul Auster will prove to be another, a writer whose name is not given. Peter is the name of Quinn’s…
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A review of W, or the Memories of Childhood by Georges Perec
This is a book of complexities and difficult issues. It finds an imaginative path into the abyss of man’s failure to be human. It is therefore a horror story, but one with unflinching honesty and an ability to extract poetry…
A review of Things: A Story of the Sixties and A Man Asleep by Georges Perec
With merciless persistence Perec pursues the crowd of shallow young men and women with their dissatisfactions which they mistake for pleasures and with their greatest goals both paltry and foolish. They have a need for one another but no loyalty,…
A review of A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
The prose has a deliberate hard-boiled rhythm (the novel’s opening sentences – “Murder didn’t mean much to Raven. It was just a new job. You had to be careful…” – illustrates this as well as anything) and the suspense is…
A review of You Are Going Away edited by Matthew Ward
Most of the stories, and particularly the three winners, have all of those qualities: are tightly structured with a conflict that pulls the reader in and drives the narrative forward, leading carefully and conclusively towards the ending. Interestingly, a large…
A review of The Secrets of Writing Successful Short Stories by Drew McAdam
If you follow McAdam’s didactic advice to the letter, you will not only end up with a file of suitable markets with a calculated fog index, word count, and samples, but you’ll end up with a ready to submit piece,…
A review of Fruit’s Burn
The style is, at times, reminiscent of kd lang’s, with its deep moody smoothness and wide range, especially on the torchier songs like “Burn“ or “Jennifer Says.” The voices move up and down the chromatic scale, toughening down low into…
Interview with Emily Raboteau
The author of The Professor’s Daughter talks about her first novel and its main character, the value of her MFA, the musical and literary sources of her inspiration, her uses of layers of direct and indirect storytelling, what she learned from writing The Professor’s Daughter, her next book, and lots more.
A review of The Professor’s Daughter by Emily Raboteau
The stories of Emma, her father Bernard, her brother Bernie, professor Lestor and Meteke form an intricate dance of stories, an impressionistic picture of life through Raboteau’s eyes. The complexity of the picture is too great to be contained by…
A review of King Harald’s Saga and Heimskringla by Snorri Sturluson
This is a vigorous and intelligent account by a man who, although he played the political game badly and with fatal results, understood politics, and was able also to breathe life into his work as very few historians can. Neither…