As a feat of storytelling, though, The Ministry of Fear is both instructive (e.g. for the way certain significant events happen “off-stage” and the way in which certain characters – Prentice being one – act as a lodestone or lightening rod for the emotional force of the story) and impressive. This is a minor work, then, but a novel with its own strengths and satisfactions; and it is an interesting precursor of much of what was to follow.
Category: Classic Literature Reviews
A review of My Antonia by Willa Cather
My Antonia is a great novel, a classic that does not disappoint. Perhaps most of all, it is about what true wealth is. Reading it, one is reminded often of The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley: there is the same look back toward childhood and the same richly allusive and resonant symbolism.
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 Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift
A Review of Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift Humboldt’s Gift has its picaresque side and the selection of types and traumas may be looked at as modern translations of Huck’s own troubles and concerns. The honesty of the writer is a…
Stendahl’s Charterhouse of Parma: A Review
Charterhouse of Parma (published 1839) is set in Italy, but this is in the early 19th century, before Italy became “Italy”. While a country such as France, with its late-18th-century Revolution, had of course much nationalistic feeling and was a political entity, Italy still retained the medieval character of a host of tiny “principalities” (an area ruled by a Prince) and such. Parma, in northern “Italy”, was one of these mini-countries. When we first meet the Prince of Parma, Stendhal draws a portrait of … well, not what you would expect of royalty.