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: Literary Fiction Reviews
A review of You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem
Under the fury and passion individual characters disappear. Motivations become subterranean and capricious. The book becomes plastic elastic where anything can happen. It is unforgivably extravagant to base so much of the book on the encounters of two sweaty bodies.
A review of Every Move You Make by David Malouf
Although “The Domestic Cantata” is the most complex and extraordinary of the stories in this collection, all of the stories are set off by Malouf’s clear love of life that underpins the work. The plots move easily and the characters all develop forward, but it is the collective meaning created by the glimpse at something that goes beyond the prose that builds these stories that makes them so remarkable. This is a not to be missed collection of stories that are as important as they are pleasurable.
A review of The Seventh Candidate by Howard Waldman
This is a bleak book which ends on a barely qualified note of endurance persisting over adversity. It is a competently written book with vivid characterizations. Waldman’s skill in depiction of the desperate straits of a forlorn man and woman is compelling and carries the reader from beginning to end effortlessly.
A review of Seeing by José Saramago
This is a vigorously told novel. There is wit in abundance, but Saramago never shirks the truth. This is a grim tale and Saramago’s focus, for all his pretence of indirection, is unerring and relentless. As a testament to our sad times and as a work of genius it is indispensable to the judicious and discriminating reader
A review of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday
Reviewed by Bob Williams Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday Harcourt 2007, ISBN 978-0-15-101276-3, $24.00, 336 pages Paul Torday, born in 1946, waited a long time before he wrote this, his first novel, and did a bang-up job…
A review of Her Mouth Looked Like a Cat’s Bum by Matthew Ward
You wouldn’t want these friends for dinner, but you might like a laugh at their expense. The wry sardonic humour that fills these pages isn’t entirely unpleasant, though it might be a little sour. Her Mouth Looked Like a Cat’s Bum is an original, interesting take on a world you don’t want to be living in; a funny (at times), racy, and disorientating descent into Hades.
A review of Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
I’m not sure why it is better for the author to spoil the plot, than for some purported friend of the reader to do the same! But — if I may be permitted to issue a meta-spoiler, or a spoiler about spoilers — there is no need to worry that Trollope is going to go off the deep end in this respect. You will still find suspense a-plenty.
A review of Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Eco sustains his fantasy with the skill of a gifted writer, but sometimes he resembles the woman who thinks that she can make it on just sex appeal. The studied pose of a gifted writer can slip and leave great empty places exposed. He will carry you forward with more skill than in his other works, and, magician-like, induce you to read the whole of a long, long book, but the final pages miss the target and he – and his reader – has to content himself with a gestures rather than reality.
A review of All Will Be Revealed by Robert Anthony Siegel
The transformation of both Augustus and Verena forms the stuff of which All Will Be Revealed is made. Siegel is incredibly gifted in narrative ability and speed. His instinct for characterization is flawless and economical. He makes as much and as well of his minor as of his major characters. His performance is deft and sure.