The book reads easily and quickly, but the slow action and gentle nature of Stonich’s prose conceals a powerful message of life, love, and the human condition: how we make meaning from our short lives. Reviewed by Magdalena Ball THESE…
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
A review of Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Love is the main hero of this novel which is about, among other things, love, loss, life, death, the lines between truth and fiction, beauty, and art. Reviewed by Magdalena Ball “In the front lobby, carved into a stone wall,…
Slow, Spare and Painful: Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist
Beyond the simple tale of Lauren Hartke and her grief, DeLillo’s short novel provides the reader with a mirror, showing us how flimsy our self-assurances of solidity, how delicate our mind and bodies, how easily undone and yet how beautiful…
A review of Julian Barnes’ Love, Etc
The book is an easy read, and appears to be a simple, light story of love and betrayal, but on closer reading and reflection, it is much more sinister, where the truth shifts, meaning distorts and ultimately the reader’s own sense of meaning is challenged in a very Pinteresque, post-modern way. The main characters are unreliable, with Stuart and Oliver showing their insecurities and failings and Gillian changing her story quite dramatically at times. Are the characters grappling with love, or is it hatred; desire for closeness, warmth and meaning, or just power?
A review of Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh
Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh is a heady, sensual, wordy, moving, funny, wonderful book. It does for the English language what Joyce’s Ulysses did over a century ago, expanding our vocabulary and consequently our ability to perceive and describe the world and ourselves.
Hero of the Word: Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang
Hero of the Word: Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang Carey’s Kelly is hero of the word. Like his other famous characters, Illywacker Badgery, Jack Maggs, Tristan Smith, Oscar, and Harry Joy, their need get the story out…
A review of Manhattan Monologues by Louis Auchincloss
Auchincloss is an inheritor of the territory once handled by Henry James and Edith Wharton, territory that is sometimes dismissed without the understanding that it remains an important literary and social realm. Marginally observed, the rich are rarely discussed with…
A review of Father Lands by Emily Ballou
Throughout the book, the intensity of the emotions are coupled with the tight ‘coming of age’ plot and the very rich details which strongly evoke Milwaukee Wisconsin in the 1970s. Ballou is a poet and her writing is strongly poetic,…
Of Woman, Guilt and Love: Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace
Atwood’s book takes the basic story as her premise, but uses a number of fictional techniques, primarily the narrative first person, but also letters, newspaper accounts, quotes and bits of poetry and song to create a tale of love, guilt,…
Plucking at our World: David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon
Remembering Babylon is a wonderful book. Malouf’s rich prose, which at times approaches poetry, creates a believable and fascinating lead character in Gemmy, a white man who was raised from boyhood by aborigines who found him nearly drowned after being…