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…
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A Review of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
When a novelist wins a prestigious literary prize like the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the Pen/Faulkner, it is interesting to glance back at his first novel–first novels, even those praised, so regularly ignored by the public at large–to discover…
A review of Siren Singing by Suzanne Nixon
Suzanne Nixon’s poems are written in free verse, a description often indicating no more than extreme laxity. But she is scrupulous and has a tense, almost quivering, regard for felicities of sounds. The result is exquisitely crafted work that rides…
A Review of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
If you are interested in the ‘golden age’ of comic books, are of Jewish, Eastern European origin, have some interest in WWII, or are a New Yorker, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay will have a particular resonance for you. Even…
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 A Word in Your Ear: How & Why to Read James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake by Eric Rosenbloom
This is a stunning performance and of exemplary clarity contrasted to the many books on the Wake that are almost as difficult to read as the Wake itself and much less fun. The generosity of the author in making this…
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…
Philomena Van Rijswijk’s The World as a Clockface
Following in the footsteps of the early Carey, Borges, Marquez, de Bernieres, and Fowles, Van Rijswijk uses her knowledge of the sea, and her antipodean base of Tasmania, to create a unique voice, taking the reader on a descriptive journey from the mythical antipodean island state of Esmania, past a small island to the east called Aotearoa, Antartica, Tierra del Feugo, Paraguay, the Cape of Africa, and back to the Antipodean mainland Incognita.
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…