There are echoes of crime fiction of the past – one wonderful minor character, Doc Oldham, could have stepped off the pages of at least two William Riley Burnett novels – and a gamut of genre pleasures. The greatest pleasure, though, is in how the story unfolds. It is an exercise in enchantment.
Tag: fiction
A review of Re’enev by Mike Maranhas
Luke Ferless is a compelling narrator to begin with. He attempts a kind of honesty, addressing the reader as if we were his analyst, trying to uncover his reasons and motivations as he addresses his actions in the present in terms of his past. Luke’s rich vocabulary and detailed self-analysis, add to his charm, but despite it all, there seems to be an underlying self-doubt and unconscious misogyny that undermines his justification.
A review of All Those Bright Crosses by Ross Duncan
All Those Bright Crosses is a beautifully written debut — a tightly plotted, fast paced mystery that is driven forward by a deep and penetrating character study. The writing throughout is beautiful, spare and transcendent.
A review of The Best Australian Stories 2006
Good short fiction works a quite a different dimension to novels – it needs a fast denouement, and the language has to be sharper, cleaner, more exacting because of the limited space. All of this stories in this collection are complete – leaving the reader with some kind of denoument. Drewe has chosen well, and the book contains a good range of material, from the modern to the traditional, funny, serious, intense, lighthearted – funky or political.
A review of Merle’s Door by Ted Kerasote
In the small Wyoming town where much of this story takes place, there were no great concerns about dogs and they roamed free, able to associate with each other and with the people of the town. This worked in a community in which automobile traffic was slight and everyone knew everyone else although Kerasote describes a similar and much larger community in the French Alps where much the same canine freedom obtained.
A review of A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
But while the themes are serious, A Spot of Bother is anything but bleak, or dour. Right from the first moments of the book, there is humour. For example, when George goes to visit a Psychiatrist about his depression, he tells him he’s been taking antidepressants: “He decided not to mention the codeine and the whisky” and Dr Foreman tells him that the side-effects are “Weeping, sleeplessness and anxiety.”
A review of After Dark by Haruki Murakami
This is not a book that develops logically. It cares nothing about loose ends or impossibilities. There is another world that lurks behind and around the world we know and Murakami is disquietingly comfortable in both.
A review of The Suitors by Ben Ehrenreich
This is an amazing and a gripping novel told with virtuosity. His ability to retell that earliest of books is a splendor that constitutes an act of magic seldom matched in the literature of our time. You will do yourself an injury to miss this book.
A review of Mr. Weston’s Good Wine by T. F. Powys
Mr. Weston’s Good Wine is a wayward work. It is religious, carnal, heretical, humorous and engaging, digressive and ultimately involving. It has a complex, personal symbolism that is not reducible to any simple message. T. F. Powys’ work as a whole seems to represent one of the most rewarding byways in English literature.
A review of North River by Pete Hamill
Hamill does a stunning job in his depiction of both sophisticated and popular Irish and Italian cultures of the time. This is an absorbing novel of the old-fashioned kind with plot complexities and well-drawn characters. It will entertain and leave the reader with durably pleasant memories.