It might be fair to say that Daphne du Maurier wrote the book on suspense novels. That book would be Rebecca her 1938 romantic mystery that set the bar for its many predecessors. It embodies many of the genre’s tropes – twisted love affairs, a sprawling manor, breathlessly rendered settings – and proves that in [...]
I think I came at Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man with the wrong approach. I saw the movie adaptation before I read the novel (I know. I know!) so I was expected some sort of eulogy, a soft and mournfully worded ode to a life about to end. What I did not expect was a [...]
After reading Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, I can’t decide if Chelsea Handler is going to save printed entertainment or drive the final nail into the format’s coffin. The arguments for her as print’s savior: this is her third New York Times bestseller, so she’s apparently converting viewers of her late-night cable show into Barnes & [...]
Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter definitively settles the argument, if there ever was any, as to whether sadness can be beautiful. It shows not only that it can be, but that it is. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter succeeds by being a profoundly sensitive and astute study of human emotion and [...]
A.M. Homes seems to have assembled the stories in The Safety of Objects with an eye toward pushing the envelope. Sometimes, she pushes that envelope too far, but she does so in the interest of creating a potent sampler of abnormality. All the entries in The Safety of Objects are weird and provocative. Homes’ writing [...]
It takes a while to penetrate the thicket of Victorian bramble that surrounds A.S. Byatt’s Possession, but the beating heart of the novel within makes it worth the effort. Possession opens with two letters falling from the pages of a book unearthed from the depths of the British Library. The letters suggest celebrated Victorian poet [...]
I am not going to say I didn’t like Ian McEwan’s latest novel Solar. I am just going to say I could not appreciate it. A “darkly satirical” novel, Solar follows physicist Michael Beard as he attempts to solidify his scientific reputation amid the upheaval and discord surrounding climate change. Unfortunately, his personal life is [...]
It will be a sad day if print journalists ever join dinosaurs and cavemen among the ranks of the extinct; sad for many reasons, of course, among them being we will no longer get books like Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World. In Loot, former New York Times culture correspondent [...]
Irish novelist John Banville wrote The Infinities with the utmost in British-Isles reserve and formality. Well, tit for tat, Banville, because I am writing this review with a conscious eye towards tempering any enthusiasm I might have for your novel, lest I display any of that emotion you so disdain. The Infinities is cool and [...]
Birds of America reaffirmed my belief that Lorrie Moore has great abilities as an observer and describer of things, but less talent as a storyteller. Every entry in this collection of short stories feel very much the same to me. Almost every one begins with a sad woman who only gets sadder as the story [...]
Interesting Stuff
Recent Comments