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     |  One of the fascinating aspects of Ford’s narrative technique is that he pre-figures decisive events in his story. It takes remarkable boldness and confidence as a writer to provide your own spoilers! We know the crack-brained attempt at armed robbery that Dell’s parents are going to commit will fail. Continue reading Canada by Richard Ford  The hot air and the cloudless vista bathe our sexy heroines and create a canvas that is more like a prison. I liked how the sister with the most to say has nothing to lose, and the other, well, she’s just in it for the sunshine. When she admits to herself that the only coping mechanism she has is to make fun of her sister in a stand up comedy routine. Continue reading A Map Of Modern Palm Springs by Emma Straub  No one escapes politics in The House on Paradise Street. Antigone was a communist insurgent during WW2, fighting in the mountains to rid Greece of the Nazis. Her sister Alexandra swung to the opposite pole and is traditionally religious and conservative. Her husband, Spiros, was a Nazi sympathizer, something that Alexandra doesn’t want to admit to herself or to anyone else. Continue reading The House on Paradise Street by Sofka Zinovief  Mandel’s writing contains countless lines that might get overlooked, and it is not because of fast prose. She wanders, politely, and pauses just as you would in the middle of your day when your mind darts to something pure or radiant. Continue reading Lola Quartet by Emily St John Mandel  Someone has to write about 9-11 NYC and their name doesn’t have to be McInerney. There is this weird light that is captured in a few novels, especially ones about NYC in the last ten years. I’m sure that’s a generalization. Certainly, it is not to be overlooked because it is actually being published. Continue reading Pile  The central character is a compass that points in many directions from it’s central locus. Or it’s like the beacon of a lighthouse that illuminates reality, including other characters, with its own distinctive coloring as it sweeps around the circumference of the social ocean. Continue reading Old Filth by Jane Gardam I call petrified any form of book marketing that is doesn’t encourage the end user to give back. Example: newspaper ads. What’s on offer from houses most of the time is book NARCeting where publishers try to sell books that marketing departments haven’t read. Do the writer a favor and don’t sell their book. Tell the world what you love about the book. Book marketing should create a framework in which ideas about books are shared in an open atmosphere. That means that any idea about a book is worthwhile. The content has to be honest with the community of book lovers providing any necessary corrective for ill considered or uninformed ideas. Literary criticism is for everybody: I invite publishers to Continue reading The Petrified Forest of Book Marketing and the Great Chain of Other People’s Writers  It’s the nature of Eden to be recognized only when you are leaving it. The studious, private, tactile appropriation of the text in the self-imposed isolation of a physical book, shielded from the ten thousand-eyed monster of marketing, may become a rare experience, celebrated by a bereft band of book connoisseurs, dead tree readers. Continue reading Dead Tree Readers  Motherhood is no joke, and watching a woman evaporate before your eyes, especially when you come home from work, and find that woman going up in steam, and holding the thing that means the world to you, is a dish typically served hot. Continue reading Rosemary, from Other People We Married, by Emma Straub Amy is smitten with Paul, a student who, in her words, has seen enough of the Ohio sun to make his hair the color of straw, and his eyes the color of cold water, from a pond. What does cold water look like? It is a great question, but a little bit quaint. Continue reading Some People Must Really Fall In Love by Emma Straub  Harry leaves his wife and son at the start, which left me wondering where it was going, but he comes back. Harry is obsessed with getting laid, not uncommon in a marriage, but Updike digs into Harry for a long time, examining his former basketball career, (redone by Franzen in Freedom, if anyone other than me and Kakutani were paying attention). Continue reading Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest by John Updike  It’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed a New Yorker story and there have been one or two near misses in the past several months. I’m glad I waited. You think that maybe this is the one but you’re not absolutely sure. Then you strike a pen that’s seems to write in liquid gold instead of ink and you are absolutely sure. So my advice, story lovers, is to wait for the real thing. Don’t compromise. Continue reading P.E. by Victor Lodato  I finally got my hands on the much talked about Other People We Married by Emma Straub, and it sits quietly on my desk like a coiled snake. She’s everywhere, and seems to be more plugged in with what’s going on in the book world than almost anyone I know. Continue reading The March Pile  This is billed as neo-fabulists/surrealists writing, and I couldn’t disagree more. For me it seems like Coen brothers writing, almost, and that’s a high compliment. Maybe that’s fabulist or surreal, I’ve never been one to judge. It isn’t even that surreal, when you think about it, as nothing falls from the sky, and no one gets oddly run over by something terrible. Continue reading The Drought by Miles Harvey  Just when you think a thread of this story is complete, you turn the page and discover another angle. By the time we get to Hollywood with Anne, where the book hits it stride, I began comparing this novel to the brilliant Eat the Document. When I finished that book, I was begging for another hundred pages. With Inside, and Anne, I would have gone on to War & Peace lengths just to see how Anne turned nothing into something. Continue reading Inside by Alix Ohlin | |||
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