Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

 

Years since I read this. Struck anew by Flaubert's chiseled detailed style. 

Re-reading in honor of the late great Northwestern Professor Paul C. Edwards, who died on October 15 at the age of 75, of alcoholism and grief. He staged this in the mid-1980s with Alchemy Theatre Company of Manhattan, which I was a member of in its first formative lackluster year. I left group just in time for them to successfully mount BOVARY.

Salve, magister!

After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell

 

A New New Me by Helen Oyeyemi

 

Strange concept - a central character/narrator who is a different version of the same person every day of the week. And each version of the narrator has trust issues with the other versions.

Oyeyemi's prose style is unsettling and brilliant - surprising, obscure, eccentric, funny all at the same time.

I'm only up to Wednesday (Kinga-C is narrator) but liking it more and more, after being put off by the Monday narrator's verse for awhile. All will be revealed, I hope.

11/5/2025 - Up to Friday (Kinga-E) now and still confused but trying to complete the journey. Oyeyemi's style is cutting and intelligent, but I don't always follow. Oh well.

Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven

 

Like this very much, complex family love with discovered connections, half siblings, step siblings. Hunever moves back for through time to constantly unsettle us as to what we really know - vs what we thought we knew - about each character.

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

 

Good - great even - but I will admit that all of her Jackson Brodie crime novels blend in my mind, and I usually have no idea which one I'm reading, I'm just worshipping her motion.

This one is set in Scotland/Glasgow during the Fringe festival, and involves the spouse of a corrupt real estate developer, a Russian sex worker, a timid crime novelist, and of course, Jackson Brodie who is as muddled and ineffective and heroic as ever.

The Finishing School by Muriel Spark

 

Lovely, compact, dense as usual. A precocious 17 year old historical novelist squares off with his frustrated, envious private school headmaster.

 

Good, odd unsettling - but do I really have enough time left in my life to read the whole thing (again, apparently, this is third time apparently - I mentioned Prince Myshkin in my high school valediction, which is some serious pretension and presumption - think I said he was Christlike. true enough. but aren't we all, in the end?)

Still at it a month later and approaching the 200 page mark (not even halfway through). The plot is almost entirely psychological - it's an unusual novel even for Dostoevsky, his last and his favorite, apparently, but critics are split.

The naive, child-like, but clear-headed Prince Myshkin arrives back in Russia after many years abroad in Switzerland recovering in a spa from TB or epilepsy or something. He moves among an ungainly collection of St. Petersburg upper middle class folk, all jockeying for position and money and love.

11/5/2025 - Still working on this but hard work. 

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

 

Another masterpiece miniature. She's already in my pantheon of short novel geniuses for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, with the likes of Penelope Fitzgerald.

Big Machine by Victor LaValle

 

Early strange one. Spends an awful lot of time getting started, which I remember in his other later novels was part of the thrill and the horror and the revelation of it all. But wondering if this one will pay off.

Didn't even finish it. Got close enough that I could have, easily, but it was boring and frustrating. Good writing but no paydirt, or at least it didn't pay off for me.