Revisiting this after 27 years. Still pretty great. The first-person voice now seems a little tedious. I remember well how shocking and powerful I found it in 1996.
Talk not with scorn of Authors- it was the chattering of the Geese that saved the Capitol. Coleridge
www.seanenright.com
seanenright.blogspot.com
Revisiting this after 27 years. Still pretty great. The first-person voice now seems a little tedious. I remember well how shocking and powerful I found it in 1996.
Amazing Barry streak continues. This is in America, mid 19th century. Two gay soldiers raise a Native American girl they orphaned.
The 1974 busing crisis in Boston is the backdrop for racial tensions in Southie. Familiar Lehane territory - and satisfying as usual. The working-class mother on mission of vengeance against the Irish mob and everything she grew up in is marvelous.
Another powerhouse. Madness, murder, mayhem in the Irish 20th century. The tragic life of Roseanne Clear McNulty, daughter of a Presbyterian graveskeeper in Sligo, and her awful manhandling by Catholics, and others. Told from her viewpoint in the present time, turning 100 years old, in her flashbacks over the century, and in the voice of a concerned doctor in the present time who uncovers at least two versions of her sad story.
Nice to read Lipsyte again. And I liked this novel, by the end. Was a little underwhelmed in first half though: prose about punk music almost always leaves me a little underwhelmed. Although Lipsyte is as surprising and wizardly as ever with his sentences. Echoes of Lester Bangs on meth.
Sebastian Barry was completely unknown to me before I read the recent New Yorker profile about him.
A stunning story. Haven't seen the film but plan. Just amazing, the compression of the story and characters.
Interesting, compelling read. About video/computer games which is not my wheelhouse. But the central drama about the two childhood friends who become influential game designers together, and apart, is interestingly done.
Strange and difficult reading. A man apparently seeks revenge on his young daughter's killer by kidnapping an torturing. First, though, Everett tortures us with linguistic grammaritications and philosophical blowing.
Astonishing novel about the Dominican Republic by Peruvian Llosa. Nothing less than a thirty year chronicle of the Trujillo dictatorship, it employs three points of view: in the present time, the return of daughter of Trujillo's minister after 30 years in the U.S, as she revisits the trauma of her 14th and final year in DR; the four assasins waiting in a car to murder Trujillo in May of 1961l; and a roaming point of view that encompasses Trujillo and many of his most prominent ministers.
Mesmerizingly beautiful. How the fates of a New Hampshire oil furnace repairman and a distressed Haitian new mother intertwine over the course of years. Tectonically growing closer to each other. I'm in awe of Banks. Reminds me of Updike a little, but with more heart.
My obsession continues. Another good, took awhile to get going for me, but in the end, I really liked how three different time settings/plots came together. A painter takes a much younger lover in Paris, remembers a long-ago trauma in El Salvador, and somehow heals his marriage.
Odd but addictive, in Percival Everett fashion. A little AUSTIN POWERS, a smackerel of THE THIRD POLICEMAN. The mathematics of nothing combined with a billionaire who wants to become an evil James Bondish villiain. The book is more farcical than compelling, but I couldn't put it down. Like THE TREES, it reads quickly, in a couple of hours.
Delightful, mysterious, swerving coming-of-age novel. The second half and the immersion into reggae and Jamaican mysticism caught me completely by suprise.
Annie Ernaux in New Yorker profile talks about old age (she will be 82), and how "I will never remember my old age."
I found it compelling reading and tore through this, but must admit it was the sex I was interested in and not incessant longing and sadness. She limits the scope of her diary entries very much to the story of her affair with the Russian man, S., who is 35 years old to her 48. And S. does not come off well -- boorish and anti-intellectual, a Stalin fan. We hear almost nothing of her two children, though they're often in the apartment with her. She refers to her other great passions mostly by the year in which they happen. I'm interested in reading the other memoir to see what depth they lend to this story, in my memory.
It's not much of a story, just a layer of egocentric suffering. Yet I know that it is through this layer of suffering that I communicate with the rest of humanity. [169, 7 Stories Press Edition]
Yesterday, it came to me with a certainty that I write my love stories and live my books, in a perpetual round dance. [171]
Liked this a great deal. Very different from THE PLOT until the middle of the book where, indeed, there is a rather large plot swerve. The concept of triplets as never before recorded -- including how many persons that actually implies. The high-art, wealthy milieu gets a bit wearying, but Korelitz' prose is glittering, at least.
Never read a book like this before! Racial injustice and a history of lynching in the U.S. - and dozens of small-town characters, each quickly and indelibly sketched.
It reads so quickly you almost forget the heaviness of the theme.
The structure - very short chapter 1-3 pages - lend an extraordinary quickening to the plot, and it is a breathless style, following a classic detective/police procedural model.Loving this, DAVID COPPERFIELD cast in Appalachia, voice of a young foster child/orphan, opioid addiction and coal country poverty. High school football world skillfully sketched by Kingsolver. Pre-sad that it's almost over (300+ pages in).
Buy the books on Amazon, and watch videos of some readings. Please.