When I think of Michael Cunningham many things about his writing come to mind: poetic, compelling… so many adjectives, and yet funny is not among them. Not that he is dark or his writing is without joy, but until I read his newest book, a series of short stories called A Wild Swan, he’d never made me laugh out loud. Now he puts a modern spin on eleven fairy tales and does so in ... Read More...
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews
This month's It's Not You, It's Me is especially true because I am not really liking, much loving, anything I've read. In fact I DNFed (did not finish) 3 books in a row, which is a first for me. There are any number of bloggers who have blamed this syndrome on the novel A Little Life, which I did read and which is an incredible piece of writing that still haunts me, but I’m not ... Read More...
Of Things Gone Astray
Magical realism is the moving force behind author Janina Matthewson’s, Of Things Gone Astray, an enchanting novel about the everyday realities of life. In it she follows six different people in London who wake up one day to find that something important in their lives has disappeared. For Mrs. Featherby it is the entire front wall of her house, for Robert his job—literally. His ... Read More...
Let Me Be Frank With You
Frank Bascombe is back in Richard Ford’s Let Me Be Frank With You and I, for one am happy to see him again. Ford’s last novel, The Lay of the Land, covered Bascombe’s travails through his mid-fifties in a way that perfectly encapsulated the middle-age process of fight and accept. In Let Me Be Frank With You, Bascombe moves through four vignettes that are comprised of ... Read More...
Bark: Stories
I’m going to start with a little confession: I’ve never read Lorrie Moore before (say that three times fast). Why not? Who knows? But now after finishing her latest collection of short stories, called Bark, I can say I’m fan. And if you’re one of those people who wants to buy free-range poultry, brine it, and slow roast it in the oven but accidentally sets the oven to Clean ... Read More...
The Color Master
Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is one of my favorite books. Her combination of magical and realism makes for poetic, moving reading. Last month her newest book of short stories, The Color Master, came out, and it shimmers with its ability to be both fantastical and utterly human. In “The Doctor and the Rabbi” Bender takes what sounds like the opening ... Read More...
