...The Sweet Flypaper of Life continues to cast a singular spell. Revealingly, DeCarava saw himself not as a documentarian, but as a modernist who valued his quest for “creative expression” over any desire to make “a sociological statement”.
And through all of it, Atkinson is brilliant. Her characters are brilliant. Her command of the back-and-forth narrative, the un-fixedness of memory, the weight that guilt accrues over time and how we carry it is remarkable.
In those moments, you will be thankful for Vásquez's faultless prose. Be thankful for his translator, Anne McLean, too. She's worked with Vásquez on all his official novels, and is so talented she might be psychic. In her English iteration, The Shape of the Ruins moves forward with gravitational pull. Move with it.
Artifacts in Holocaust museums and memorials in Israel, Europe and the United States continue to be reminders of genocide and inhumanity in this dying century. So are such impressive written testaments as "The Seventh Million."
As Goodwin reminds us of their paths to positions of power and the challenges they faced as presidents, she identifies the traits of personality and character that made them great leaders. Published at a turbulent time, her book is a rich source of information and inspiration.
That's really it: the relationships in Ponti are so stunted and painful that the novel evokes love mostly through negative space. There are hints of reconciliation and redemption at the end, but they come too briefly and too late to have much conviction.
Lal’s book is an act of feminist historiography. Beyond its excavation of the achievements of a queen deliberately “effaced from the record”, it usefully portrays Nur Jahan as an imperfect character, though an exceptionally courageous one.
And the drama, whether sparked by rare books, prying strangers or old spirits, is full throated. The villains could have a little more oomph, but LaValle hooks the reader deep into his increasingly eldritch thriller.
In the course of chronicling Mozart's last year, Mr. Robbins Landon pays particular attention to the Requiem and ''The Magic Flute.'' After giving us a succinct summary of the controversies surrounding that opera's inception, he carefully examines its use of Masonic imagery.
Still, this isn’t Henry James and doesn’t aspire to be: it’s a rip-roaring beach read about literary life, the fools we make of ourselves in pursuit of love and fame, and the whirligig of time bringing in, as it always does, its revenges.
Indeed, there’s a lot going on in The Great Believers, and while Makkai doesn’t always manage to make all the plates spin perfectly, she remains thoughtful and consistent throughout about the importance of memory and legacy, and the pain that can come with survival.
In meticulous if sometimes too laborious detail, Gabor documents reform’s institutional failings. She describes the sorry turns in New York City’s testing-obsessed policies, the undermining of Michigan’s once fine public schools...
Crudo is a news novel, and a Twitter novel, and a historical-record novel...It's a romantic comedy, in that it ends with a wedding. The prose is extravagantly beautiful, like the dahlia-filled garden where Kathy and her husband sunbathe naked. It's also exceptionally funny.
The book makes for fascinating reading. The history, dating back to ancient Greece and before, and stretching to current events, is meticulously researched. There are copious notes and bibliographical references.
Mr. Tolson has laboriously stitched the plots of the novels ("The Moviegoer" was followed by "The Last Gentleman," "Love in the Ruins," "Lancelot," "The Second Coming" and "The Thanatos Syndrome") to events in Percy's life, revealing a surprisingly strong strain of autobiography...
The book is hard to define; let’s just say that it is a weird social commentary, an exercise in hyperbole, a paean to order and, not least, a celebration of the complex design that goes unnoticed by all who step into the humble convenience store.
But he does bring out just how damaging the results of Israeli influence have been, both in terms of direct harm to American interests and in creating Muslim perceptions of American bias, hostility and hypocrisy...For raising this vital issue, on which so many others are silent, Walt deserves special thanks.
Readers who want to know what happened to Brooks will keep reading to learn how the case against her proceeds, but it's Brooks's questions about why mothers are so judgmental and competitive that give the book its heft.
Although the novel lacks some of the twists and surprises that Slaughter's readers have come to expect and at times feels repetitious and padded, the characters keep you involved all the way, as does the vivid writing.
Even at its most gossipy, the narrative bulges with insight into the musicians whose paths he crossed, from the delicate internal chemistry of Talking Heads and Madonna’s armour-plated ambition to his fruitful encounters with Lou Reed and Brian Wilson late in their careers, before his own career began to wind down in a tangle of boardroom politics.
There is also a delight in words that is wonderful to read, a delicious speed to the prose. Feast Days is not a thriller, but reads a little like one, moving swiftly from one kind of experience to the next with brutal, dazzling effect.
