Reviews of books and other forms of literature
The stories in A.L. Kennedy’s What Becomes seem driven by two entities: the author’s brain and her prose appendage. The latter is so alive it appears to possess a separate language pulse. In heightened moments Kennedy uses language to bind thought to physical sensation, which in turn stimulates a replicated response in the brain of the reader. This simulated experience is what makes her stories so striking and also intense.
In an occasionally polemical and highly impassioned voice, Edith Grossman advances the most brilliant and persuasive arguments for the absolute importance of literary translation I have ever encountered.
Zadie Smith, the prodigiously gifted English novelist, seems to have been caught in the tangle of literary debate from the beginning.
Declan Kiberd, a professor of Irish literature, has set out to rescue Ulysses from its reputation.
Scialabba writes as if he's trying by sheer example value to will a smarter, more honest, more aesthetically and morally sensitive Left into being.
For more than fifty years, Donald Hall has had a two-sided career, his fifteen books of poetry matched by fifteen books of nonfiction.
Whether their subjugation is political, familial, romantic, or cultural, Adichie's headstrong and heartstrong heroines reach a point where they take action to loosen whatever is choking them.
Right off the bat, Scorch Atlas asserts itself as, if not the coolest-looking book you’ve ever fanned between your fingers, on the short-list, interior and exterior alike. Trot it out to the right café or park bench, and people will crane to try to discern what you’re reading. Visually, its obvious allusion (though a Google …
Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler, Reviewed by Tim Horvath Read More »
It would be an understatement to say that Roth has never excelled at writing women characters.
First, I am not the strong reader I might like to be. Second, I found Chronic City tedious, boring, and uninspiring. Third, the second might find cause in the first.
