It was Tony’s enthusiasm for it that encouraged me to read this book by an author I haven’t read in decades. And I’m so glad I did as it grew on me as I read. I kept wondering why I found such a low key book so engaging. We learn at the outset the narrator is a prep school administrator with limited skill in social interactions, according to the headmistress. Gail works hard to...
This is my second book by Claire Messud and it is chock full of bits I want to remember. Essentially it is a fictionalized multi-generational family history, made more interesting by the world events that moved family members around the globe. First we have Gaston and his wife Lucienne, French people who lived in Algeria (pieds-noirs) who were displaced in 1940 by the war, Gaston to Salonica...
My initial reaction before I began reading this was concern about reading a book about writing a book, especially one that bills itself as a black comedy. Some of the cheap shots did make me uncomfortable. Ultimately it’s much more complicated than that, taking comedic aim at the publishing world, academia, the television industry, while exploring aspects of dealing with racial identity...
I truly loved There There and admire this one at least as much. I’ve now read my favorite book for the year. It begins with the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, a surprise attack by the US army on a peaceable Native American encampment in southeastern Colorado. Orange brings this and subsequent policies and events to life with characters, beginning with Jude Star, a child who barely escaped...
After I read James Woods’ review, I knew I wanted to read this book. Then in Wikipedia I learned that Muammar Quaddafi had overturned the government of Libya in 1969 and was both an authoritarian dictator and responsible for improving the status of women there significantly. It’s useful to read James Woods’ New Yorker review to learn about the author. The narrator Khaled is the...
I was happy to see Ron Charles’ enthusiasm for Louise Erdrich’s latest book and it turns out that I share it. This one begins in 2008 in North Dakota’s Red River Valley where the economy centers on sugar beets and gives brief updates to the present time. The last book I read of hers, The Beet Queen, written in 1986, begins in 1932, and has a character Wallace who introduces...
As usual I will begin by noting how hard I find it to write about a collection of short stories. How do I write about the whole of a disparate mix? Not comprehensively, I fear. “The Bootlegger” tells about a complicated marriage with the backdrop of classical music. The narrator describes her smart and successful husband, a person who was moved to hear classical music at Carnegie Hall...
Besides being an award-winning author, Alice McDermott has been active in teaching creative writing in many settings. This book is subtitled “Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction.” Though I don’t aspire to write, as a reader, I have appreciated authors’ reflections on what makes fiction work. I loved George Saunders’ A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, a 400-page...
This is the second in the Australian series “Writers on Writers” that I have read. The first was about Tim Winton; this one is about Kim Scott, another favorite of mine. I did not recognize the name Tony Birch, though it turns out I read an essay of his in Anita Heiss’s collection Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia. In 2018 Kim Scott’s book That Deadman Dance was one of my...
If you love nice long sentences, this is a good book for you. It was published in 1908, the year my father was born, and is set in Waterford, Ireland. The Irish author was successful, having been the first author to have two top-ten best selling books on The New York Times list in one year (1905). She died when she was only 36. It tells the struggle of one family to become middle class in...