book review Mini-Review: “The Lying Life of Adults” 27 Jan 2021 The Lying Life of Adults, by Elena Ferrante In short: I loved it! An intense, passionate, honest, vulgar, and sublime poetic telling of the young girl's coming-of-age in crime-ridden Naples.…
book review Mini-Review: “Lithium for Medea” 20 Jan 2021 Lithium for Medea, by Kate Braverman An odd, passionate, and almost-perfect novel, written in a gush of negative ecstasy that echoes Allen Ginsberg's best work in but prose form, probably…
Author post… Musings on Proust, Part Seven 12 Sep 2020 Hmm...the next book I called in to my library has not arrived yet, leaving me with only Proust for a day or two. While I have to admit that he…
Author post Musings on Proust, Part 1 27 Mar 202027 Mar 2020 I have at last begun reading Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. While the coronavirus pandemic and its accompanying restrictions have given me more time to read, I actually…
book review Mini-Review: “River,” by Esther Kinsky 17 Feb 202018 Feb 2020 River, by Esther Kinsky Esther Kinsky's recent book, River, is not easy to categorize. Is it: A novel? A collection of linked short stories? An extended prose poem? A series…
book review Mini Review: “Always Happy Hour,” by Mary Miller 27 Dec 2019 Always Happy Hour, by Mary Miller Always Happy Hour is a satisfying and ultimately dismaying collection of short stories that could have been a country & western song, and probably…
book review Mini-Review: Yiyun Li’s “Where Reasons End” 18 Dec 2019 I just finished Yiyun Li's Where Reasons End, which might be called a conceptual novel, an experimental novel, perhaps an experimental memoir, or perhaps just a heart-wrenching and intellectually-challenging good…
book review Micro-Review: “Cities I Never Lived In,” by Sara Majka 12 Dec 201912 Dec 2019 I just finished a collection of linked short stories, Cities I've Never Lived in, by Sara Majka. This is a collection of linked short storiesI heard of from some ten-best…
book review Book Review: “Ducks, Newburyport,” by Lucy Ellman 30 Nov 2019 Ducks, Newburyport is a new novel both celebrated and feared for its audacity: a single stream-of-consciousness sentence nearly one thousand pages long, paused but not interrupted by concisely-written chapters of a…
book review “Just Finished….” (Three Micro-Reviews) 10 Oct 201912 Oct 2019 These are micro-reviews I posted recently on the delightful Facebook readers' group, First Edition, sponsored by the London Times. Just finished The Wallcreeper, by Nell Zink, and enjoyed it thoroughly!…
