New Yorker Tim, a wealthy law firm partner, walks. Rather, his legs walk uncontrollably, sending Tim away from his work and his wife and daughter, walking nonstop until he collapses into narcoleptic sleep. Intelligent, proud, tough, he joins battle with his unheard-of affliction. The Unnamed, by sophomore novelist Joshua Ferris, is Tim’s weird, undulating tale. [...]
Out of the last financial boom, in the wake of the GFC, come the novelists’ judgements. Often novelists can penetrate deeper than the analysts and historians. Adam Haslett’s Union Atlantic is a coruscating dig into the ascendancy of a fictional American bank of that name, told through the eyes of four intersecting characters: an emotionally [...]
Eric Maisel is a humble, brilliant writer on creativity, a guru (though he would argue against the very term) to the stumblers like me. Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions breaks no new ground but instead takes Maisel’s notions of ‘making meaning’ and living through creativity to prod us towards obsession. Not the destructive [...]
Anna Quindlen’s best novels, such as Black and Blue, burrow into violence and death. A writer who immerses her readers, she weaves a tapestry of characters into richly imagined lives and then . . . crunch, the horror of it all. So it is with Every Last One. Deftly Quindlen shoves the reader into the [...]
Most forays by actors into music are not worth listening to, but the first album from She & Him – actress Zooey Deschanel teamed up with beguiling singer-songwriter M. Ward – was spirited and atmospheric. She & Him are back with Volume Two, with eleven original Deschanel songs and two covers. The sophomore release is as [...]
This must be the season for wonderful thrillers. I had admired Steve Hamilton’s private eye series, featuring Alex McKnight, during its early years, but stopped following him some time ago. Glowing reviews of his new standalone The Lock Artist: A Novel drew me back and thank goodness for that, for this is one of the cleverest, [...]
A lifelong fascination with ants led me to read one excellent book last year (see my review of The Lives of Ants) but now I’ve chanced upon an even more remarkable book. Adventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions, by famed wildlife photographer and writer Mark W. Moffett, is just the [...]
What a dazzling premise! Charlie Huston posits for his sci-fi thriller Sleepless: A Novel an alternative early 21st century in which a tenth of the population has turned sleepless, a condition that torments and eventually kills the afflicted. Into a familiar, yet ghastly Los Angeles, Huston plunges Park Haas, the last honest cop, and his [...]
There are two kinds of atheists. One branch obsesses over religions and their foibles, the other shuns any religiosity. I’m in the latter category and have avoided biblically slanted literature since Sunday school, so I only tackled Philip Pullman’s controversial The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ for a book club. Oddly enough, I [...]
Walter Mosley’s character-based crime fiction series are such pleasure to read. He has the uncanny ability to imbue every page, even in midst of a speedy plot, with the thoughts and memories of his core character, so much so that the prime joy of reading is in growing into the heart and mind of that [...]