Spring releases, particularly of novels, tend to be marvellous. I’m not sure why but check out these beauties: Peter Temple’s Truth – how long I have waited! The Year of the Flood, another dystopian venture by Margaret Atwood Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City promises to be a corker
Also posted in Crime Fiction |
The American publishing industry’s annual awards, judged by five writers in various categories, have just released their 2009 nominees. In the fiction category, I’m already after the first two but the others are new to me: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann Marcel Theroux’s Far North Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders [...]
Can a novel change your life? Can it indeed! One third of the way through Roberto Bolano’s final, posthumously released, 898-page novel, I scribbled down: ‘2666 has changed my life.’ What on earth did I mean? I’m still puzzling over those five words (and the puzzle feels increasingly meaningful) but I think I was exulting in [...]
Also posted in Genocide |
For the first time this year, no crime fiction or sci-fi, just a directed mixture of serious literary fiction and nonfiction: I’ve been saving up Tim Winton’s Breath John Keane’s ambitious, fascinating The Life and Death of Democracy Exposure: A Journey, lyrical memoir/travel from local author Joel Magarey Hilary Spurling’s superlative Matisse the Master: A Life [...]
Also posted in Nonfiction |
The opening pages of American Rust, by debut American novelist Philipp Meyer, are stunning, revealing a richly textured style of concrete action and internal immersion, a style wonderful to read once its cadence is absorbed. In a dying Pennsylvania town gutted by its steel mill’s closure, two unlikely friends – geeky, smart Isaac English and short-fuse [...]
In the August 30 issue of the New York Times Book Review, one of my favourite authors, Jonathan Lethem, swoons over the first fiction from Lorrie Moore in more than a decade. I don’t know how many accolades I’ve read for Moore’s 1998 short story collection, Birds of America, but for some reason I’ve never [...]
Last weekend’s book sections contained two complimentary reviews that add more onto the bulging list: George Williams in the Weekend Australian calls Iain Banks latest, Transition, seemingly a thriller-science fiction cross, ‘dark and stylish’. Ever reliable Age reviewer Andrew Riemer says Clive James ‘reveals admirable poise, erudition and authority, whatever the subject matter’ in his [...]
T. Corraghessan Boyle is one of my favourite authors, an exuberant stylist who tackles ambitious topics, often from intriguing angles. Being a beginning student of the arcane (but surrounding) subject of architecture, I snapped up his latest, The Women, for it’s a brave fictional look at the life of an architectural great, Frank Lloyd Wright. [...]
Also posted in Learning Art |
Some years I’ve had the pleasure of reading the entire Booker shortlist. I know the shortlist always ‘stirs up controversy’ (not coincidentally boosting press exposure), but the quality of the entire list has always seemed high to me. This year, I’ve too much reading, full stop, to contemplate blanket exposure, but in any case none [...]
Pete Dexter is one of those brilliant authors who seems to get ignored. After Paris Trout, which was made into a film, his wonderful novels, often bleak, sometimes comedic, disappeared fast and rarely made their way to Australia. His new outing, Spooner, is released later this month. What’s more, I’ll also put on my list [...]