Imagine, if you will, The Life of Brian, but it’s not funny. That’s not quite right, but it’s in the same ballpark. It’s kind of what would happen to Barabbas, released on mercy by Pontius Pilate, were to be the center of a novel. Accordingly, this novel is a spare, ironic, and ultimately fairly laconic representation of this question. We start off with Barabbas being released from captivity, hearing about the crucifixion, not yet knowing the role Jesus will play in his life, and dealing with […]
The human mind invents its Puss-in-Boots and its coaches that change into pumpkins at midnight because neither the believer nor the atheist is completely satisfied with appearances.
So this novel feels so much like a French novel of the 1930s. And it is. It’s ruminative and thoughtful and harrowing in it’s own right. It also feels like a slightly juvenile novel, not really in it’s idea or in it’s execution, but in that way that socialist novels can often feel…politics upfront, narrative second. So I decided to read this because while reading the Ralph Ellison collection of essays he mentions Malraux many times as one of the transformative writers he discovered in […]
You pigs, you. You rut like pigs, is all. You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All a you.
So there’s this kind of reverse engineering you can do with some music. It might be entirely bullshit, but it’s fun. What you do is take a band you like and trace back their entire career to a single influential song by a sort of demi-god of music that came before them. In some case, it might even be a single not, moment, riff, whatever. So mine: No Quarter by Led Zeppelin explains the entire career of Tool. Others might be: Run run run by […]
I am fearing because I am seeing that the only way not to be fighting is to die. I am not wanting to die.
This is small book told by a small person and involving a small world. There’s a kind of claustrophobic feel and tone to this novel and that is both terrifying and horrifying, but it’s awful oddly reassuring both for us as readers and for the narrator. I bought this novel when it first came out, and skipped the movie because I never ended up reading it. Now, the author has a new book that’s been recently published and well I figured I would want to […]
A sin committed; a prayer answered
This book is absolutely the real deal. This is incredibly strong and beautifully written memoir. And unlike other recent ones I have read, seems to have fully considered and engaged with the memoir, as a form, is, and what the particularly story and writing should encapsulate. This is thoughtful, painful, pained, and completely realized. Mailhot, as you would discover reading this, is a First Nations woman from Canada who married when she was sixteen, had a child early, lost that child to custody hearings (while […]
My fiancé immediately began to look uncomfortable, but did not voice this discomfort except by a soft gurgling sound in the throat .
Ugh. So one of the reasons I persist with books I don’t like is because, especially with newly published books, I want to stay current with what’s out, develop opinions, think about the industry and the state of the art itself, and to keep informed and current. And sometimes I just want to know who I think is a trickster figure/con artist. This book is not like the awfullest book I have ever read, or even close. One or so of the stories is perfectly […]
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