I went into this novel cold, and I was all the better for it. So if the following short premise sounds good to you, stop reading and find this novel and go forth. An older British woman languishing in the home of her useless son in Spain is gifted an encrusted hearing trumpet that better allows her to hear and comprehend the conversations in the world around her. Having been mistaken for senile, when her hard of hearing is the better explanation, she begins to […]
She is beginning to understand that completion is not so much about reaching perfection as it is making the choice to look away from the material.
I knew I probably wasn’t going to like this one very much. And I didn’t. I think it’s a rather unfortunate novel in several ways. It’s not terribly written, but it relies heavily one tricks rather than quality. It’s a novel that strikes me as oddly cynical in this marketplace, where reviews are extracted from literary peers and friends instead of earnest critics. I won’t say who, but a writer who gives all their friends five stars regardless of actual quality gave this a three […]
…progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and *reimagined* if it is to survive.
I am a lot more conservative-minded in my 30s than in my 20s, so much so that my 20s version would be mad, and my 30s self, well me, would be annoyed by the younger. That’s not to say I have much in the way of conservatism at all in my politics. The modern Republican Party, like under the Bush years, is a death cult that wants to take us with them as they sacrifice themselves on the altar of capitalism and sell it to […]
The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
It’s funny because there’s a moment in one of Zadie Smith’s essays in Feel Free where she knocks Iris Murdoch a little as being one of those stodgy British writers she had to read in school. And in a similar moment Iris Murdoch makes a similar list in this book. All of that may be true…that’s she’s stodgy, that British kids have to read her (which they shouldn’t have to….she’s for older folks) and all that. But Zadie Smith wrote an Iris Murdoch novel in this […]
Rumours began with the whispered gossip of native servants and spread quickly to the rest of the population
This is an utterly brilliant novel that almost has no business being this good. On the surface it looks to be a sweeping historical epic in the vein of James Michener or MM Kaye, and to some small degree it is. It’s a novel of the closing days of the British Raj, written by a former colonial official. So on the one hand, it’s potentially a kind of wistful nostalgic novel of a lost past. But luckily it’s way more Orwell and Graham Greene than […]
No matter how good a man is, there’s always some horse can pitch him.
I am not sure which of the above novels I will be reviewing. I won’t be reading Of Mice and Men or The Pearl, I know that. Instead, I have access to a bunch of his short works and whatever I get to I will get to. I have a weird relationship with Steinbeck because I read The Grapes of Wrath in high school and unlike other books I read in high school, I have never reread it. When I pick up one of his other novels I tend […]
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