So I thought the mystery and a “thrill” of this novel were both stronger, more interesting, and better written than her previous novel. I am generally a sucker for a good English mystery novel, and one of the major improvements in this novel from the last is that the voice itself is better rendered than the previous one. This more or less actually feels like a person, and the narrator of In a Dark Dark Wood did not. Another good step forward for this one was […]
Why oh Why
And still I persist. I really generally don’t like stories based on myth and fairy tales, unless! there is a full rendering of the ins and outs of the stories. I think The King Must Die is one of my favorite novels and just does such a satisfying retelling of the Theseus myth. It’s a very satisfying novel. And I read The Robber Bride earlier this year and it was great! And this one has satisfying stories: “The Bloody Chamber” and “The Company of Wolves” are both […]
So that’s what happens to…
Lydia Millet wrote one of my top choices for the Longlist for the National Book Award, The Sweet Lamb of God, and I liked it a lot, but it has, what I consider, one of the lowest and inexplicably lowest ratings on Goodreads. That doesn’t deter me. Instead, it sort of suggests a kind of specialness I felt with it. This novel had some version of that too, though I didn’t like this one nearly as much as I liked that one. In this novel, our […]
This book asks so much from me.
Lois McMaster Bujold is a genius and a national treasure of course. That goes without saying. When I found myself reading the first of the Vorkosigan novels, I went on an absolute tear and read the remaining thirteen or so that were out at that point in about six months. Needless to say, it was too much, too soon, too fast. I basically got an ice cream headache from it. It would be about impossible to do the same thing with the Chalion/Five Gods series. […]
This is the book that people should ready instead of Hillbilly Elegy
Here’s the best tweet ever: Patricia Lockwood grew up in suburban Missouri and has a dad who is a Catholic priest. I know a few people who tell a story like, oh my dad was in seminary and met my mom who was a novitiate nun and they dropped out and got married. But this is not the case, through a special dispensation he was still able to become a priest even though he had and maintained a marriage with kids. Lots of kids. […]
Proto 90s/Ur-text
This book is one of those books that wrote the book on how to write books. That is, early 90s hybrid culture immigrant narrative. And this one is not exactly the one that did it first and did it best, but it is a very compelling book with alive characters that are funny and interesting. But I also think this book has the issue that a lot of these books have which is you can feel the marketing of the book at times in the […]
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