This book truly, like her other collection truly is an experience. Her stories are not a whole lot like other writers’, except for one very clear connection point. The stories range from the narration of the death of a town and its people, to a grumpy angel who doesn’t really want to be bothered. My favorite story in this collection is the only one I will talk about: “The Poet and the Muse” starts off: “Nina was a marvelous woman, an ordinary woman, a doctor, […]
Voyage of the Voyage of the Narwhal
This book also explores the 19th century fascination with the Arctic as a genuine scientific and adventurous pursuit. In this particular voyage, the lead protagonist, Erasmus, who comes from a scientifically-minded family, but is of middling success and talent, is conscripted to join a voyage lead by his would-be brother-in-law to be a naturalist on the ship. This ship’s main goal is to seek out the remains of the ill-fated mission of Franklin whose two boats Erebus and Terror were lost in the pack ice of the […]
The stressed words sounded so peevish.
I can’t very well review all the stories in this collection as it’s a retrospective collective 4o years after the death of a not entirely well-known writer and covers 40 years itself. Oh and there’s 30 stories in it. Of the 30 stories, most seem primed for publication in that they are roughly ten pages long each and have a solidly cohesive and straightforward narrative, if not straightforward characters. Taylor’s writing is trim and funny and hides in subtleties, but like the four novels of […]
“How waste everything looks when ye can’t fix a name to it”
So imagine the movie The VVitch taking place about a 100 years later, and in western Virginia/border of Ohio territory instead. There’s still lots of fear and anxiety but there’s no witch. Not even a little witch. This novel comes from a collection of novels by a novelist most (including me until about a year or so ago) from West Virginis named Mary Lee Settle. One of those novelists who spends her entire career at a university, even wins some awards, but maybe doesn’t have the […]
North East South West
Obviously, this book makes me think of this clip from the Simpsons. I am left wondering why this book gets taught to high school students, at least in a compulsory sense. I think that this book makes a lot of sense for a self-motivated kind of student. Not to say that it’s a particularly complex or difficult book to read, but that it’s themes and issues kind of skip teenage years. For example, everyone in this book seems to be either a child or […]
I should not be obliged to hear this voice.
I can’t say I am a voice of young Black men in America. I also can’t say I am an expert in the narration of Black experience in America. Nor can I say I am an expert in music. The thing is, I don’t know that I trust a British writer who is not Black to tell me these things either. As a novel in which I am finding out about a set of characters even through the lens of a kind of sub-culture (record […]
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