I waited too long to write a decent review for a book this ambitious. It really sucks, but the book doesn’t.
Portrait of an Art Monster Marriage
Dept. Of Speculation is 46 pithy chapters that take up only 180 pages, composed entirely of short, aphoristic paragraphs and quotes that vaguely tell the story of a woman’s journey through adulthood. The characters are nameless: the wife, the husband, the daughter. The narrator, the Wife, starts as an aspiring Art Monster, and changes as she falls in love, gets married, has a daughter. The wife waxes poetic (or, aphoristic) about life’s catastrophes, from having a colicky baby, to a cheating husband, to a battle with bedbugs, […]
Giving Rebirth is Not For the Weak
There are no harmless, compassionate ways to remake oneself. We murder who we were so we can rebirth ourselves in the images of dreams. Even 25 years after it was first published, the themes of this novel remain relevant: the immigrant experience of trying to assimilate into US culture and the particular experience of a young Hindu woman who chooses to defy traditional expectations and dares to remake herself. Violence, including murder, is a part not just of Jasmine’s personal story but of other women, […]
Wickedly funny, and painfully accurate, satire of journalism
I loved Scoop. LOVED IT. I’m also slightly miffed that I never read it until this year. How could it be that this awesomely biting satire on journalism was not in my life before? What starts out as a case of mistaken identity secures a foreign correspondent gig for the reluctant William Boot, a hapless columnist for the gardening section of the Beast. He is sent to the fictional African country of Ismaelia, where he is told to report the war between the good vs. the […]
Watching It All Slip Away
A Friend of the Family is narrated by Pete, a successful internist, living in a well-to-do suburb in New Jersey for over twenty years. At the opening of the novel he is awaiting the result of a lawsuit for medical malpractice and being physically threatened by his patient’s brother as he passes time at a beach. For some reason, he is living in the studio above the garage, separated from his wife and son, marking time with his elderly mother and very few patients. What […]
Charlie Brown Grows Up and Moves to Canada
This 1993 novel won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and was turned into a movie. The Shipping News is the story of a man named Quoyle over the course of a few eventful, transformative years of his life. Proulx’s unique writing style combines poetry and humor to create characters who might be from a folk tale or might be your next door neighbor. Hive spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramps, he survived childhood….” Quoyle is a lot like Charlie Brown […]
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