This is my second Murakami experience and it was a good one. I read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and found it relentlessly inventive but not much else. Hard-Boiled, however, has plenty of chewy meat beneath the author’s famous razzle-dazzle style. The … Continue reading
Funny, Imaginative, and Vulgar This is my first Palahniuk novel, and to my surprise, I enjoyed it. Surprised because it’s not the sort of thing I normally like, a hodge-podge of urban punk, violent, humorous, sci-fi, horror of an experimental thing. … Continue reading
Lots of Nothing, Nicely Packaged Offill, Jenny (2014). Dept. of Speculation. New York: Vintage (177 pp.) The first 100 pages are almost entirely devoid of content, making this a 77 page “novel.” What chutzpah and what a great marketing job … Continue reading
Coruscation Beats Content Eagan, Jennifer. (2011). A Visit From the Goon Squad. New York: Anchor. One of Elmore Leonard’s famous ten rules of writing is: “If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.” Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad is painfully … Continue reading
Writer as Artist DeLillo, Don (2001). The Body Artist. New York: Scribner. This short book (125 pp) by an acclaimed master novelist is perplexing, disturbing, and confusing, yet also haunting, dense, and impressive from a craft standpoint. What’s it about? … Continue reading
Author as Flasher Mitchell, David (2004). Cloud Atlas. New York: Random House. Robert Frobisher, a character in one of the six novellas that make up Cloud Atlas, is a composer in 1931 Europe who describes his new work in a letter to … Continue reading