Amateur Detective with Tourette’s Lethem, Jonathan (1999). Motherless Brooklyn. New York: Random/Doubleday. The “Motherless” of the title is a group of four teenage boys living in an orphanage in 1979 Brooklyn. They are hired out for odd jobs of questionable legality … Continue reading
Life is Poetry; Poetry is Life Woolf, Virginia (1928). Orlando. Orlando, FL: Harcourt This is one of Woolf’s most popular novels, partly because of its fascinating story. A young English boy (Orlando) loves poetry and adventure. The dying Queen Elizabeth … Continue reading
Hidden Story of A Hidden Tomb Phillips, Arthur (2004). The Egyptologist. New York: Random. The epistolary novel is a difficult form, because written language uses a different diction from conversation, and is inherently less alive than real-time dialog and narration. Since … Continue reading
A Kaleidoscope of Early Feminism Russ, Joanna. (1975). The Female Man. Boston: Beacon. Four women live in different worlds, and each world has a different definition of what it means to be a woman. Through some fantasy magic, they are … Continue reading
The First Gothic Novel Walpole, Horace (1769/2010). The Castle of Otranto. New York: Oxford World Classics. This short book (115 pages), published in 1769, defined the Gothic novel form. It is full of murky castles, stormy weather, princes in disguise, swooning … Continue reading
Collapsed of its Own Weight Jess Walter (2012). Beautiful Ruins. New York: Harper-Collins The first five pages of this book contain dozens of ecstatic reviews from major newspapers and published authors. I wonder how Harper-Collins accomplishes that for an undistinguished … Continue reading
The Hedgehog Blog The Elegance of the Hedgehog Muriel Barbery. New York: Europa Editions, 2006 Two female narrators describe their lives in intermixed chapters. One is a fifty-four year old concierge at a condo for wealthy people, in contemporary Paris. … Continue reading
Clueless People Behaving Badly The Corrections Jonathan Franzen. New York: Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2001 This saga of Midwest family life put Franzen on the map, as did its selection for Oprah’s Book Club (the kiss of death), which he … Continue reading
High-Wire Act McCann, Colum. (2009). Let the Great World Spin. New York: Random House. This set of stories describes the lives of ordinary people in New York City in 1974. As the stories unfold, the lives of the dozen or … Continue reading
Drunk Guy Dies in Mexico Lowry, Malcolm. (1947). Under the Volcano. New York: Harper & Row. It’s intimidating to read an iconic novel like this, one universally acclaimed as a “towering achievement in 20th century literature,” and so forth. It’s as … Continue reading