"This novel succeeds both as a story and an illumination of storytelling."
A beguiling exercise in metafiction, one that tells an engrossing story from various perspectives while undermining the possibility of truth in storytelling.
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"Sierra is a more sophisticated writer than Dan Brown, and he offers fresh perspective on the Renaissance mind."
No mere Da Vinci Code redux, this Spanish bestseller fuses an ecclesiastical whodunit with an A-Z guide to Neoplatonist philosophy and Renaissance symbology.
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"A reminder that daily ruminations of even a highly literate and engaging writer are not invariably erudite."
Globetrotting polyglot Manguel (Reading Pictures, 2001, etc.) rereads favorite books, one per month, as the Iraq War simmers, then boils.
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"A small but rich little instant classic, as though Joseph Conrad had sent up a perfect new tale from the silence beyond the grave."
Manguel (News from a Foreign Country Came, 1990; the nonfiction A History of Reading, 1995; etc.) offers a tiny but deft and quietly moving story of Robert Louis Stevenson at his premature death.
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"But, overall, both his pacifism and his passivity seem unfortunately generic, and his plight never fully engages our emotions."
Ports Of Call ($24.00; Nov. 30; 197 pp.; 1-86046-446-7): The native Lebanese (now French) author of such exotic fiction as The Rock of Tanios (1994) and The Gardens of Light (p. 177) offers here the winsome (though strangely uninvolving) story of Turkish-Lebanese nobleman Ossyane Ketabdar's renunciation of both his father's revolutionary ardor and Clara, the Jewish woman whom their respective cultures, a world war, and the later (1948) Arab-Israeli War keep apart for many years, before a final bittersweet meeting seals their fates.
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"With a few fine exceptions, then, here's the nature essay at its most quaint and rhapsodic, from empurpled pens."
paper 0-306-45992-2 Manguel's (A History of Reading, 1996, etc.) collection of natural history essays is overburdened with selections from Victorian Englishmen, with a smattering of odd gems to sustain the reader's interest.
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"His book, digressive, witty, surprising, is a pleasure. (140 illustrations, not seen)"
A delightful set of interlinked essays that explore the history of reading, by a novelist (News From a Foreign Country Came, 1990) and anthologist (Other Fires, 1985, etc.).
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This collection embraces such a wide range of writing as to nearly undermine the presumed premise—that there exists something that can be intelligently called ``gay fiction.'' Indeed, in his introduction, Manguel (News From a Foreign Country Came, 1991, etc.) writes that ``the notion of `gay literature' is guilty on two counts: first, because it implies a narrow literary category based on the sexuality of either its authors or its characters; second, because it implies a narrow sexual category that has somehow found its definition in a literary form.'' So, in addition to James Baldwin, Edmund White, Christopher Isherwood, and other frequent denizens of gay-themed anthologies, the editors (Stephenson also edited Between Worlds, not reviewed) admit Sherwood Anderson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Hemingway, and other writers not habitually invited into such collections but who have written about homosexuality.
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