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. Read full book review >
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. Read full book review >
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.). This is written more in the pursuit of learned pleasure than of pedantic knowledge, by a man plainly in love with books and reading. Read full book review >
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. Read full book review >
