Unlikely to touch off a wave of imitators on these shores but an interesting sampler.
Illuminating collection of current writing from across the pond, as different from its American counterpart as a Paris croissant is from a New York cronut.
To gauge by this collection, universities in most European countries don’t offer a Master of Fine Arts degree. The contributors to this collection hold Ph.D.s in art history, ethnography, literature, philology, philosophy, and often, their publications are divided between fiction and politically engaged essays. The “enfant terrible of Galician literature,” Xurxo Borrazás, for instance, writes “transgressive fiction,” whatever that is, and, lately, “a challenging collection of essays on literature and politics.” The fiction here breaks down somewhat differently, and though the generalization is a loose one, it seems that writers from oppressive zones such as Belarus (“Well, we’re here to express our dissent against the politics of the ruling regime”) are just a wee bit more vocal about social/political matters than those from more forgiving climes—say, Switzerland, from which Christoph Simon turns in a tale reminiscent of fellow Helvetian Friedrich Dürrenmatt in which a presumably transgressive bookseller is ordered to be “put in a coffin...hammered shut with an iron nail, and...thrown into the river.” (Her mule, in addition, is to be turned into sausage.) It would stand to reason that the oppressed would be allegorical and the free representational, but no. In all events, the assembled collection offers a pleasing blend of realism, deconstruction and absurdism that sometimes vie for the dominant mood, as if the spirits of Slavoj Žižek and Samuel Beckett and maybe Georges Perec were fighting for first place. Sometimes all three meet, though, as in Belgian Thierry Horguelin’s meta-policier and Liechtensteiner Jens Dittmar’s alternately dark and goofy view of human relations: “[I]nstead of screwing her, he simply shoved her down the stairs.”
Unlikely to touch off a wave of imitators on these shores but an interesting sampler.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-56478-898-6
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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