FullReviews Index - page 4
Astonishing Splashes of Colour
Booker finalist Astonishing Splashes of Colour takes its title from J. M. Barrie's description of Peter Pan's Neverland. It follows the life of Kitty, a woman who, in a sense, has never grown up. She lives an improvised life reviewing children's books, visiting her husband who lives in the apartment next door, and fostering a growing obsession to replace her lost child. Clare Morrall's debut novel is a sparkling original.
How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater
It's 1983 in Wallingford, New Jersey, a sleepy bedroom town outside of Manhattan. Seventeen-year-old Edward Zanni, a feckless Ferris Bueller-type, is Peter Panning his way through a carefree summer of magic and mischief. The fun comes to a halt, however, when Edward's father remarries and refuses to pay for Edward to study acting at Juilliard. Marc Acito, hailed as the "gay Dave Barry" for his humor column, "The Gospel According to Marc" delivers on this fun-filled romp through adolescence.
The Darling
Russell Banks' "The Darling" is Hannah Musgrave's story, told years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. Hannah's encounter with Taylor in America triggers a series of events whose momentum catches Hannah's family in its grip and forces her to make a heartrending choice.
Brick Lane
Monica Ali's novel, Brick Lane, was resoundingly praised. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Ali was named as one of the best young British writers. I suspect that everyone's enthusiasm for the novel is, in part, that Ali is like a magician revealing all her secrets. IN a time when every Western country is facing off with its Muslim populations, this book provides its readers a look at a community that, frankly, frightens them; it is, in short, an education.
Eve’s Apple
Jonathan Rosen's Eve's Apple on the surface appears to be a story about a man obsessed with his girlfriends' eating disorder. What it turns out to be is something much more intriguing; a mystery novel where the crime is both the eating disorder and the obsession to solve it. The internal unknown of a disease still incurable by both medicine and psychology is for Joseph Zimmerman both a source of deep distress and his raison-d'etre.
The Normals
Hargrove Anderson Medical, a pharmaceutical company looking for perfectly healthy "normals" to participate in Phase I studies of their latest experimental drugs. Billy Schine, a debt-ridden and disillusioned Harvard grad signs up for a fourteen-day trial of Allevatrox, a new atypical antipsychotic for the treatment of schizophrenia.
Scream Queens of the Dead Sea
When a young graduate of the Israeli army decides to moonlight as an assistant nurse at a mental institution in Jerusalem, the job seems like a nice break from everyday life in the Promised Land. What could be easier than exercising power over a small group of heavily medicated zombies? But as the human inventory inside the insane asylum begins to mirror the psychotic norms of the outside world, the inexperienced ex-soldier finds himself trapped in a hilarious yet terrifying freak show.
The Line of Beauty
In "The Line of Beauty," Alan Hollinghurst's gay antihero, Nick Guest, finds his life dramatically altered when he takes up residence with conservative Parliament member, Gerald Feddens, his wealthy wife and two children. Chris Smith, who headed the 2004 Booker Prize judging panel, called The Line of Beauty, "a winning novel that is exciting, brilliantly written and gets deep under the skin of the Thatcherite 80s. The search for love, sex and beauty is rarely so exquisitely done."
A Complicated Kindness
Miriam Toews' darkly funny novel, A Complicated Kindness, is the world according to Nomi Nickel, a bewildered and wry sixteen-year-old trapped in a town governed by fundamentalist religion. In Nomi's droll, refreshing voice, we're told the story of her eccentric family as it falls apart, each member on a collision course with the only community they have ever known. It is a work of fierce humor and tragedy by a Canadian writer poised to take the American market by storm.
The End of the Story
Mislabeled boxes, problems with visiting nurses, and confusing notes --such are the obstacles in the way of the unnamed narrator of The End of the Story as she attempts to organize her memories of a love affair into a novel. With compassion, wit, and what appears to be candor, she seeks to determine what she actually knows about herself and her past, but we begin to suspect, along with her, that given the elusiveness of memory and understanding, any tale retrieved from the past must be fiction.
Enter Sandman
Two months after her 30th birthday, celebrated journalist, Stephanie Williams, was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. Williams made a pact with her friend, Adam Fawer. They would write and finish thir novels. For three years, Williams battled breast cancer and wrote her book. The resultant novel, Enter Sandman, is a largely biographical account of her struggle. Stephanie Williams died on July 3, 2004, just weeks after the book's publication.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Narrated by a fifteen-year-old autistic savant obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, Mark Haddon's dazzling novel weaves together an old-fashioned mystery, a contemporary coming-of-age story, and a fascinating excursion into a mind incapable of processing emotions. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is one of the freshest debut novels in years: a comedy, a tearjerker, a mystery story, a novel of exceptional literary merit that is great fun to read.
The Known World
An ambitious, luminously written novel that ranges seamlessly between the past and future and back again to the present, The Known World weaves together the lives of freed and enslaved blacks, whites, and Indians -- and allows all of us a deeper understanding of the enduring multidimensional world created by the institution of slavery.
Transmission
Transmission, Hari Kunzru’s new novel of love and lunacy, immigration and immunity, introduces a daydreaming Indian computer geek whose luxurious fantasies about life in America are shaken when he accepts a California job offer. Award-winning novelist Hari Kunzru was hailed as a "modern-day Kipling," for his best-selling debut, The Impressionist.
"P"
You'll be getting a lot of art for your dollar when you buy a copy of P by Andrew Lewis Conn. Because creating a work of art in our times that is devoid of reference, influence, homage, and downright stealing is next to impossible Conn has chosen to embrace rather then deny his predecessors and create a work of ultimate reference. He has taken James Joyce's Ulysses as his model and created his own single day in the late 20th century over which the action of his story takes place.
Gilligan's Wake
In Gilligan's Wake by Tom Carson, seven familiar narrators recall the last century. The Skipper shares his memories of fellow skipper Jack Kennedy. The millionaire gets Alger Hiss a job. Mrs. Howell reveals her friendship with The Great Gatsby's Daisy Buchanan. Ginger dishes up the scoop on the Rat Pack. The professor confesses to his part in every event from Los Alamos to Watergate. And Mary-Ann finds romance in Paris. And then Gilligan, inventing this comic collage for reasons of his own.
Drop City
It is 1970, and a California commune devoted to peace, free love, and the simple life has decided to relocate to the last frontier—the unforgiving landscape of interior Alaska. Armed with the spirit of adventure and naïve optimism, the inhabitants of "Drop City" arrive in the wilderness of Alaska only to find their utopia already populated by other homesteaders. T.C. Boyle’s ninth novel is a tour de force infused with the lyricism and take-no-prisoners storytelling for which he is famous.
Oracle Night
Paul Auster is one author who likes to write novels about novelists, and continues to be consistently entertaining and provocative in doing so. Auster's latest novel, Oracle Night, is another exploration on why we write, and what kind of power that writing actually holds.
Samaritan
Samaritan by Richard Price tells the story of Ray Mitchell, who after a lucrative television writing career comes to an abrupt end, ex–high school teacher, returns to the New Jersey city of his birth—to rethink his life, reconnect with his teenage daughter and to spread the wealth on the housing project that reared him. He begins teaching again, embarks on an affair with a married woman from the old neighborhood and becomes a mentor to a former student recently released from jail.
Yellow Dog
Martin Amis is no stranger to the nittier and grittier walks of life. Amis's novels are filled with sex, drugs, and violence, and is an expert at creating despicable characters for whom you can't help but feeling a little bit sympathetic. His latest novel, Yellow Dog, should please fans of his morbid sense of humor, layered storytelling, and uniquely descriptive language.