This is how the great-granddaughter of Iowa farmers Walter and Rosanna Langdon describes what’s left of the topsoil on the original family farm when she visits it in the closing pages of The Last Hundred Years Trilogy by Jane Smiley. We can see the how this family’s decisions played … Read More
Category: fiction
“Rosa was a perfect example of an only child, thought Claire – she behaved herself, but it was because she was always on the stage and the lights were always up. “
If you were a novelist, what compliment would you most like to see in a review of your work? A comparison to Tolstoy, perhaps? That compliment was in fact given in the British newspaper, the Guardian, in a review of Jane Smiley’s novel Early Warnings, the second … Read More
“I have often pictured her stage-managing a fashion show of monsters.”
As unlikely as it sounds, this quote comes from a letter of recommendation for an associate dean of student affairs applicant, who also happens to be the former lover of the creative writing professor who sends all of the letters in this hilarious expostulatory novel. His comments become “more elaborately … Read More
“Why couldn’t she be more like his other teachers, who looked at him blankly the following fall when he said hello to them outside Woolworths, having in a matter of months forgotten his existence entirely?”
No contemporary writer is better at convincing the reader that a person with many faults can be a hero than Richard Russo. His mixture of empathy, honesty, warmth and wit made Sully a heroic figure in Nobody’s Fool and makes Doug Raymer the equally-unlikely hero in the sequel Everyone’s … Read More
“The perennial question of motherhood, Eloise thought, was how honest to be.”
“Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”
“I’ve never heard anything like that. The last line comes out of nowhere.”
This line from a conversation between a seventy-seven year-old poet and an IRS agent about a poem by James Wright in the short story “Yancey” is vintage Ann Beattie: it’s an astute comment in an unusual situation by characters who come to each other from unanticipated angles, and who … Read More
Best of 2015 Books
2015 has been a wonderful year for publishers and readers. My “Best of 2015” list consists of the books that I am most likely to read again. In the memoir category, Norway’s Karl Ove Knausgaard’s fourth volume of My Struggle is part of a series that I believe will be … Read More
“To scatter beams of light on the darkness of your unknown past is my duty.”
A Beijing taxi driver is stalked by someone who claims to have been his soul mate in five of his past lives during the last 1300 years. It’s an interesting premise for this novel, which has received rave reviews from critics around the world. This wildly ambitious rollick … Read More
“Was the crisis real or make-believe?”
What makes a light novel, such as this one, satisfying? Texture, I think, can have a lot to do with it. While the plot is thin — The Queen of England decides to leave the palace for a day — the author incorporates photos from actual events, insider knowledge … Read More
“Her father always said, ‘That loneliness of his,’ and when she saw it in him now, she felt lonely, even abandoned for the moment it lasted . .”
Writing about loneliness is surely one of those tricks that should come with the warning “Do not attempt this at home.” Often, descriptions of loneliness trigger disengagement. It takes a master, such as Marilynne Robinson, to write a novel about loneliness that’s a page-turner. In an interview, when asked … Read More
“You are a coward as well as a snob and a tyrant, Atticus.”
Much has been written about Atticus’s moral compromises in Go Set a Watchman, which might remove him from the list of “Best Dads in American Literature.” However, what I find more remarkable is Scout’s courage to reject the views of the men she loves most and to tell them that … Read More
“It was as if nothing I’d ever done in my life prior to this counted.”
The wonderful thing about 600-page sagas is, in my view, the opportunity to develop a wide perspective. Readers get to see the consequences of decisions as they play out over the span of decades. Sometimes characters come to see things differently, and sometimes readers do, too. Moments of reconsideration can … Read More
“But, like most families, they imagined they were special.”
What makes this family special? Anne Tyler provides this list: They thought their uncanny ability to keep their dogs alive for eons set them apart, as did their fierce disapproval of any adults who wear jeans, and their air of good-natured patience “that was not entirely deserved.” They also have … Read More
“A good book . . . leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.”
If you agree that a great book does compel you to reread your own soul, you will find yourself contemplating the capabilities of the human spirit after finishing The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. What astonished me most about this award-winning novel was the way contradictions … Read More