Bad personality, bad prose, and sexism aside, the narrator’s anxieties about how to novelize history are legitimate.
The Land of Decoration – Grace McCleen
Judith’s preoccupations with death are more about her longing for a perfect world, one that she creates in miniature on the floor of her bedroom and calls “the Land of Decoration.”
CONFUSION will resonate with anyone who has felt the tension between desire and knowledge that sits at the heart of pedagogical relationships.
A Sense of Direction – Gideon Lewis-Kraus
The fundamental flaw is the concept: the idea that three pilgrimages is better than one; that three pilgrimages equals three times the enlightenment for the writer and three times the payoff for readers.
The Chemistry of Tears – Peter Carey
Abundant with sumptuously detailed antiquities — Islamic water clocks, ancient Chinese timepieces, and of course the impossible mechanical duck.
With the Animals – Noëlle Revaz
Revaz makes it possible to feel a certain empathy for Paul, a pity for how small he has made his world and how tightly he needs to control it.
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk – Ben Fountain
The hypocrisy that’s so prevalent you almost only notice it when it’s absent.
I Am an Executioner: Love Stories – Rajesh Parameswaran
No creature, human or animal or alien, escapes the terrible consequences of falling in love.
Metawritings: Notes Toward a Theory of Nonfiction – Jill Talbot
It would be no surprise if, solely based on the book’s title, many would-be readers rolled their eyes uncontrollably.
Nostalgia is a fetish; in SOUND it’s a compulsion, a habit to be tamed.