Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller – Chloé Griffin
The point of fairy tales, in case you didn’t know, is that you must be pure of heart. The point of stars is that you want to be them. The point of saints is that when their bodies die they do not really leave us.
The Secret World of Oil – Ken Silverstein
In this era, some people go to war over religion. For other folks, oil will do.
The Soul of the Marionette – John Gray
One gets the sense that [Gray] tells stories not to reach more people, but because he doesn’t think people are worth explaining things to. But then why write for popular outlets?
Metcalf has recreated that uniquely readerly revelation of finding in unrelated literature of all kinds resonances and echoes that inform one’s lived experience.
The canon of world literature should not just reflect a liberal-humanist position.
Virginia Woolf: A Portrait – Viviane Forrester
A heady blend of cod Freudianism and prurient psycho-sexual sleuthing, compelling and objectionable in equal measure.
After the Tall Timber – Renata Adler
To anyone who reads it, either in its entirety or piecemeal, this book says, quite clearly: You have not been reading carefully enough.
The Mountain and the Wall – Alisa Ganieva
But the greatest loss were the bronze statuettes, cast millennia ago, of bare-breasted, full-buttocked nude female figures, laughing horsemen with dangling legs.
A View of the Harbour – Elizabeth Taylor
While there would perhaps be no Taylor were it not for Woolf, it is high time that Taylor is taken on her own terms and reclaimed as a major British novelist.
Book of Numbers – Joshua Cohen
The reader is put in the same position toward the novel’s depicted world as the protagonist is toward his own life, alienated as he is from his marriage and his career.