Whether Connors realizes it or not, his isolation isn’t so pure, nor his city living so alienating that he has to view himself as split between the two. That’s part of being American, containing those multitudes. That’s part of being human. And that’s what makes this book so incredibly enjoyable.
This is exactly what we need: more books that don’t force us to choose between enthusiasm and rigor, the ridiculous and the sublime, stories and arguments, the personal and the literary. If the theories we use to read novels don’t also help us read our lives, then we’ve missed the point entirely.
All the Time in the World – E.L. Doctorow
The stories are novelistic in scope, as each one ends with the bang of an action, event or revelation, but they are also quiet, compact, and unassuming – at least at first.
NOX is mystifying and exquisite, and, to reverse Carson’s metaphor, it opens doors that won’t close—even once you fold the book back into its box, you remain inside it.
Barnes approaches big questions about human relationships and finds no simple answers, but in setting his parameters narrow, he is able to dig deep, forgoing the pyrotechnics of ardor and the convictions of youth for measured uncertainty and emotional ambivalence.
Cloud of Ink, one of the two winners of the 2010 Iowa Poetry Prize, is a solid volume of eccentric, dense, whimsical, occasionally inscrutable and occasionally gorgeous poetry. Though the collection is somewhat eclectic and adopts a number of different approaches, Klatt’s talent for imagining bizarre, dreamlike scenarios is certainly one of his greatest strengths.
Unfamiliar Fishes – Sarah Vowell
Vowell often comes off like a guest who crashed the party and then forgot why she wanted to come in the first place.
Wolitzer’s greatly misunderstood what it’s like to be on and experience the internet, while simultaneously reacting to the medium as it was in about 2003. The depiction of technology and its effect on our relationships is so awkwardly misplaced, it’s hard to move past it.
The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise – Georges Perec
Once again, Perec manages to transcend gimmick, turning a laborious challenge into a conceit for the circuitous monotony of the workplace.
“Separated from his native Nigeria by resentment, time, and trauma, Julius treats the clinically depressed at Columbia-Presbyterian while soberly addressing his own suspicion of a worsening emotional miasma and its many symptoms, including the terrifying return of bedbugs.”