Tag: Fiction
-
That Old Ace in the Hole
Overview That Old Ace in the Hole (2002) is Annie Proulx’s panoramic, character-driven novel set in the Texas–Oklahoma Panhandle. It follows Bob Dollar, a guileless land scout employed by a corporate hog‑farming conglomerate, as he embeds himself in the fictional town of Woolybucket. Proulx makes the landscape and its people the book’s central subjects: the… Read more
-
Prague Stories
Review: Something a little different for me with this volume. I will admit that I knew nothing about Prague, Czech Republic or Czech people other than Jaromir Jagr is from there. But now thanks to Everyman publishing I know a lot more. I still had to refer to my map of Europe to place all… Read more
-
Babbitt
Review: This was an extraordinary novel, and I was not expecting that at all. How I came to read this was due to a trivia question that I got wrong a few weeks ago. The question was: Who was the first American author to receive a Pulitzer Prize? So I looked at the choices and… Read more
-
Underworld
Review: I didn’t read this book as much as I experienced this book. What an absolutely brilliant novel. From the first sentence to the last word this was stunning, emotional, captivating. I originally heard of this book when reading an old newspaper piece by Salman Rushdie when he was reviewing some of his favorite reads… Read more
-
The House Gun
Review: This was awful. I made it 107 pages and I feel that some sort of prize should be awarded in recognition of my tenacity and determination. It doesn’t have to be a Nobel Prize. I’d be happy with, say, a Rolo. This book made me want to: Re-evaluate my priorities, namely why I would… Read more
-
Links
Review: 20 years after publication and still contemporary with the new every day. Somalia is a shithole. An inside look at just exactly what it’s like everyday there, which is to say awful. An excellent novel, a brilliant novelist. Dark, disturbing, but an important novel. This book made me want to: read more from this… Read more
-
British Short Stories – Classics Criticism
Review: From Kipling to Huxley, Conrad through Greene, this collection covered a broad cross-section of early 20th century British short fiction. Wow. Lots of casual, routine racism. All of these stories were excellent. None very happy, some downright depressing. I didn’t “get” all of them, but maybe nobody does, stories hit or miss with each… Read more
-
Islands in the stream
Review: I bailed on this. Got through about 30% and just had to move on. I wanted to like this. I wanted it to live up to A Farewell to Arms or the short stories. But no. Drinks, bars, descriptions of making drinks, descriptions of bars, descriptions of drinking drinks in bars. I would have… Read more
-
Youth and the Bright Medusa
Review: Superb Cather at her very best. Opera stories. Just the way I like it! I was surprised by the veiled, and not so veiled, references to sexy times. Interesting that in one story she killed off the protagonist on the Titanic, and I don’t mean a schlocky tale of Titanic romance. Just a description… Read more
-
Sapphira and the Slave Girl
Review: The final Willa Cather novel. This was written and published around 1939-1940, but set in 1856. Pre-Civil War America in the south. I’m not sure who was meant to be the hero of this one. Every character seemed to be very human, very flawed. I was expecting a sort of anti-slavery treatise, but I… Read more