Tag: Fiction
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A Dirty Job
Review: 5 stars! Wanted to get that in there first, so there could be no confusion. From the first page this was excellent. Funny, really funny. Like laughing about it when you’re not reading it and people stare at you. Despite the humor there is a lot of genuine human emotion which can be very… Read more
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The Blind Assassin
Review: This was my very first experience reading Margaret Atwood. There’s a reason she won the Booker Prize for this. Prose is elegant and shit-filthy by turns. I love reading Canadian books because I can identify with the places, the seasons, the attitudes. The point of these reviews is to provide a critique, for whomever… Read more
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Drowning in Beauty: The Neo-Decadent Anthology
Review: Like any great anthology, some good, some bad, some great, most average. This was, to put it simply, trying too hard to be cool. The Decadent Movement was a late 19th century literary and artistic phenomenon. Think Dorian Grey and you’ll get it. The creators disavow that Neo-Decadent is an homage or pastiche to… Read more
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The English Patient
Review: I was reluctant to read this as I had heard that it was a women’s book. Meaning one of those odious volumes that fat chicks in yoga pants gush to one another about in trendy coffee shops. Well I had no cause to fear, this was outstanding. From beginning to end this novel was… Read more
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G, A Novel
Review: It didn’t take long to figure out why this one won the Booker Prize. Elusive to define. Partly historical, partly imagined. One reviewer described portions of it as a sexual meditation. Like Proust, the protagonist is unnamed through most of the novel. And even then he is known simply as “G”. Also like the… Read more
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The Elected Member
Review: This one took home the Booker Prize in 1970. Not sure why. Not going to say a lot about it, lots has been written on it over the years. I just didn’t like it. One can’t love every book, even the prize winners. This book made me want to: finish it and move forward… Read more
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The Ghost Road
Review: What an extraordinary book. A tour de force from first to last. Set in 1918 and with retrospectives to an earlier time prior to the war. A gritty, even shockingly brutal look at life in 1918. Imagine all the old codgers you see at the cenotaph on November 11 being young and fucking each… Read more
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Something to Answer For
Review: This was the first ever (inaugural is the word) Man Booker Prize winner, way back in 1969. My goal beginning with this one is to read all 50 Booker Prize winners from 1969-2019 in the next year. I don’t get this book. It was well written, very crisp prose and some really elegant phrasing.… Read more
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Burning Marguerite
Review: Powerful and intensely moving. If that sounds like every book jacket review in history it doesn’t matter. It’s still true. There is a very calm space right at the heart of this novel, like the silence in a cathedral. There is not a lot of wasted prose. Short, intense sentences that convey pages of… Read more
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The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna
Review: An investigation of memory and how our lives and events are largely our own. A beautiful exposition of nostalgia and how it shapes our memories. Very interesting to see war-time memories from an Axis country. Overall rating: How I discovered or acquired this book: Noteworthy experiences while reading this book: Discovering that Kindle illustrations… Read more