It is a rare thing: to find a book that simply lays itself out, seduces, moves forward, never falters, and lands with a deft final step. The good read that Goodreads is named for. Taylor’s novel is simple on the … Continue reading →
To say that the book is superbly written, and that it inhabits the very difficult territory of a literary love story, is to say that the achievement of Aciman is large. He’s depicted the cauldron of young love, youth, erotic … Continue reading →
This novel has a hazy quality from start to finish. Well, that’s not quite true. The beginning of the book has a startling turn when Liam, the main concern, loses his job, moves into a new apartment, and wakes up … Continue reading →
This book feels like a case of fan fiction meets Agatha Christie, but not the good Agatha Christie. The fact that the book has as its premise that we return to the world of Pride and Prejudice makes it something … Continue reading →
Finding this book in my smallish public library, I read it with some fascination over a few days, and with the surprise one feels on hearing a genuine voice. Laurus is the fourth name by which the protagonist is known … Continue reading →
I have been reading George Sand’s novels in and among other books, including Indiana, Mauprat, Consuelo, The Countess of Rudolstadt, and this book. The story of Sand’s life, including her cigar-smoking, pants-wearing, and Chopin-loving, are better known in English than … Continue reading →
I started hearing about this book during the pandemic, from readers who found some parallels between the Covid crisis and this novel’s narrative of an epidemic of blindness that strikes an unnamed city. I’m not sure I would have made … Continue reading →
This is a smart book written by a smart person and you will feel smart if you read it and like it. If, like me, you don’t enjoy the reading, you will get the feeling you have failed literature in … Continue reading →
The sense of character is remarkable and drives the writing in fantastic ways in this novel about culture and migration and peoples butting up against each other, England and Bangladesh and Jamaica colliding. It is a dizzying book, full of … Continue reading →
I’ve read a good bit of work now by this writer and have been at times awestruck and at other times found myself with a desire to flip pages and be done with whatever it was of his I was … Continue reading →