Sunday, September 17, 2006

Today's Inquirer reviews ...

... Inquirer book critic Carlin Romano is much taken with John le Carré's The Mission Song: Le Carré's truth squad is in Congo this time. In reference to this, in case you missed it, this earlier post is pertinent: Reality vs. fiction ...
I confess that I am not a fan of le Carré. I find his underlying assumption that, because operatives on both sides of an issue have personal and moral shortcomings, neither side is any better than the other to be not just morally obtuse, but intellectually dishonest as well. We are imperfect beings in an imperfect world. Some are more noticeably imperfect than others - in fact, imperfect to a degree that is both loathesome and dangerous. It does not bother me at all that the people who tried to kill Hitler were not themselves saints (they were, however, heroes).
Carlin also nicely profiles Alix Ohlin: Author finds place for real literary life.
Inquirer film critic Steven Rea is impressed with Ian Buruma's A Death in Amsterdam: A bloody emblem of Islamic alienation.
Roger Miller finds that Richard Grant's Another Green World overcomes its shortcomings: Ponderous but engaging tale of a wild anti-Hitler scheme.
Glenn Altschuler finds Timothy Gilfoyle's A Pickpocket's Tale to be a delectable feast: Pickpocket had a long, colorful and gritty life.
Petrona's own Maxine Clarke takes a look at the latest Kurt Wallender novel to make into print here: Nabbing the villain is the weakest part of a strong book.
Inquirer columnist Karen Heller, meanwhile, is enchanted by Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children: A splendid novel set in bookish circle of N.Y.C.
Katie Haegele has high praise for Michael Bedard's William Blake: The Gates of Paradise: Young Adult Reader An affectionate look at William Blake, artist, poet, renegade.
During the past week:
Dorothy Lehman Hoerr enjoyed Jennifer Egan's The Keep: 'The Keep' weaves two story lines in intriguing Gothic novel.
Karen Heller was ultimately underwhelmed by Marisha Pessl's debut: 'Calamity Physics' is proof that more is often less.
And David Hiltbrand, freed from watching TV, found Princess Diaries author Meg Cabot quite engaging: Girls' writer knows how to be popular .

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:01 PM

    Alix Ohlin rocks. Here's an excerpt from her story, "Simple Exercises for the Beginning Student," about a friendless boy whose family is imploding. He's begun taking piano lessons at the house of a woman who also has a misfit son.

    "Inseparable from the keys was the smell of Mrs. Tanizaki's house, a spicy sour smell of leftover dinner, and her smell too, different from his mother's but distantly related to it, an older woman smell, and the darkness of the room, and the one lamp that pooled light over the piano. He was drawn inside all of this. Still, at times, he woke up at night and remembered the visions he'd had about the dancing and the castle, a piece of color at the edge of his sight like a scarf fluttering in the wind, and he knew that as piercing as the notes were, as clearly as they answered to his fingers on the white and black keys, still they were only notes, they weren't the music."

    Alix Ohlin can play the music, and conduct it too. She's a maestro of prose and her work reminds me quite a bit of a writer I know she admires: Alice Munro.

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  2. Anonymous1:43 PM

    Thanks so much for asking me to review the book, and publishing my review, Frank, and for the link in it to my blog (correct url -- thanks again!).

    I've linked to your post at:
    http://petrona.typepad.com/petrona/2006/09/more_shameless_.html

    Le Carre is very uneven, in my opinion. I've enjoyed some of his books, but found others unreadable.

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  3. Anonymous3:25 PM

    I've always had mixed feelings about LeCarre's work as well. Much of it I find to be plodding and dull. For books that are supposed to be thrillers, they sure don't have many thrills in them.

    I think my favorite of his was a lesser-known work called "The Night Manager" that I found to be quite enjoyable.

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