by Anakana Schofield It’s been a while since I’ve been good and disturbed when reading, but to say that Schofield’s narrative about the mentally unbalanced public masturbator and exhibitionist accomplished what it, presumably, set out to do seems like it shouldn’t be at all surprising. The story follows Martin, a man who plans his day…
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by Patrick deWitt When, in reading, I come across outlandish fantasies or nightmares relating to the plot, I often enjoy them immensely. I think back to Vonnegut’s Der Arme Dolmetscher: The protagonist’s heroic fantasy, made up with only the limited German phrases that he knew, absolutely made that story. In Gogol’s Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and…
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by Kazuo Ishiguro Some authors tie everything up in a neat little package, leading the reader along a clear path through the narrative in their stories. Ishiguro is not one of those authors, or, at least, A Pale View of Hills is definitely not one of those stories. No, it comes across that way at…
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by Tracey Lindberg I occasionally struggle getting into a story. In the case of Trainspotting and A Clockwork Orange, it had to do with the unfamiliar dialects. (Trainspotting improved once I was able hear the Scottish accent in my mind, whereas the great writing in A Clockwork Orange made the meanings of the made-up slang…
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by Jane Urquhart It feels like quite some time since a book came along and both delighted me and terrified me through its superb writing, making me glad that high art still exists in contemporary Canadian literature, though worried that I’m nowhere near creating anything comparable in quality. It should go without saying, then––but I’ll…
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by Ken Kesey Am I a terrible person? To like a piece of literature so criticized for its racism and misogyny seems to suggest as much. And I see the truth in the arguments, though I would suggest that it should be regarded less as racist and misogynist literature, and more as real literature, literature…
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by Helen Humphreys It strikes me as the work of a very talented author to make a war novel dull. I admit that this is, perhaps, a more combative tone than I should be starting with, but I honestly feel that this was at least partly intentional by the author. The Evening Chorus starts us…
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by Evelyn Waugh Some stories feel almost untouchable to me, which isn’t to say nothing exists that can be considered better, and it isn’t to say nothing exists that is similar, but, even with similarities and even with stories that resonate on deeper, more visceral levels, nothing feels truly comparable. In the case of Brideshead…
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by Graham Greene Our Man in Havana has the unique distinction of its place in history more-or-less matching up with its subject matter. The story is about Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman from Cuba, being recruited by British intelligence to gather information. Not knowing the first thing about espionage, but still wanting to draw a…
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by Oscar Wilde I don’t know if it says something of my nature that I seem to enjoy such wicked men in classic literature, so long as they possess a sharp, eloquent wit. This has been true in the past with Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert and Hermann of Lolita and Despair fame, respectively, and it is…
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