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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by Jack Kerouac Hearing, in passing, of a relationship between Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, I made the foolish assumption that On the Road would remind me of Naked Lunch. So it should come as no surprise that I was startled to see that Kerouac’s novel is nothing of the sort, with a wide-eyed,…
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by Irving Welsh Trainspotting is something of an oddity. Not so much a traditional story per se as a collection of many collected shorts being told from many different viewpoints, each loosely connected through the characters’ uncontrollable vices. Flipping between points-of-view proved to be jarring from the get-go, at least until I got some familiarity…
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by Vladimir Nabokov Nabokov really is a cruel man. Twice now, with both Despair and Lolita, has the author successfully crafted an entirely likeable protagonist and proceeded to make him truly despicable. Of course, while this doesn’t necessarily leave me satisfied in the end, it really is a testimony to the author’s skilful pen. The…
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by John Updike The Coup was one of the novels that Hitchens infamously coerced me into reading through the magic of his prose, so, naturally, understand that I was very excited in opening this book up. The vivid picture Updike paints of a fanatic Muslim fundamentalist initially lived up to my expectations, but slowly gave…
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by Joseph Boyden With Joseph Boyden coming to town very soon (tonight, actually, at the time of writing this review), I felt I should read through one of his works in order to really get something out of his talk. As such, I reluctantly put down John Updike’s The Coup in order to start The…
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by Vladimir Nabokov I have always enjoyed a good pun, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to come across intelligent ones these days, in lieu of the mediocre and insular. I only mention this because Lolita is riddled with them, right down to the titular nymphet’s dolorous haze. One could say that Nabokov was a pundit in the…
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by F. Scott Fitzgerald Until The Great Gatsby, nothing compared to the works of Nikolai Gogol––at least, in my mind––with regards to successfully capturing its time and place and transporting the reader there, this time 1920s New York rather than the old Ukrainian countryside. I really have to commend Fitzgerald on this point; he extensively knew…
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by Jay McInerney I picked up McInerney’s novel on a whim, judging a book by its cover, more or less. I will admit that I did not love it from the beginning––the shallow debauchery and translucent euphemisms for cocaine use––but it slowly grew on me as the heart came forth. McInerney constructed a sturdy narrative,…
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