Avaland's 2010 Literary Adventures, Part III

New thread. The previous was getting unwieldy.

HERE is my previous thread.

I try to comment on each book I read, so any comments on the books listed here are on my previous threads or on the books' pages (sorry about the lack of touchstones, see note at bottom).

READ in 2010

NOVELS/NOVELLAS

The Moorland Cottage by Elizabeth Gaskell (1850, new ed 2010, UK author)
Doc: A Novel by Mary Doria Russell (forthcoming 2011, US author)
The Silent Land by Graham Joyce (2011, UK)
The Topless Tower by Silvina Ocampo (1968, T 2010, Argentine)
Butterfly by Sonia Hartnett (2009, Australian)
Black Mirror by Gail Jones (2002, Australian)
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones (2006, Australian)
Strange Meeting by Susan Hill (1976, UK)
Wide Open by Nicola Barker (1998, UK)
The Small Hand by Susan Hill (2010, UK)
Buddha's Orphans by Samrat Upadhyay (2010, Nepal)
World and Town by Gish Jen (forthcoming 2010, US author)
Oil on Water by Helon Habila (2010, Nigerian)
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates (1996, US)
Truth by Peter Temple (2009, Australian)
The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (2005, Australian)
Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner (2005, T 2009, Quebeçois author)
Cold Earth by Sarah Moss (2009., UK author)
Rien ne va Plus by Margarita Karanapou (1992, T 2009 Greek)
A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates (novel, 1982, US)
The Country Where No One Ever Dies by Ornela Vorpsi (novel, 2009, Albania)
Kraken by China Miéville (2010, novel, fantasy)
The Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Djaout (novella, Algerian, T 2007)
Gardens of the Sun by Paul J. McAuley (2009, Science Fiction, UK)
Deep Hollow Creek by Sheila Watson (novella, 1992, Canadian)
Touch by Adania Shibli (novella, T 2010, Palestinian author)
The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker (novel, 2009, US author)
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates (novella, 1992)
First Love by Joyce Carol Oates (novella, 1996)
The Wilding by Maria McCann (novel, historical, 2010, UK author)
Dark Places by Kate Grenville (novel, 1994, Australian author)
The Beggar by Naguib Mahfouz (novella, 1965, Egyptian author)
The Beacon by Susan Hill (novella, 2008, UK author)
Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey (novella, UK authors, 1932)
The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates
The Corn Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates, included in Transgressions, Vol 4, edited by Ed McBain
Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi
The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind (novella, German author, 1987, translation 1988)
The Rainforest by Alicia Steimberg (Argentine author, 2000, translation 2006)
A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear by Atiq Rahimi (Afghan author, novella, 2002, translation 2006)
Childwold by Joyce Carol Oates (1976)
The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi (Afghan author, novella, translation 2009)
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (Australian author, 2009)
Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser (novella, US author, 2000)
The House of Paper, Carlos María Domínguez (Translation 2004, novella, Uruguay)
I Lock My Door Upon Myself, Joyce Carol Oates (1990, novella, US)
Galore by Michael Crummey (2009 novel, Canadian, Newfoundland)
A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates (2010 novella, US)

Short Fiction Collections & Anthologies

Sourland:Stories by Joyce Carol Oates (2010, US, short fiction)
Love in Infant Monkeys: Stories by Lydia Millet (2009, US)
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson (2009, US)
Bedside Storiesedited by José Luis Martín Nogales (2005, Spain)
Stories from Contemporary China edited by Sun Yong (anthology, 2009, Chinese authors)
A Taste of Honey: Stories by Jabari Asim (short story collection, US author)
Broken Things by Padrika Tarrant (short fiction, UK, 2007)
The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease edited by Sarah Eyre & Ra Page
Flesh & Blood by Michael Crummey (Canadian author, 1998)
Everything in This Country Must: A Novella and Two Stories by Colum McCann (Irish author, 2000)
Goodbye, Columbus and Five Stories by Philip Roth (novella + five stories, US author, 1959)

Poetry:

Selections from: Continuum: Poems by Nina Cassian (2010, Romanian)
Rising of the Ashes by Tahar Ben Jelloun (2010, Morocco)
Upgraded to Serious by Heather McHugh (US, 2009)
Selections from: She had Some Horses by Jo Harjo (US, Native American)
Selections from: Rough Cradle by Betsy Scholl (US, 2009)
Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni (US, African American, 2009)
Voices by Lucille Clifton (US, African American, 2008)
Dark Things by Novica Tadic (Serbian poet, Translation: 2009)
Selections from Domestic Violence by Eavan Boland (Irish poet)
Selections from The Long Marriage: Poems by Maxine Kumin (US Poet).

Police Procedurals, Psychological Crime Novels & Other Mysteries

Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (T 2010, Icelandic)
The Princess of Burundi by Kjell Ericksson (2002, T 2006, Swedish)
The Complaints by Ian Rankin (2009, UK)
The Shadow Woman by Åke Edwardson (1997, T 2010, Sweden)
Betrayal by Karin Alvtegan (Sweden 2003, T 2005, psychological suspense)
Missing by Karin Alvtegan (Swedish 2000, T 2006, psychological suspense)
The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas (1995, T 2009, French)
Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill (2009, UK)
A Cure for all Diseases by Reginald Hill (2008)

Nonfiction

Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream by Adrianna Huffington (2010, US)
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
Selections from Conversations with Octavia Butler (2009, US)
The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle Aged Mind by Barbara Strauch (nonfiction, science, US, 2010)
Enlightened Sexism by Susan J. Douglas (nonfiction, cultural/media studies, US, 2010)
Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter (UK, 2010)

Samplings/Essays...etc.

The Myth of the 'American Idea' and "In the Absence of Mentors/Monsters: Notes on Writerly Influences" from In Rough Country: Essays and Reviews by JCO
"Margaret Atwood's Tales" from In Rough Country: Essays and Reviews by Joyce Carol Oates (2010)
"Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story" in Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon.
"Up Against the Walls of Genre: The Many-Mansions Manifesto" by Eugene Reynolds, published in the New York Review of Science Fiction, February 2010.
"The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm," from Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings by Angela Carter"Through a Text Backwards: The Resurrection of the House of Usher," from Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings by Angela Carter
"The Better to Eat You With," from Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings by Angela Carter
"Ghosts: Hilary Mantel" also from Uncensored.
"On the Composition of I Lock My Door Upon Myself" from Uncensored: Views & (Re) views by Oates.
"Inside the Locked Room: P. D. James" by JCO, same collect as noted below.
"The Aesthetics of Fear" by JCO, same collection noted below.
"In Olden Times When Wishing Was Having...Classic and Contemporary Fairy Tales," essay published in Where I've Been and Where I'm Going by Joyce Carol Oates
"The Double Standard of Content" and "False Categorizing," chapters 5 & 6 of How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ
"Bleak House" from Savage Reprisals: Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks by Peter Gay.

Books Abandoned (a variety of reasons)

The Poetry Lesson by Andrei Codrescu.
O Genteel Lady! by Esther Forbes (1926, US author) comments on book's page or below.
Serena by Ron Rash (Not entirely abandoned, I continue to read this on and off.)
This Night's Foul Work by Fred Vargas (read the Chalk Circle Man and thought it interesting, but I guess Adamsberg is a bit too twee of a detective for me).
So I am Glad by A. L. Kennedy (picked up in a pinch but didn't read enough to get into it. Perhaps will go back to it...)

*sorry about no touchstones. Every time we edit a list like this we have to reset all the touchstones again which gets to be a royal pain when the list gets long...

Actually any more it is harder to get the touchstones working in the first place, but once you do they stick. Still I will never do touchstones in a cumulative list again, and I recommend against it. Do the ongoing touchstones as you post each message.

Robert

I agree with Mr. Durick (aka "Robert"). Don't bother with the touchstones on the master list. Just commenting so that your thread will pop up where I need to see it. Looking forward to more of your reading adventures.

>2 Mr.Durick:, 3 I stopped doing this ages ago but have thought about doing it again because of the way touchstones seem to be coded now... (I've manually coded one in that didn't come up on its own), but perhaps I'm too lazy to bother.

When that coding works, automatically or manually entered, it means you won't have to do it on edits, but I've seen it fail copiously. It's frustrating to enter twenty or thirty codes and have 25 of them fail. If I were you I wouldn't take on the mantle of laziness; I'd just used touchstones in the messages dedicated to the one of few works, not the summation.

Robert

World and Town by Gish Jen (forthcoming, 2010, US author)

Hattie is living in a secluded area near the lake, content with her three dogs and her comfortable mantle of mellowed grief. She’s not a recluse—she has friends and activities, and is vocal in small town affairs—but she seems to enjoy her solitude. But then, the peace of her wooded neighborhood is disturbed by a trailer being dropped on some nearby mushy land and, with it, a Cambodian family of five.

Hattie Kong is the half Chinese daughter of an American missionary mother and a Chinese father. She is a widow, a mother of a grown son now traveling the world, a former neuroscientist and teacher. During the Cultural Revolution, Hattie was sent to the US by her parents, whose fates were then at risk.

The Chhungs are a patched together family, the father, mother and oldest son are relatives—survivors of the Khmer Rough—who found each other in a refugee camp and formed a family, more children came along after they got to the U.S.. They lived for a time in the city, some of the kids got in trouble, and the family eventually made contact with a church who placed them in the small town of Riverlake in Northern New England (perhaps Vermont).

Gish Jen has populated the town of Riverlake and her story with more than just Hattie and the Chhungs, of course, but here is where her story begins. It would be easy to think you know where this story is going, just from what has been laid out, but you’d be wrong. The unfolding of the story is such that I hestitate to tell much more of it here but prefer to leave it for your own discovery. And Jen has always written the kind of credible, comfortable characters that stay with the reader and draw us back to the story even when we are not reading it—we can’t help but get involved with them.

This latest novel by one of America’s great writers, is a thoughtful novel about the things we believe in, and the things or people to which we give our lives. But more than that, it is about the subsequent choices we make, the actions we take and, perhaps even more, the actions we choose not to take. There’s a fair bit about faith, religion and superstition, but Jen opens her story up to a larger commonality that speaks to all of us. And as the title suggests, it’s also about relationships, family, community, and the world—like a set of Babushka dolls, each a reflection of and part of the other. There’s a lot in this book, more than small town Riverlake, and perhaps more than even I expected.

>6 avaland:, it's added to my wishlist. I've never heard of Gish Jen before.

>7 charbutton: Here is a piece from the Guardian by the scholar Elaine Showalter who discusses American lit and highlights 8 contemporary "key figures" out of about 50 she says are writing today. They are: Joyce Carol Oates, Marilynne Robinson, Anne Tyler, Gish Jen, Bobbie Ann Mason, Jayne Anne Phillips, Jane Smiley, Annie Proulx. She notes Toni Morrison also as a key figure but because she is already well-known chooses not to discuss her in detail in this article.

Her bit about Gish Jen is near the end of the article. These authors are all well into their careers and have been writing for decades. I think you will like the article.

I admit I have not read all these authors extensively, mostly Oates, Tyler through to the mid-90s, Morrison and Jen; though I have quite a lot in the TBR pile.

>8 avaland:, thanks for the article link. I've read Anne Tyler but most of the others are new names to me.

O Genteel Lady! by Esther Forbes (1926, US author)

O Genteel Lady! (1926) is the first novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Esther Forbes (who wrote the YA novel, Johnny Tremain, which many of us here in the US had to read in school).

Esther Forbes was extremely nearsighted and dsylexic and had trouble in school. She had a gift for storytelling and when a teacher encouraged her to read one of her stories before class, and she did, the teacher then accused her of plagarism (that was the last time Forbes did that). They hired her as a typist at Harcourt publishing, but when they discovered she couldn't spell, they moved her to reading the slush pile. Forbes won an O. Henry prize for her first published story and the Pulitzer in 1942 for her biography, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. (just some interesting tidbits)

I'm afraid I have abandoned this book at about page 100. Set in the mid-19th century, it's the story of a young woman who, after her mother scandalously runs off with a much younger man, escapes the wagging tongues of Amherst and a stuffy, moral financé, by running off to Boston to stay with a cousin. Boston offers a great, wide world for Lanice and she is soon doing artwork for a lady's magazine and being introduced to interesting people in the city or who come through the city.

It's written with some wonderful domestic detail, particularly clothing, and, at least at the beginning of the book, the author seems to use the restrictiveness of the clothing, the "cage" of hoops as a metaphor for a woman's place in society. There is certainly a fair bit of well-done local detail of historical Boston...etc. I admit to skipping ahead to Chapter 10 where she is introduced to George Eliot. I'm sure the book is meant as a coming-into-her-own sort of story, as our protagonist is immature and naive when we first meet her, but I found Lanice lacking in personality and, frankly, a bit boring.

Apparently the novel was reviewed well and sold well back in 1926, but it's a bit too tame for my tastes. I've read a lot of American fiction written during the period she has set the book in and I think I prefer that to this. I think if you enjoy early 20th century literature, you might enjoy it more than I did (it's a bit jarring to go from JCO back to the gentle novel of 1926).

Great review of World and Town, Lois! I have two of Gish Jen's books, and I'll definitely get this one when it comes out in the US next month.

Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark (Scottish author, 1971, reprint 2010)

Not to Disturb is a short, dark comedy - a pre-murder, murder mystery. Set in a grand estate in Switzerland, sometime in the 20th century (mid?), the story reads like a play to me, and one can almost see it being acted out.

The reader is thrown immediately into the story among the servants who are discussing the murder. Thing is, the murder not only hasn't happened yet, but the victims haven't even arrived on the scene. There's a lot of snappy dialogue and messing with verb tenses, and I think I detect just a touch of post-modernism in the banter. Here's a little sample from page 7:

"Suppose the Baron wants his dinner?"
"Of course he expected his dinner," Lister says. "But as things turned out he didn't live to eat it. He'll be arriving soon."
"There might be an unexpected turn of events," says Eleanor.
"There was sure to be something unexpected." says Lister. "But what's done is about to be done and the future has come to pass. My memoirs up to the funeral are as a matter of fact more or less complete. At all events, it's out of our hands. I place the event at about 3 a.m. so prepare to stay awake."

People come and go from the estate. There's all the servants, the Baron and Baroness, various visitors, and the lunatic relative in the attic and, wouldn't you know it, there's a horrible thunderstorm brewing outside the mansion. This is a very funny and brilliant short novel.

The Shadow Woman by Åke Edwardson (1997, T 2010, Sweden)

This is the most recently translated of Edwardson's 12 "Erik Winter" mystery novels. A young woman is found murdered and through the autopsy it's determined that she has had a child. The police are having difficulty identifying the woman and that's holding up further investigation into the murder. And then, if there is a child, where is he or she?

Although I'm developing a bit of a pet peeve about books being translated not in chronological order, I once again enjoyed one of Edwardson's well-written, complex police procedurals. Erik Winter is a young middle-aged, very talented police detective who seems to have developed his sense of intuition more than most. It was hinted at in the other four books I read, but it's a bit more overt in this book. This is the first of Edwardson's I've read since reading one of Fred Vargas's books. Her detective is quite overtly an anti-deductive reasoning, undisciplined and zen sort of guy - too foo for me - but with Edwardson, his intuitive powers are much more integrated into the deductive reasoning process, more a cerebral process than a spiritual process.

Intuition, of course, has been associated with the female, and I find it interesting that here, instead of it being demeaned or dismissed, his intuitive thoughts, when he shares them, are mostly respected.

This is a good series if you enjoy excellent, cerebral police procedurals which read like literary fiction (a la P. D. James).

Buddha's Orphans by Samrat Upadhyay (2010, Nepal, Nepalese author)

Raja and Nilu are both orphans. Raja was abandoned as an infant just before his mother drowned herself, and Nilu was being brought up by a single mother who was often lost in the haze of alcohol and drugs. As children the two meet, he as the adopted son of a servant, and she as the daughter of the mistress of the house. It's an odd little relationship for the playmates at first, and Nilu begins to teach her little friend how to read. Theirs will be an epic love.

Set in Nepal during the later half of the 20th century, Buddha's Orphans is a tale of epic love—or perhaps an epic tale of a love that reaches across decades, caste, and anything else which might stand in its way. While reading it, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago came to mind more than a few times, and while this novel doesn't reach the intensity of the classic, it certainly makes a brave attempt. His characters are superb, his stories—their stories—are set against the upheavals of Kathmandu as Nepal transforms itself from Monarchy to Democracy. The background-foreground connection doesn't work quite as well as it was probably intended, but I would not call it a failure as one is certainly transported to Nepal (and what do most of us know of Nepal?)

We've all read epic stories of love, set against war or other turmoil, but the most unusual thing about this epic love story is the very distinctive cyclical sense of it. Upadhyay has woven multiple stories in a way that suggests underpinnings of Hindu philosophy - that time is eternal and cyclical, a neverending cycle of birth, death, rebirth. This cyclical sense to the story was what really stayed with me after I had finished reading the book and perhaps it is this that gives the love story it's monumental feel.

Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream by Arianna Huffington (2010, US, nonfiction)

Huffington succinctly and intelligently discusses the disturbing decline of the American middle class in this short book. She discusses how this came about, the symptoms and possible solutions.

Some of the topics covered include: the fear that arises in the absence of economic opportunity and the insecurity of the current situation, how we define the middle class, capitalism without a conscience, our crumbling infrastructure, the state of our schools and education system, the corporate takeover of our democracy and the badly broken democratic process, the squandering of our resources – both natural and human- and the failure of the “free press” to serve the public interest (and the rise of citizen journalism) .

Of course, each of these topics is worth a book of its own, but Huffington is giving us the basics here. As her narrative moves forward one can feel the sense of urgency and passion. Somewhere around page 150 she moves to urging us as a society to deal with our crises and challenges now, hold the powerful responsible, stop waiting for other to solve the problems – and for problems too monumental for individuals – support the raw power of government initiatives. Then she names just a few things that would make a big difference in the health of our society. The picture of America is pretty bleak and we have been loathe to really look at it. I think at one point she uses the metaphor of a middle-aged man refusing to see the thinning hair and crow’s feet, fantasizing that he’s still young….

But what I like best about this book is that Huffington doesn’t leave the reader despairing over the degradation of our society. “The greatest antidote to despair is action,” she declares. And so the last section of the book is a call to action for the individual. Huffington offers some practical actions one can take to overcome the bullies in our society, fight apathy, build community, exercise empathy and develop resilience. It’s very heartening and hopeful.

I’ll end with a quote she used by the social activist Geoffrey Canada:

If not us, who? If not now, when?

Love in Infant Monkeys: Stories by Lydia Millet (2009, US)

A superbly written, somewhat humorous collection of short fiction , each story inspired by a headline or “fact-based account” of a celebrity and an animal. My favorites, I think, are “Sexing the Pheasant” in which we are given the internal dialog of Madonna after she has shot a pheasant, which is not quite dead yet; “Jimmy Carter’s Rabbit” where Jimmy Carter goes to visit an old school chum - now a psychologist - to apologize for something done when they are children; and “Sir Henry” a tale told by the dogwalker to celebrities’ dogs. Other stories include “Chomsky, Rodents, “ “Telsa and Wife, “ “The Lady and the Dragon” (Sharon Stone and a Komodo Dragon) and more.

It’s pretty clear in these stories that between the humans and the animals, the animals are the wiser and more intelligent of the two.

I've added that to my wishlist. I remember reading a review, but your comments make it much more alluring.

The Huffington book sounds interesting. And she's offering free transport to anyone in Manhattan who wants to go to the Oct. 30 rally. (Although I get the feeling the logistical nightmares will be handled by her assistants.)

>17 RidgewayGirl: a visitor, how exciting! Free transport, take it! I paid the bus ticket on a chartered coach for the 2004 March for Women's Lives. It was an awesome experience. And there are always interesting people on the bus. I went with one daughter and met the other one there (she came on a bus from her university). I'd go to this one if I didn't have a Belle deadline and an overseas trip a few days later.

Yeah, the Millet is wryly humorous - the kind of stories that make you smile knowingly but not laugh out loud. Although there were things in the Madonna story that came close to making me laugh out loud (like whether she could wear tweed in the UK without killing something).

#15, The Huffington/Canada quote is adapted from an old Hebrew commentary*:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, who am I?
And if not now, when?

Lots of food for thought in these reviews; thanks, Lois.

*ETA Hillel, Ethics of the Fathers

>19 rebeccanyc: oh, thanks for that. I knew it sounded familiar to me, but I had no idea from where. Huffington also mentioned Disraeli's Sybil early on, which got me thinking it of an interesting discussion question. Now, if I just had some more time.

I have become wary of Arianna Huffington's book recommendations, so though the subject seems important and interesting to me I have stayed away from Third World America. Is the book in fact informative? Or is it mostly inspiring? Will it at least interestingly confirm my prejudices? When I say that we are becoming a banana republic I would like to be better informed than I am, and once upon a time I would have snapped this book up for self-support; I am wondering whether I should snap this one up.

Robert

>21 Mr.Durick: Well, I think readers who follow current events and politics closely like, say, my husband, would not find enough meat in the Huffington. I found her informative and inspiring but she's giving us a more simplified version, which is about all I need (or want). As I said, any one of the subject she brings up could and does have books entirely devoted to it. I can't say she told me anything jawbreakingly original, but I liked the book nonetheless. I suspect, Robert, you will want something a bit more.

Thank you.

Robert

I just want to note here that Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for last year's Pulitzer Prize, something I didn't know until I ran across it today over on the prize's website.

21> if you'd like something a bit.."meatier" discussing the power of money and where it's backed up inside the toilet that America's political system has become, Kevin Phillips (once the architect of Nixon's southern strategy) has a number of excellent books dealing with various facets of the distribution of wealth/capital in the USofA and its political consequences.

Thanks, Bob. I've read his American Theocracy and, as I remember, found it cogent. I'm interested in the loss of the middle class and the entrenchment of an almost alien oligarchy enriching themselves at the expense of a never enriched underclass. It is coming to America I fear; I wonder whether Arianna Huffington has captured enough of that with real substance say rather than just as fear mongering. I actually read twenty pages or so at an area Barny Noble's recently; that part was at least okay but not surely indicative of the rest of the book.

Robert

>25 bobmcconnaughey:, 26 I don't think Huffington's intent is to tackle the subject in great depth, but to make the argument, lay out the evidence succinctly, and smoothly move into a call to action. I think the book is meant to be motivational as much as anything (and, actually, I didn't think it dropped to the level of fear-mongering). I don't read that many political books, but I have read some of Robert Reich's previous books and it seems he's been saying this sort of thing for quite a while now. The topic of class in America has always been interesting (though I have other literary fish to fry...).

The Small Hand by Susan Hill (2010, UK)

This is a well-done, traditional Victorian ghost tale with a contemporary setting packaged as an attractive, little book. A middle-aged antiquarian book dealer gets lost trying to find the country estate of a client, and instead finds an overgrown estate tucked down a lane that had become increasingly narrower and less accessible (no easy spot to turn around!). He can't resist looking around a bit and at one moment he distinctly feels the small hand of a child take hold of his. He leaves the estate and carries on with his life but the feeling of the small hand stays with him. He starts to look into the history of the run-down estate, and well, odd stuff starts happening, mostly manifesting itself in panic attacks. The resolution will, as one might expect, come from secrets unearthed, but not before tragedy strikes.

Best read in one sitting (it's novella-sized). The details of the protagonist's book dealing are fun to read about also. Entertaining, but not spectacular.

Wide Open by Nicola Barker (1998, UK)

Nicola Barker's Wide Open is a splendid, even spectacular novel - expertly crafted, refreshingly original, and filled with an oddball cast of characters, none of which could be considered "normal".

Wide Open, which is set on the Isle of Sheppey, begins with a meeting of two young men: Ronny, who has stopped on his way to work to investigate the mysterious man on the overpass who is out there every day waving at particular cars moving on the highway below. Here's a bit of it that ties in with the book's title (Ronny has had a short conversation around a dead wasp with Jim on the overpass):

The man was silent for awhile. Ronny studied him. He seemed very young but his face was not a very young face. It was lined, vertically, and not in the places normal faces creased and wrinkled. It as as thought he'd only just woken up from a hard sleep but his face hadn't shaken it, hadn't hurled off its hard sleep and its blankets yet to get on with the business of living. He seemed ludicrously pliant and tractable, but singular. He seemed. . . Ronny shuddered at the thought. . . he seemed wide, wide open. But you couldn't survive that way. Not in this world. Not for long, Ronny knew it.
In fact he prided himself on being shut right up. Like an oyster. Like a tomb. Like a beach-hut in the winter; all bolted, all boarded. Like the bright lips of an old wound. Resolutely sealed.

Ronny's and the man's odd conversation hooked me in just a few pages. And from here on we are introduced to a circus-like set of characters - Nathan, who works in the Tube's lost property department, and the aforementioned Ronny, bald and usually suited up like an astronaut because he works various jobs involving noxious chemicals - they are brothers who have not seen each other in ten years. There's Sarah, a farmer of wild boars, and her rebellious, college-aged daughter, who is prone to killing chickens on the sly; Luke, a professional photographers and pornographer, squatting off-season in a summer prefab ; Connie, an optometrist on a mission; and, of course, the weirdly strange Jim, who seems to be homeless, unnaturally thin, and oddly wise. There's no point in trying to give a synopsis, except to say that each of them connects to another to form kind of loose web which slowly over the course of the book tightens in like a spiral. As the reader, I felt kind of like I slowly got caught in a literary Chinese finger puzzle that I could not back out of—and did not care to.

Barker's craftsmanship is impressive. Oh, it's not just the prose, or the way she affectionately makes these people so real, but after I had finished the book, looking back, I realized that nothing in the book is wasted, everything is made to service the story; and although she is telling a story that is often funny, it's an moving exploration about how individuals cope with trauma and abuse.

This novel won the Impac Dublin Award in 2000 and, when I began the book, I wondered why; but as I continued, I could see that the connection lay not just in the power of the story, but in its originality and craftsmanship much like Muller's The Land of Green Plums or Rawi Hage's DeNiro's Game, also winners of the award. A splendid book for those who appreciate something a little quirky, a bit different.

Lois - The Small Hand sounds interesting! I haven't read Susan Hill yet, but I have some of her stuff on my to-read list. I'm adding this one.

>30 Nickelini: I have read some other books by Hill and she's written better ones, but this was certainly an entertaining short read.

The Complaints by Ian Rankin.

This is the first Rankin novel to interest me since he retired John Rebus.

After bringing a very successful case to fruition, Malcolm Fox, a member of the Complaints—a nickname for the police division which investigates possible bent cops—is asked to investigate a young officer named Jamie Breck for possible child pornography. Meanwhile Fox's sister's abusive boyfriend turns up dead and guess who is investigating the crime - yes, Breck. Breck begins to play friendly to Fox just as a surveillance van is getting settled in across from Breck's home. That's just where the wheel begins spinning and as the reader moves forward into the book, deeper into the story, it seems everyone is investigating everyone else and no one knows who to trust. And once Rankin has the ball of yarn completely wound up and tangled for you, he begins to unravel it. There's not much more I can say except that this is trademark Rankin, another well-done police procedural (although it does stretches levels of credibility, imo), a standalone. It was a nice read to take one's mind off other more nagging challenges - at least for a few hours:-)

Wide Open sounds fascinating, Lois -- must keep an eye out for this one.

Strange Meeting by Susan Hill (1976, UK)

Strange Meeting is a story of male friendship in the midst of war. John Hilliard is a young officer returning to France (WWI) after recuperating from a leg injury. If truth be told he is glad to be back, as the stay at home with his emotionally distant family has not been all that therapeutic. Losses were many in his absence and among the many new faces is David Barton, another young officer who he must share a room for a few weeks with. David is a much-liked, open, good-natured and congenial fellow—very different from John—but a friendship develops between the two. Soon, the unit which has been back away from the front lines on a kind of respite, is to be sent forward again and John is loathe to see David be changed by the real horrors of war as he has been.

In vividly descriptive prose, Hill brings alive through these two men a moment in history in all its inglorious and psychological detail. There's an appropriately subdued tone, perhaps a respectful mournfulness to the book which hangs heavy over the story and Hill does not gratuitously belabor any gore—she does not need to—a tribute to her skill as a writer. The end result of all of this is a riveting and subtly powerful book that transcends its 179 pages.
---------

There is an afterword included by the author which tells of her childhood obsession with WWI and her exorcising of the ghosts through the writing of this book, for which she read countless diaries, letters, memoirs...etc. and further took the imaginative leap of placing herself there. "I cannot now bear to read a word about any aspect of the First World War. . . I was haunted by it or years and in writing the novel I laid the ghost forever: it was an obsession which I followed to a conclusion and which then left me completely and forever."

A treat for those who wander into my thread:

From Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones.

"Alice felt depressed. After this, she thought, she would visit a bookshop. Her tastes in knowledge garnering were irredeemably old-fashioned. She loved the feel of books, their integrity as objects. The wing-plan of them, the scent and warmth of paper. She loved the relative stiffness of the cover and the sentience of settled print. Random flicking of pages, inscriptions, dog-ears. She loved—though it was a sin—to see books left open upside down, their bird shape accentuated in the keeping of a page. She loved those images of the Annunciation in which the Virgin rests her index finger on a page of her book, retaining her place during Gabriel's visit. Or the mortuary statues in European churches, that have dukes and bishops sleeping in death on the pillow of an open book. She loved second-hand bookshops for their presumption that any tatty volume mattered, and new bookshops, for their signs and neat rows of books, waiting to be opened for the very first time. Inherited books. Books as gifts. Books as objects flung across the room in a lover's argument. Books (this most of all) taken into the warm sexual space of the bed, held upon the lap, entered like another body, companionable, close, interconnecting with innermost things. Those bed books that chart the route between waking and sleeping, that are a venture of almost hypnagogic power. Those enticements. Adventures. Corridors of words. Capsules. Secrets." (pp 136-37, Vintage edition)

I'm beginning to be jealous, here...

:-)

"Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen.
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content,
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margin of his eyes."

WS, Romeo & Juliet

Glad I wandered in here... Thanks!

I have abandoned The Poetry Lesson by Codrescu about halfway through. I enjoy Andrei Codrescu's radio pieces very much and looked forward to this slim volume. It tells the tale of a contemporary poetry professor teaching an introductory level poetry class. Although there may be many similarities to Codrescu, one cannot assume his character is autobiographical, at least I hope not, because I found the professor unappealing in so many ways. He is patronizing to his students (or was that just in his head and not out loud), he fills the class time with clever, sometimes funny quips, and many anecdotes about poets' lives, and life in the old days when he was young and cool and a part of the poetry scene. He comes across as a man of upper middle age who spends his time looking backwards, perhaps embellishing a little, nostalgic for his youth. His passion for poets and poetry seems completely tied up with his own ego. Oh yeah, he doesn't mind a glimpse of thigh in class. Gag.

Thing is, his unappealing personality overshadows anything he has to say about poets, their lives and their writings. I'm disappointed. I've certainly read books with unappealing characters, don't know why this one irritates me so. However, I do believe, the book may appeal to other readers. For me, well, life is too short.

I'm sorry to hear that The Poetry Lesson was such an irritating read, especially since I bought it from City Lights earlier this month. I'll put it aside for the time being.

35> aaahhh.......

>41 kidzdoc: well, Darryl you might like it. There's 1 review on the book's page by an Anthony someone, who articles clearly what I would say about the book. I was reading the book in bed before sleep and the professor just wasn't an ideal bed companion. I wonder if people like cariola, jane or urania might recognize the character type he's going for... I will look forward to other opinions though.

Black Mirror by Gail Jones (2002, Australian)
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones (2006, Australian)

Black Mirror is Gail Jones's first novel, which followed two collections of short fiction. Briefly, an elderly and lonely artist in London is telling her biographer her stories before she dies. The biographer and artist grew up in the same outback mining town in Western Australian, albeit in different generations, but that does not mean their stories will not interweave. Another brilliant work by Gail Jones, whose gifts for language enrich the story.

Dreams of Speaking is Jones's fourth book, after Sixty Lights. A young woman, who is a bit emotionally unsettled, is in Paris working on her project, "the poetics of modernity", when on a train trip she meets an older Japanese man: an atomic bomb survivor and poet. This is the story of their friendship. Again, another bloody brilliant work by Jones.

Here is just a little excerpt of my Belletrista piece on these novels, now up on the web.

One looks up from reading a Gail Jones novel and cannot fail but see the world around one somewhat differently, if only briefly—colors are somehow richer, shapes sharper, shadows deeper. We notice things we have not seen before—we have new ways of seeing. This is because there is a poetry, a lyricism, to her work; it's a feast for lovers of language. She tells her characters' stories in beautifully crafted prose, rich in metaphor and simile.

Her books demand an attentive reader, sheltered from distractions, They are not easily read on a noisy subway or in a room full of rambunctious children. They lend themselves to quiet afternoons in the park, cozy evenings curled up in bed, or sheltered corners of someone’s library. Her sensuality of expression makes her stories breathe.

Five stars for both books! (I'm terribly smitten by her)

edited to add link.

Belle, Issue 8 is up.
http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue8/index.php

Take a peek. Books to add to your TBR piles!

Off on holiday, back mid-month.

But I can reach her if needed, FYI.

I'm back from the UK and Iceland. Little reading was done, just a bit on the planes but less than I imagined.

I did step into a couple of bookshops of used books in the UK and picked up a couple of books, and I hit one bookshop in Iceland and bought a new book, but otherwise I was elsewhere reading plaques in museum, listening to tour guides, chatting up taxi drivers or the person sitting next to me wherever I was at the time.

Pleased to have met up with LTers: flossieT, charbutton, caroline_mcelwee, finebalance, and shearrob.

It's nice to have a pile of book packages waiting for me at home though:-)

Finished The Princess of Burundi by Swedish author Kjell Eriksson (2002, T 2006) a few days ago. I dragged this book over 4 flights and through 3 countries and, despite ample time, i was lacking the concentration to read it through then.

Like most police procedurals, this one begins with a murder - in this case a man found tortured and stabbed to death. The police are somewhat baffled with this one. When an old school chum is assaulted, they think it might have some connection but, then again, maybe not:-) I enjoyed this procedural and will certainly read more by this author, but I'm not terribly fond of a climax-as-book's-ending thing. I like a little denouement, if you know what I mean. The author seems to take great pains to make his characters, both the victims and the police, sympathetically credible.

Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir (T 2010, Icelandic)

I picked this mystery, third in a series, up in Iceland recently. While not as sophisticated as some of the procedurals I read, Sigurdardottir's books are very good mysteries which have each included some piece of Icelandic history in them.

Her protagonist, a lawyer, is in the Westmann Islands with her client, as they enter a house being excavated after being buried in lava and ash in the 1973 volcanic eruption. No longer the property of it's owners, it is being excavated as part of the "Pompeii of the North" project (this is a real project, btw) and her client, who was a teen at the time of the eruption, is being allowed to retrieve something from the basement ahead of the archaeologists. Turns out it's a box that a high school friend, a young woman he adored, had asked him to stow for her. He had never looked in the box because the eruption happened very soon there after, but he did so now and manages to drop the contents. The severed human head rolls across the basement floor and stops next to three bodies.

Thora, the lawyer, usually has to solve the mysteries by the means she has as she doesn't always have access to the same information as the police do. I'm always intrigued with how she does it, but more than the mystery itself, I enjoyed learning about the Westmann Islands in general, and the eruption and its aftermath in particular. This was the community who tried to keep the lava from blocking their only harbor by pumping seawater on it.

Sigurdardottir's mysteries make nice companions to Indridason's mysteries if Iceland interests you. Her protagonist has her domestic challenges as a working, single (divorced) mother of two, but is psychologically stable, reasonably social, and not is not entirely married to her job, which is departure from Indridason's Wallander-like, emotionally dry protagonist (don't get me wrong, I enjoy Erlandur despite his emotional handicaps) .

Butterfly by Sonya Hartnett (2009, Australian)

Hartnett renders the horrors and delights of female adolescence in heart-wrenching detail, in this tale of one girl's approach to her 14th birthday. The prose is wonderfully written with wit and great sympathy. The title seems a bit cliché, but looking back on it, I think it's perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek, as the metamorphosis is far from a nice snuggle in a cocoon. Beyond that I think there's a wider theme, not limited to adolescence, of change being the only constant in life.

I did read Plum, the protagonist, as more of an 11/12 year old than a nearly 14 year, based on several things, but it doesn't seriously affect the story. As one moves through the book, one understands that this is not a YA story, but one best understood by those who have already been through adolescence and are looking back on it.

On another group, the "best books of 2010" thread has already been posted, and in looking at my reading, I realize that the work I do for Belletrista has cut into my reading. Since Belletrista started I have been reading fewer books—less at least 20%. But I have replaced one kind of reading with another....

So, here is where I will acknowledge "other reading" – the hours and hours spent combing through and reading publisher catalogs, hardcopy and online, from all countries publishing in English (including Qatar and India!) to find the books to be featured in Belle. It's certainly neverending and time-consuming, but hardly painful!

I'm enjoying the Joyce Carol Oates collection, Sourland, at the moment. I suspect I won't have much time for more books before the end of the year but one never knows.

Lois, this week's New Yorker has an article by Joyce Carol Oates about the death of her husband, but you have to subscribe (free?) to read the whole article online.

avaland,

should I pick up a copy of the print magazine? Or you could swing by Borders or B&N on your trip today?

>53 rebeccanyc: thanks, rebecca, I think I should be able to live without it. I've read some other commentary she has done on it and I have her memoir somewhere in the house.

>54 dukedom_enough: I'm coming downstairs with my answer....

>54 dukedom_enough:, 55(b)
lol, feels like my house

#54, 55 I feel a little like I should clear my throat and make my presence known!

56, 57 LOL! (thanks for visiting, btw, it's been kind of quiet here over the last 6 weeks or so. Not counting the posts from the LTer I live with)

I'm usually lurking....so watch it, you two!

#58 Lois - I'm lurking, if not posting. Noticing your comments on and excerpts of Gail Jones too.

Lurking is perfectly acceptable. You ought to just leave a blank post or something, just so I know I'm not talking to the walls.

I'm currently thinking about how I want to handle my thread for next year. Short reviews or longer ones or both? What do I want to pay attention to next year? (this year I marked year of publication or translation, country of origin...etc). Do I want to try harder to log my "other" reading?

About me@54,

The internet is so much faster than going up or down stairs to talk. Also, avaland was at home and I was at work, 13 miles away, when I wrote that. Don't worry, we don't put up the really good stuff here...

>62 dukedom_enough: such a tease!

Why not go with what feels right at the time? Longer reviews when you want to, short ones when you don't, extra reading mentioned as it occurs to you. If we get lonely, there's always Belletrista.

>64 RidgewayGirl: Yes, that sounds like a very relaxed way of doing it.

lurking -- busy with the end of the semester (thank goddess).

I do enjoy hearing about "what else" you're reading. I started mentioning articles, individual short stories and such on my thread last year, but then didn't keep it up.

>67 laytonwoman3rd: it would make for a much longer thread, me thinks.



The Topless Tower by Silvina Ocampo (1968, T 2010, Argentine)

10 year old Leandro is out playing when a strange man, perhaps French, arrives at his family's front door. He is an artist and is selling his paintings, which are of a strange, windowless tower, and of various rooms, including an art studio. The boy begins to make fun of the man and in the conversation that ensues, the boy soon finds himself imprisoned in the windowless tower of the man's paintings. However, with the artist supplies he is able to draw and paint things which come to life, the problem is that the things he paints do not always take the form he wants.

Will the images we've seen throughout our lives remain inside our eyes? Will we be like a modern camera, filled with little rolls of film; of course, rolls that don't require to be developed?

This is an amusing magical realist tale clearly inspired by the surrealists and Alice-in-Wonderland (who makes an appearance in this short novella). Ocampo was an Argentine author, poet and visual artist. She was married to the much younger Bioy Casares, and was also friends with Borges and Calvino.

Longer threads are OK, methinks.

"Puffin Problems: Why are the Puffins in Peril?" by Bjarni Brynjolfsson
Iceland Review, 2010



This was a terrific article that provided a fair amount of general information (fascinating, really) on the puffin and discusses the reasons for the decline in the puffin population in the Westmann Islands of Iceland. Having tasted smoked puffin while in Iceland last month—a traditional delicacy in the country—, I thought I might be listed as one of the reasons; however, it turns out that the Westmann Islands colony is likely declining because their food source in that area has declined due to a "systematic change in the ocean currents south of Iceland" which has affected the bottom of the food chain on up. The country's other colonies do not seem to have been affected. Puffins are also native to some of the islands off the coast of Maine, my native homeland, and of course maritime Canada.

edited to add author's name.

"The Myth of Imperiled Whiteness and Ethan Frome" by Elizabeth Ammons.
The New England Quarterly, March 2008

A very interesting analysis of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome which argues that the novel displays the "widespread racist hysteria and anti-immigration anxiety in the United States early in the twentieth century" and is a cautionary tale of the disappearing and possible "death" Yankee white New England.

Ethan himself and the farmhouse he lives in are representations of this deterioration. There is some interesting analysis of what Zeena (from the name Zenobia) represents, interesting bits about her name, her character. The role of the narrator is discussed, the 'white' imagery of white bodies wounded, the snow..etc. It's really fairly difficult to sum up the author's argument in a paragraph or two.

The author does tie her discussion of Ethan Frome to the myth of imperiled whiteness presented in our culture today both in her introduction and her conclusion. "Anti-immigrant racism, then as now, often circulates within the culture as supposedly neutral information or 'entertainment.' The tragic tale of Ethan's imminent demise...is not neutral. It is a race-laden, white horror story about the possibility that white hegemony will end."

Since I've never read Ethan Frome, I'm afraid that article wouldn't mean much to me, although I think it would be interesting to compare earlier episodes of anti-immigrant hysteria and fear of "imperiled whiteness" with what is happening today.

Wow. Obviously I need to re-read Ethan Frome. Ought to anyway--it's been decades.

"Preston-á-porter" by Kate Finnigan
V&A magazine, summer 2010

An extended review of a new V&A book that "looks at how the vivid colours and adventurous patterns of Horrockses ready-to-wear collections appealed to a generation starved of fashion fun by wartime austerity."

>72 rebeccanyc: She does quote liberally from some of the articles of the day, including a piece by Henry Cabot Lodge in Century Magazine (1904), which she speculates Wharton likely read as she had pieces in both the previous and following issues of the magazine.

>73 laytonwoman3rd: You and me both! This is why I like to read lit crit (providing its readable). I don't always agree with the perspective, but they always enrich my understanding of a book.

See, a thread could get really long...

btw, I should add that the author of the Ethan Frome piece uses "person of color" to include anyone not with white status, so that includes the first wave of Irish and French Canadians (she used North Adams, Massachusetts as her example, a mill town that Wharton had used for research before), followed by Eastern Europeans, people of the Mediterranean countries...etc.

Okay, I have to admit that when I saw "Puffin Problems: Why are Puffins in Peril" (great alteration, btw), I thought it was going to be about Puffin books--the children's line published by Penguin. You can tell where my head is at.

Anyway, real puffins are more interesting. Thanks!

"The Myth of Imperiled Whiteness and Ethan Frome" by Elizabeth Ammons. The New England Quarterly, March 2008

Whoa. I read Ethan Frome last spring and I missed all of that.

>77 Nickelini: I think most of us missed that perspective.

78 - Yeah, maybe even Edith Wharton!

I remember when I first learned about hidden narratives in an English lit class--it really took a while to get my head around them. I saw lots of students who never did make the leap.

Oh it's time for whiteness to end -- let's all turn golden!

the author of the Ethan Frome piece uses "person of color" to include anyone not with white status, so that includes the first wave of Irish and French Canadians OK, now that makes some sense even without re-reading.

#80 My husband always says that, Jane---he thinks white people are the least lovely of all the races. And he's pretty darned white himself. I think he only married me 'cause there was a hint of a Native American gene in my family tree somewhere----sadly, now that we've done a lot of research, it turns out that it was definitely not in the line I descend from.

>81 laytonwoman3rd: Well, he certainly gets a few points for not turning you out when you discovered that (or haven't you told him....hmmmm)

>80 janeajones: It does seem the way we're trending over the generations... I read in Nat'l Geo a few years back a prediction of when red hair will disappear. I did my part to keep the line going...

Can't we keep the redheads? I have a red-headed daughter.

82/3 - That was an interesting article. Problem is for every one of your daughter there are about 5 like me who married a Hispanic kid who's winning the punnett square. :)

>I do remember the article mentioning that red hair was showing up in strange places...

Back in the 1990s, I had a woman co-worker who was from India, and was married to a American of Yankee heritage. I remember suggesting to her that their kids might turn out with red hair, i.e. implying that there was some British ancestry on her side. She assured me with great confidence that there was NOT. She was right, too.

The Silent Land by Graham Joyce (2011, UK. forthcoming in the US 3/11)

Jake and Zoe are in the French Alps on a ski vacation and on a very early morning run down the mountain, they get caught in an avalanche. They manage to survive but discover that their world has dramatically changed into a silent one. People and other living creatures have disappeared. (It's a "Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore" moment).The reader is carried along with the couple, attempting to puzzle out the mystery and make sense of the world around them.

I've read every Graham Joyce novel with the exception of the recent one written under a pseudonym. Joyce writes in that interstitial area between genres - he can write literary fiction with a touch of magical realism, or swing a little further and dip into fantasy. He particularly writes women characters well, imo. In this book, the prose seems a bit lighter than his usual, and the banter between the couple could sometimes seem adolescent, but I found myself able to forgive him for this as I found myself caught up in the mystery and philosophy of the story. Are they dead? Are they in another plane of existence? Are they dreaming? And if this empty, silent place is the afterlife, what then will one make of their life there? "What if we are not the sum of our memories," Jake asks Zoe.

A fast, enjoyable read with a satisfying ending.

Making a note of that one.

Me too. Sounds interesting!

Thus far, here are my best books of 2010 (although there is still a few weeks left!). All of these in particular still linger in my mind for one reason or another....

Favorites in various categories:

novels & novellas:

--Black Mirror by Gail Jones (2002, Australian)
--Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones (2006, Australian)
--Strange Meeting by Susan Hill (1976, UK)
--Wide Open by Nicola Barker (1998, UK)
--The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (2005, Australian)
--A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates (novel, 1982, US)
--The Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Djaout (novella, Algerian, T 2007)
--Deep Hollow Creek by Sheila Watson (novella, 1992, Canadian)
--Touch by Adania Shibli (novella, T 2010, Palestinian author)
--The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi (Afghan author, novella, translation 2009)
--I Lock My Door Upon Myself, Joyce Carol Oates (1990, novella, US)
--The Country Where No One Ever Dies, Ornela Vorpsi (T 2009, Albania)

Short fiction:

--Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson (2009, US)
--A Taste of Honey: Stories by Jabari Asim (short story collection, US author)
--Everything in This Country Must: A Novella and Two Stories by Colum McCann (Irish author, 2000)

Poetry:

--Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni (2009, US)
--Dark Things by Novica Tadic (Serbian poet, Translation: 2009)

Nonfiction:

--Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter (UK, 2010)

Police procedurals/mysteries:

besides the Peter Temple listed above,
--The Shadow Woman by Åke Edwardson (1997, T 2010, Sweden)

Nice list, Lois. I didn't realize that Wide Open won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize in 2000, and after reading reviews of it on LT I've added it to my wish list. I have two of her books, Darkmans and Burley Cross Postbox Theft, but haven't read either one yet. Hmm...maybe I'll bring Darkmans with me to Wisconsin at the end of the month.

>91 kidzdoc: Darryl, since reading Wide Open, I've picked up another of hers (a collection, I forget the title just now), and have Darkmans waiting for me at the bookstore (recommended by shearrob when I met him in London in November). I am looking forward to reading more of her. She's an incredibly talented writer, very artful.

I'm glad to read your comments about Barker; Darkmans will probably be the first book I'll read in 2011 (I'll be in Wisconsin visiting my best friends from Dec 28 to Jan 5).

>93 kidzdoc: I will be interested in what you have to say about it, but I'm not altogether sure you will like her writing.

I think that Rachael (FlossieT) said the same thing. If I don't like it I can leave it with my best friend's wife; she's a former professor at UCL who loves British literature.

I really liked Darkmans, although I more or less felt like I was hanging on for dear life while I read it!

>50 avaland: Glad to see a review of this author - I just ran across the series in Book Lust To Go and was considering it.

#97 Margaret - Will you be reviewing Book Lust To Go? I have to, since it's an Early Reviewer. I'm still reading through it.

I have finished Mary Doria Russell's Doc, a well-done tale of "Doc" Holliday. Will post more comments when I get some time, might not be until the new year.

Am nearly finished with the 2010 Oates' collection, Sourland, which I have been nursing for weeks, if not months. It's excellent. The stories which stand out are those which examine the impact of violence on a life or lives, whether that be a victim, the perpetrator, or a witness. More on this later.

Lois -

It is a pleasure just to stop by your thread and see what you have been reading.

Looking forward to your comments on Mary Doria Russell's book Doc: A Novel.

I'm depressed right now with the physical stuff I deal with being a daily struggle, so I think it would be wise for me not to try Sourland: Stories, at this time. Maybe when things are moving upward again. She is an amazing writer and I am looking forward to reading her experiences after her husband died.

Ruth/womansheart

Ahem. Sorry about the deleted post. I made it in the wrong thread. Oops. But, hello! I am reading this one! And I am also interested in hearing about Doc when you get to it. (Man, I'm not even going to try sorting through the touchstones on that one.)

>100 womansheart: thanks for stopping by. No, I'd not recommend it for you, perhaps something like A Bloodsmoor Romance might work, but she does like to shine the light in the dark places....

>102 bragan: I had to do the touchstone manually.

I'll probably get to the reviews on the weekend, but I'll also post them on my 2011 thread. Thanks for popping by, even if it was by mistake:-)

I have finished The Moorland Cottage by Elizabeth Gaskell, a short 130 page novel that was reprinted this year by Hesperus Press. I will add comments, along with those for the other two books I have finished, this weekend to both this thread and the 2011 thread.

Comments on my last four books for 2010 are on my 2011 thread or on the book's page.

The Moorland Cottage by Elizabeth Gaskell
Sourland: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates
Continuum: Poems by Nina Cassian
Doc: A Novel by Mary Doria Russell

>98 dchaikin: Margaret - Will you be reviewing Book Lust To Go? I have to, since it's an Early Reviewer. I'm still reading through it.

I guess I should since I've looked over quite a bit of it. It's useful but not exactly what I was expecting. I gather a lot of the books she would have included in a stand-alone have been left out because they're in earlier books in the series. That was disappointing, since I'm not intending to buy the others.

Just waking up the group to check the settings....