Archive for January, 2011

PHILADELPHIA NOIR edited by Carlin Romano

Akhasic Press’ new collection of noir stories is Philadelphia Noir, with 15 stories based in various parts of the city and one neighboring town (Narberth, PA). Finally, after many US and foreign cities already having a collection or some cities having two, one of the US oldest, and darkest cities has a collection of its own.

January 15, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Noir, Short Stories, US Mid-Atlantic

THE GORDIAN KNOT by Bernhard Schlink

Just now and again in this novel, as in the quotation above, one gets a glimpse of Bernhard Schlink the moral philosopher who probed so deeply into the German past with his novels THE READER and HOMECOMING and especially the non-fiction GUILT ABOUT THE PAST. But readers looking to this novel for deeper insights will be disappointed. Although the publishers do nothing whatever to indicate that this is not a new novel, its references to Francs and Deutschmarks, to East Germany as a separate country, and to the still-standing World Trade Center show that the book is not of our time. It is in fact a translation of a comparatively early novel by the German author-jurist, first published in 1988. This matters little to readers willing to accept the book on its own terms, but will disappoint those expecting to follow the recent development of Schlink’s sophisticated thought.

January 14, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: France, New York City, Noir, Thriller/Spy/Caper

A FAIR MAIDEN by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the greatest and most prolific writers working today. She is the winner of the National Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and more awards than can be fit into this short review. Her recent short novel, A FAIR MAIDEN, is one of her more minor works. Though I call it minor, it is by Joyce Carol Oates and, by any standard, that makes it major.

January 13, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Coming-of-Age, Mystery/Suspense, Noir, y Award Winning Author

A VOICE FROM OLD NEW YORK by Louis Auchincloss

Born in 1917 to a prominent New York City family – all eight great-grandparents were natives and resided within blocks of each other – Auchincloss belonged to an insular, elite group that, over the course of his 92 years, furnished him with material for some 60 books. This memoir, completed shortly before his death a year ago, was his last.

January 12, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Non-fiction

PUBLIC ENEMIES by Bernard-Henri Levy and Michel Houellebecq

Originally published in 2008 in France, the newly released English translation of PUBLIC ENEMIES: DUELING WRITERS TAKE ON EACH OTHER AND THE WORLD doesn’t quite deliver the literary death match promised in the subtitle. That is, rather than a frenzied cockfight between two writers the French love to hate – the writers in question, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Houellebecq are both controversial superstars in France –this collection of letters is something far better: a measured exchange between two thoughtful (and thought-provoking) writers on a wide range of philosophical issues. And while the letters lack the intimacy and the casual, almost incidental, handling of the abstract that often characterizes published correspondence–indeed, Lévy and Houellebecq aren’t friends; the correspondence was initiated with an eye to publication, a fact that mars the book with an off-putting self-consciousness – the exploration of topics as wide-ranging as the social and political obligations of the writer, the purpose and desirability of confessional literature, our all too human need to be liked, the perils of fame, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, divine breath and the life source, the void, the nothingness, render the book fascinating.

January 11, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: France, Non-fiction

THE POISON TREE by Erin Kelly

THE POISON TREE, the debut novel from British author Erin Kelly, begins with a young woman named Karen driving her child, nine-year-old Alice to pick up husband Rex. This may sound like a fairly routine domestic errand, but the difference here is that Rex has just been released from prison after serving 10 years for murder. The novel’s first chapter is a window into the delicacy of a fractured family’s difficult reunion as parenting roles shift to a thinly structured “normalcy.” The underlying question is why was Rex in prison for murder? Just what happened to put Rex behind bars is slowly doled out to the reader as first-person narrator Karen goes back to the mid 90s when she was a university student at Queen Charlotte’s College and met the intriguing, free-spirit, budding actress Biba and her brother Rex.

January 10, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Debut Novel, Mystery/Suspense, Psychological Suspense, Reading Guide, United Kingdom