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(originally posted on September 25, 2007)
Don't even try to classify this effort from Ball, a Long Island native who's married to an Icelander and has lived pretty much around the world. Part existential fable, part thriller, part dystopian paranoia tale, it's jumbled and strange and weird and wonderful and I couldn't put the damn thing down if I tried. Kind of like Richard Gwyn's THE COLOR OF A DOG RUNNING AWAY played at 45 rpm.
(originally posted on September 25, 2007)
After last year's heftier tome on all the possible ways to die, Largo returns with a more celebrity-focused take on all the ways celebrities tend to die, from Elvis to Lupe Velez to Anna Nicole Smith and everybody in between. This is a book to dip into, to consult for instant trivia knowledge or party tricks.
(originally posted on September 25, 2007)
How to explain this book's fabulousness? It's a traditional mystery owing much debt to Josephine Tey as it is a keen alternative history on what might have happened had England negotiated "peace in our time" with the Third Reich as it is an unconventional love story as it is a jaw-dropping political thriller with an ending that is a serious blow to the kneecaps. Suffice to say I'll be reading HA'PENNY, Walton's follow-up, post-haste.
(originally posted on September 25, 2007)
Oyeyemi follows up her wonderful debut THE ICARUS GIRL with a luminous, exquisitely written account of the fracture points of a Cuban family in London after the mother increasingly chooses the siren call of Santeria over almost all else. But it is the strong friendship, the high and low points, between Maja and fellow outsider Amy Eleni that really elevates this book into something truly special.
(originally posted on September 25, 2007)
Perhaps the best possible praise I can heap upon Davidson's debut novel is that THE FIGHTER is less about the bloody, brutal scenes of bare-knuckle boxing than about what it means to be a man - and have some degree of manhood - at a time when many upper-middle-class families will do anything in their power to shield their children from having to pull up any sort of bootstraps and engage in hard work and labor. For that, I must thank Davidson profusely.
