Kai Maristed
A consistently engaging and engaged, insightful, humorous, scarily moving, polished contemporary drama with a premise to die for.
“The Endless Week” is a brave, uneven, at times brilliant swathe of prose. Experimental? For certain. Perhaps the only way to write an Internet novel is by looking from the inside out.
“Darkenbloom” is a hefty novel, in which a blood-stained, depraved swath of history is laid bare by in-depth examination of a narrow geographical sample (think “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, or, for that matter, “Gone With the Wind”).
Bruna Dantas Lobato’s sensibility is unmistakably original: she explores her protagonist’s life and surroundings like a dowsing rod, poking into closets, corners, and cupboards.
Rachel Kushner’s latest novel is mélange of vignettes, stand-alone or linked flash essays, and portentous bits of wisdom.
What could have gone terribly wrong goes terrifically right in the hands of this creative team, culminating in a convergence of the life, the oeuvre, and our protagonist’s encroaching agony.
What sets “Cold Nights of Childhood “wonderfully apart from today’s autofiction genre is the narrator’s absolute lack of self-pity. There is no blame-game, and no lugubrious victimhood.
One wonders sometimes whether the weight of acclaim doesn’t place an author beyond critical reproach. The bandwagon effect.
Daphne Kalotay’s fresh eye for the outside world is paired with a sympathy for the inner world of her protagonists, which can feel helplessly pained at times.
Surely the selfless subject of Anne Weber’s Epic Annette qualifies beyond doubt as a true heroine of the twentieth century?
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