Books

Book Review: Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” — A Translation That Respects the Nuances

December 6, 2014
Posted in , , ,

Marian Schwartz’s careful translation of Anna Karenina is exquisitely mindful of the book’s complex linguistic texture.

Read More

Book Review: Émile Zola’s “The Conquest of Plassans” — “Tartuffe” Gone Realpolitik

December 5, 2014
Posted in , , ,

Entertaining yet incisive, The Conquest of Plassans remains a devastatingly acute reminder that religion and politics make surprisingly compatible bedfellows.

Read More

Book Review: “Outside Music, Inside Voices” — Illuminating Conversations about Creating Jazz

December 2, 2014
Posted in , , ,

Jazz fans with open ears should rush to this book: so should anyone interested in the creative process, its rewards as well as its challenges.

Read More

Book Review: Charles D’Ambrosio’s “Loitering” — Slam-Bang Ghost Stories

December 1, 2014
Posted in , ,

Charies D’Ambrosio’s short fiction collections were finalists for major awards, but it is his essays that I return to again and again.

Read More

Book Review: Enduring the Unendurable — Philippe Rahmy’s Extraordinary Portrait of Pain

November 30, 2014
Posted in , , ,

Philippe Rahmy is afflicted with brittle-bone disease: in his superb writing, he takes off from his incurable inherited condition and ventures out courageously.

Read More

Book Review: “Havel: A Life” — A Splendid Biography of a Seminal Artist/Statesman

November 24, 2014
Posted in , , ,

What this magisterial biography does so well is give us an even-handed portrait of a remarkable, flawed man who is obsessed with a need to help the disenfranchised.

Read More

Book Review: Into the Labyrinth of Fragmentary Memories — The Novels of Patrick Modiano

November 19, 2014
Posted in , , ,

The prose of Patrick Modiano, this year’s Nobel prizewinner, has a distinctive French style whose directness and grammatical limpidity by no means exclude semantic depth and complexity.

Read More

Poetry Review: “Long Way Back to the End” — Zero to the Icy Bone

November 17, 2014
Posted in , ,

American poet Paul B. Roth is keenly aware that a striking phrase can set a dream in motion.

Read More

Book Review: “The Pushcart War” — One for the 99%

November 14, 2014
Posted in , ,

First published in 1964, Jean Merrill’s classic children’s novel has just been reissued by New York Review Books to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Read More

Book Review: Jack Kerouac in Mexico — Fiction Dressed as Fact

November 13, 2014
Posted in , ,

Reading this book is like listening to a lively conversation from a self-proclaimed Kerouac authority giving his opinions over a café con leche late at night at Cafe Pamplona in Harvard Square.

Read More

Recent Posts