Books

Book Review: “Trieste” — A Vivid and Lurid Chronicle of Horrors

February 19, 2014
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As fiction, “Trieste” is almost entirely a dense tapestry of thinking, remembering, agonizing and raging.

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Fuse Book Review: Pussy Riot — The Price of Singing a Loud Song in the Savior’s Castle

February 9, 2014
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Most everyone has heard the faux-scandalous name. What has not been heard enough is that Pussy Riot are the purest and most potent expression of the punk-rock ethos ever.

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Book Review: “The Good Lord Bird” — History As a Morality Tale, With Wings

February 5, 2014
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There is more than one way to tell the truth, “The Good Lord Bird” reminds us again and again, and many reasons to cloak it in humor.

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Book Review: “An Unnecessary Woman” — A Memorable Story of Redemption

February 5, 2014
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When the septuagenarian protagonist of this novel finally gets out of her claustrophobic apartment, everything changes.

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Book Review: “The Devil I Know” — A Brilliant Satire of Ireland’s Boom and Bust

February 3, 2014
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Claire Kilroy’s dark and fantastical comedy “The Devil I Know” nails the greed and rampaging ambition of the corrupt avatars of “the new Ireland” — developers, bankers, and government pooh-bahs.

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Book Review: Director Edgar G. Ulmer — Hollywood’s Master of the Eclectic Led a Doozy of a Life

February 2, 2014
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This is an invaluable volume that can and should be read in conjunction with one’s own Ulmer movie marathon.

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Book Review: “The Elixir of Immortality” — A Fabulous Ride Through European History

February 1, 2014
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Love stories, treachery, brilliant plans, history itself gone awry – it’s all here in inspiring abundance in this fabulous novel, where the Spinozas make their way through hundreds of years of European history.

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Book Review: The Poetry of Pierre Reverdy — The Search for Purity

January 31, 2014
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Pierre Reverdy’s poetry that is suspicious of the deceiving beauty of words, hence its pared-down, elemental, stylistic qualities.

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Book Review: Richard Powers’s Urgent “Orfeo” — Can Art Save Us?

January 27, 2014
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As with any Richard Powers novel, when you finish “Orfeo” you will have no doubt you are alive, awake, and likely ready to start over at page one.

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Fuse Book Review: “My Life in Middlemarch” — Expanding the Boundaries of Memoir

January 24, 2014
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I don’t share Rebecca Mead’s awe for “Middlemarch,” but I share her enthusiasm for stretching the envelope of memoir.

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