Search Results: roberta silman

Book Review: Israeli Novelist A.B. Yehoshua’s Fascinating “Retrospective”

May 23, 2013
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This fascinating book ends, leaving the reader with all sorts of questions — but that is exactly what really good fiction always does. Opening our minds, etching characters in our imaginations, and generating all sorts of possibilities.

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Book Review: “The Hanging Garden” — A Posthumous Gift from a Literary Giant

August 4, 2013
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This novella is a gift to all of us who love Patrick White’s strangely alive prose and a welcome addition to his oeuvre. And for those who don’t know his work, it is a terrific way to be introduced to one of the 20th century’s finest writers.

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Book Review: “Winter” — A Luminous Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

January 20, 2016
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This novel about Thomas Hardy becomes not only the story of an odd triangle, but also a meditation on the nature of art.

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Book Review: “Love, Madness & Scandal” — Among the Metaphysicals

October 12, 2017
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The biography offers a fascinating look at Frances Coke Villiers’s tale of rebellion, the plight of a memorable woman during a tumultuous time.

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Book Review: “Girl of My Dreams” — A Vivid Look at Hollywood and History

May 23, 2015
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Peter Davis knows Hollywood from the inside and has written a splendid novel about the great days of Tinsel Town with the kind of passion you rarely see anywhere these days.

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Book Review: A. B. Yehoshua’s “The Extra” — A Genius for Dissecting Family Matters

June 27, 2016
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This canny writer is concerned with the kind of complicated family relationships that engaged his Jewish literary forebears.

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Book Review: The Wonderful and Silly Adventures of “The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared”

December 8, 2012
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Touted in author Jonas Jonasson’s native Sweden as the perfect antidote to the grim noir Swedish trilogy that begins with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo this delicious book has sold over 3 million copies around the world.

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Fuse Book Review: “The Measures Between Us” — A Promising But Scattershot First Novel

November 8, 2013
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We are left with a somewhat scattered narrative written in the third person with an omniscient narrator that moves from one inner life to another, sometimes to good effect, and sometimes leaving the reader stranded.

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Classical Music Commentary: The Boston University Tanglewood Institute — A Marvelous Experience For All

July 26, 2014
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Precision and obvious competence were only part of the story. What made this concert from The Young Artists Orchestra so special was the joy conveyed by these fledgling musicians.

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Book Review: “Love Made Visible” — A Poignant Memoir About Life With a Boston “Renaissance Man”

August 27, 2014
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We become participants in a chapter of American art history that raises important questions about what fame means, how much a part luck plays, and how we treat our artists. .

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