After the fun romp of Interred with their Bones, I was looking forward to Carrell’s next Shakespearean mystery with great anticipation. I wasn’t disappointed to learn that the focus of her second novel is on Macbeth, one of my favorite plays. However, after finally finishing the novel, I am very divided as to my feelings about Haunt Me Still. On the one hand, I was thrilled to get an inkling into some of the real history behind the plot of Macbeth, which added another whole […]
An Islamic adventure story filled with djinn and revolution
This highly imaginative debut novel by an American-born convert to Muslim has garnered praise from all and sundry. Part fantasy, part mythology, part religious tract and part political tract, Alif the Unseen is as hard to pin down as it is fun to experience. It is the story of a young half-Arab/half-Indian man living in an unidentified Arab sheikdom known as “The City.” Alif (his “label”) is a computer hacker par excellence, and from his mother’s apartment is happy to sell his services to any […]
Existentialism and friendship in contemporary Japan
This novel was my first taste of Murakami, and while I found it a fascinating (and not Japan-specific) foray into the minds of 20-30 somethings, I found Murakami’s story rather emotionally chilly. Of course, any book which devotes at least half of its pages to death, death wishes, and repressed sexual urges, is bound to be more than a little chilly, even downright depressing, but the book is saved by a combination of sometimes lovely prose, a mystery that kept me turning pages almost despite […]
An ambitious, delightful but very messy Shakespeare murder mystery
This Shakespearean “who-dun-it” is a delightful contribution to this particular genre of historical mystery. It is a glorious mash-up of DaVinci Code-like code-breaking and world-hopping combined with the inexhaustible debate over the disputed authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, and of course, the identity of Shakespeare himself. The chapters jump back and forth between the period of Shakespeare and the present-day, where people within the literary, academic and theater worlds are dying like Shakespeare’s characters, and no one has a clue who the bad guy is, including […]