I struggled with this rating and review. House of Leaves is different things to different people: for many (many, many, MANY) people it is mind-blowing, complex, and a richly rewarding treat if you take the time to completely parse it. This is not a small undertaking. Entire sections are printed like this — or this — and the visual impact of coming across pages like that — intended, obviously, to draw the reader into the mindset of the characters — is daunting. There are oodles […]
Lives up to the hype and then some: Neapolitan Novels
I’m afraid I may never be able enjoy another book. These Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante are pure perfection and set way too high a bar for anything I may read from now on. I’m reviewing them as a set because I gobbled up all four in under three weeks and they are so cohesive. Although the books were released one by one, each September since 2012, it’s easy to imagine Elena Ferrante (a pseudonym) sitting down and writing all 2,000 or so pages in […]
Lost and Found
This review was originally published at Women Write About Comics. Have you ever picked up a book just because you had a good feeling about it? You’ve never heard of it, don’t recognize the author, and don’t even know what it’s about? This began as one of those books. It also happened to be one of the rare instances when an impulse buy not only met, but exceeded my expectations. When I got home from the bookstore and finally bothered to read the blurb, […]
A double cannonball to contemplate
What a subtle, poignant, sad book. In post-WWII England, Stevens, a butler of a formerly great aristocratic house takes a road trip through the country and has the opportunity to reflect on his tenure of servitude. Through these memories — many with another employee, Miss Kenton — Stevens sketches a life left rather unlived through the endless pursuit of dignity, that intangible, elite quality embodied by the foremost butlers. What is dignity? No one can put it into words, not even Stevens, but based on […]