Death with Interruptions – 4/5 Stars As I have said, I started reading Saramago because of the comments of Ursula K Le Guin in her essay collection Words are My Matter. She wrote beautifully and swimmingly about his work and how much she respected him as a political person and a moral writer. She expressly talks about how he’s not a political writer, which is more or less true, in that he’s not a partisan writer (he’s politically socialist). Anyway, there’s a review blurb on […]
For those looking to be terrified by something other than reality right now
Imagine, if you will, being suddenly blinded and forced to navigate the world while protecting your two young children, all while unseen monsters stalk you. Thus is the premise of Josh Malerman’s debut novel Bird Box. The plot jumps around in time with some chapters taking place several years in the past, when reports of strange and disturbing events in Russia begin filtering onto U.S. news channels. Something that people are seeing is making them lose their minds, causing them to murder people and/or […]
A really good read, but I don’t get all the fuss.
This was a really good book on a lot of levels: 1. Good as historical fiction. Excellent particularly because we get POV characters on both sides of the conflict. 2. Good as literary fiction (at least, according to my standards). I prefer my lit-fic to be on the accessible side, and not to focus exclusively on middle-aged white man problems. But it’s also got extra levels if you want to go digging. 3. Good as writing, in the sense that the sentences strung one after […]
Heroism comes in all forms in this exquisite WWII story
This book is beautiful, horrifying and a must read. It is a WWII story with two main characters—a young blind French girl who flees with her brilliant father, a locksmith for the Parisian Museum of Natural History, from the occupied French capital to outlying Saint-Malo, and an orphaned German child prodigy who gets caught up in the Nazi war machine which slowly crushes the light in him. Marie-Laure lives in worlds created by her doting father, but when he is taken from her and she […]