Belles-Lettres

Yummy!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:29:00 +0000

Penguin Classics have now issued their cloth-bound collection in the US, which had only been available to date in the UK. Check out an interview with the designer Coralie Bickford-Smith here of this delicious new way to enjoy the classics. Titles include Sense and Sensibility, Crime and Punishment, Great Expectations and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Auster gets a whoopin'

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:48:00 +0000

Wise writers know never to read their reviews, but who can resist? So I sure hope Paul Auster (best known for his New York Trilogy) hasn't sneaked a peak at James Wood's take on his novels in the November 30th issue of The New Yorker; it's been a long time since I've read such a forensic analysis of a writer's flaws. Wood writes "Although there are things to admire in Auster's fiction, the prose is never one of them..." (ouch!), before continuing to say that although Auster is probably America's best known postmodern novelists, and postmodern novels are known for borrowed language and cinematic language, yet "he does nothing with cliche except use it" (yikes!) His stories are "assertions rather than persuasions" and "this is the crevasse that divides Auster from novelists like Jose Saramgo or Philip Roth" (kapow!) I've never read any of Auster's books, and I'm now, frankly, terrified to pick one up lest it's as bad as Wood asserts or that Wood himself may one day read one of my own....

McEwan meets Madonna

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:56:00 +0000

My continuing journey through Ian McEwan's back catalogue recently paused at The Cement Garden (1978), his novella about, to quote the Los Angeles Times, "the banality of evil." Four children left parent-less in a dilapidated house ferment an amoral atmosphere of lethargy and manipulation. It confirms my suspicion that adolescence is not when innocence is lost, it is when our true base nature exists in the raw, before we learn to suppress and hide it. A gripping, nasty little book, I was relieved to finish it.

As an aside, I came across this line while reading, "Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy... but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading..." and thought, 'Jings, that sounds familiar. Didn't our Mags yodel about that'? And sure enough, Madonna included a line of dialogue from the 1993 film of The Cement Garden in her song "What it feels like for a girl," spoken by (and this didn't surprise me) Charlotte Gainsborough.

Going Home

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:40:00 +0000

Famous barrister Sir Edward Feathers and his wife, return Home to retire in Dorset, England after many years living in the Far East. Feathers, known affectionately as Old Filth (Failed in London Try Hong Kong) tries to settle into the country life but memories haunt him - of his Malay childhood, of his distant father, of his school days and the war years, and most inconveniently, about his foster home in Wales, memories normally as skirted over and unexamined as his marriage of convenience to the capable Betty.

Jane Gardam's 2005 tragicomic novel effortlessly captures the language and mores of ex-pats and Raj orphans, portraying the suppressed emotions of the British upper classes and their determination to Get On With it, no matter what. Old Filth embodies a generation, indeed an Empire, which only approaches a painful self-reflection at the moment of it's dying. For Old Filth, for Great Britain, the definition of Home is anything but clear.

Gardam is a wonderful new discovery to me, I'm ashamed to say, as she has been publishing since 1975, and consistently wining or being short-listed for numerous literary prizes. Her latest novel, The Man in the Wooden Hat, is now available in the US. A follow-up to Old Filth it calls enticingly from my shelf not simply because of the promise of its contents but because it is printed by Europa Editions, a publisher of aesthetically delicious paperbacks.

Let the Great World Spin wins National Book Award

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:47:00 +0000

Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, has won the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction. Those familiar with his work in the New Yorker or the Paris Review, will not be surprised by this latest accolade. More information about McCann can be found on the National Book Foundation website, and on the author's website.

Wolf Hall wins 2009 Man Booker Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:30:00 +0000

The bookies favorite, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, has won the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The award was announced on October 6th, with Mantel besting an impressive short list including A. S. Byatt's The Children's Room, J. M. Coetzee's Summertime, and Sarah Water's The Little Stranger. Find out more about the books in competition here.

Twitter-Gate

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:07:00 +0000

Apparently Alice Hoffman got a little twitter-happy after reading an unfavorable review of her new book, The Story Sisters, by Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe. Unfortunately, if one puts one's art out into the world, the world will respond, and often the most classy thing to do is shut up and suck it up... Salon.com has an interesting take on this story, regarding the non-apology apology.

Brooklyn

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:33:00 +0000

....Well, I took Colm Toibin's new release Brooklyn from atop the pile and read it. Yep, mistake. This is well crafted account of a young Irish woman's immigrant experience in Brooklyn, NY, after the Second World War, and Toibin's perceptive portrayal of the shifting nature of familial relationships with those left behind is the best part of the novel. However, it lacks humor, and only humor or writing that is more than meticulous - that is ravishing - could save this book from being, I hate to say it, boring. My opinion is very much in the minority, I know, given Brooklyn's other reviews, but nothing frustrates me more than an immensely talented craftsman (or woman) forgetting that novels shouldn't only illuminate or educate, but entertain.

Women and Readers first....

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:56:00 +0000

I suffer from a queasy concoction of guilt and desperation if I abandon a book before its conclusion, as though I were elbowing my way past the infirm to reach a lifeboat. I made it to the end of John Banville's Birchwood (1973), but I confess that I skimmed at an ever-more frantic pace through its final third. God, this book was awful....Fine writing, 'tis true, but so damned joyless... After completing Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture some time ago, I felt I'd had my fill of miserable Irish history, no matter how moving, so I've got what I deserve for returning to that well. Question is, what do I do with Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, perched atop my 'to read' list?...

The Orange Prize 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:52:00 +0000

Marilynne Robinson has been awarded the Orange Prize for fiction for Home, her follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead. The Sunday Times have named Robinson the world's best living writer of prose, a stretch I think, but an homage to her unwavering focus on the work itself, and her disregard of literary fashion. She has written three novels in twenty-eight years (what a nice steady pace...), with quiet plots and a strong religious and philosophical intent. My review of Home can be found in the blog archives for Wednesday 14th January. (Photo credit: Ulf Andersen/Getty)

Mme. Barbery's Divine Gallic Charm

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:58:00 +0000

"Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate while others are born. And in all this sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes its merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn: human life continues to throb. So let us drink a cup of tea."

Wise words from Parisian concierge Renee, who makes pedagogical efforts to appear semi-retarded so as not to upset those bourgeois notions about intelligence and class still tenderly held by the majority of her oblivious, self-absorbed employers.

French author Muriel Barbery's delicious novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog (now available in paperback) merits its runaway success, and much credit must go to Alison Anderson's rich and skillful translation. The quiet story of how the intellectual Renee is coached out of her shell by the arrival of a Japanese tenant, is delicately mirrored by the precocious musings of twelve-year-old Paloma, the daughter of another tenant, as she calmly plans her own suicide.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog's combination of bourgeois mise-en-scene, cinematic references, lush reveling in la table, philosophical and metaphysical debate and Japanese esthetics makes this book so irresistibly, well, French. Barbery's light touch triggered a surprisingly strong emotional response from this reader. A particular highlight is Renee's flinching in the face of an employer's grammatical confusion between the verbs "to bring" and "to take." A confusion, I fear, which is so rampantly out of control in American English that it may need to be given up as a lost cause.

(Note to fans: Barbery's first book, Gourmet Rhapsody (Une Gourmandise) will be released in the USA this coming August.)

International Man Booker Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:09:00 +0000

Canadian author Alice Munro has been awarded the 2009 International Man Booker Prize, in recognition of her "practically perfect" short story collections, chronicling small town Ontarian life. She could be considered a 'domestic' writer,(to use that slightly derogative term so associated with the concerns of us little women) following in the footsteps of Austen and Eliot, though she is more similar to Muriel Spark than Anita Brookner, as she tackles big issues in the miniaturist form (though without Spark's bite). The announcement was a minor upset, as Australian author Peter Carey had been deemed the favorite to win this time around.

(photo: Andrew Testa / Rex Features)

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned...

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:41:00 +0000

Wells Tower's first story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, appeared in my in-box weeks ago, but I only got around to it during our recent break by Chesapeake Bay - an appropriate landscape of Waspish towns and lobsters shacks, pick-up trucks and yacht yards, foreclosed condos and back-creek ranchers in which to read his derisive assessment of our uncanny ability to balls-up the American dream. Tower's book has been extensively reviewed since idling on my desk, with raves from such as the New York Times to the Independent - so I guess the short story is not, quite, dead. So many raves that it seemed heavily freighted to disappoint.

It didn't. It is a remarkable debut about dysfunctional fathers and sons, sibling rivalry, bickering buddies, and messy love affairs, whose relentless catalogue of misery is saved - made bearable, made un-putdownable - by a combination of savage humor and literary agility. In "Retreat," a brother's festering jealousy peaks in the nastiest of conclusions, in "Wild America," adolescent despair and competitiveness swerves by disaster, and in the title story, a speedy yarn of gut-churning violence recounted in chirpy American-ese, two happy-go-lucky Vikings learn the unsettling side-effects of developing a conscience. Man's inability to vanquish lust, greed, envy, and careless destructiveness, Tower implies, stands between us and the potential for paradise. And the price paid for love is to lie awake night after night, waiting to hear "the sounds of men rowing toward your home." A chewy, heartbreaking collection - heartily recommended.

I'm doing this for your own good...

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:08:00 +0000

Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers, published in 1981, is a menacing novella about a violent and erotic misadventure in the gorgeously dank seediness of Venice. I can't say I enjoyed it but observing McEwan wield his scalpel against his defenseless characters is hypnotic and addictive. James Woods, in an article in the April 30th issue of The London Review of Books, explores McEwan's literary focus on trauma, which, he argues, McEwan uses as a metaphor to explore loss of innocence. Woods characterizes McEwan as a distinctly manipulative author, but an author who manipulates in order to underscore the very fictive nature of fiction itself. Using Atonement as an example, he explores, convincingly, reasons why some readers were so offended by this novel's structure and denouement, and concludes that our yearning for happy endings is in some way indicative of the "banality" of our own literary pretensions. McEwan, it could be said, is teaching us a lesson by relieving us of our innocence. Ouch.

A Hidden Gem Revealed

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:43:00 +0000

Scottish author Robin Jenkins wrote over thirty novels, collections of short stories and various articles, in a long career that spanned from his first publication in 1951 till his death in 2005. Many of his books are sadly out of print in the US (though second-hand copies can be tracked down), and I try to find them whenever I return to Scotland. My latest import was Poverty Castle (1991), a novel-within-a-novel, in which an author, respected but rarely read, tries to finish one final work before he dies; he want to write a novel about happiness deserved. He invents the captivating Semphill family; a guileless and gentle father and five daughters all named after Walter Scott heroines, whose self-contained contentment is put at risk by the mother's inability to grasp her astounding good fortune and her desperate yearning for more. Into the family comes Peggy Gilchrist, a poor student from Glasgow, and the story becomes, as all Jenkins's do, a parable about class. Peggy's education is beginning to alienate her from her own family, but she resents her feelings of admiration for the Semphills. "The working class grudge the rich being rich," her mother says. "Whit they hate is for one of themselves to rise in the world. You should ken, Peggy." Poverty Castle begins like a fairy tale, as beguiling as its setting in Argyll, and ends with human nature having extracted its toll.

Annie's Ghosts

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:36:00 +0000

Steve Luxenberg recently released a family memoir, entitled Annie's Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret. Not long before his mother's death Luxenberg had discovered that she was not the only child she had always claimed to be; after her death he decided to find out more about this elusive missing aunt. My review for WYPR, Maryland Public Radio, can be heard here, and an excerpt appears below:

Steve Luxenburg has been with the Washington Post for many years and his book stands as a testament to his stringent adherence to the best practices of the news profession and to his determination to sift his own prose for sentimentality or unqualified assumptions. "I felt somewhat trapped between the roles of son and journalist," he writes. As a son he was often tempted to rise to his mother's defense...

Annie's Ghosts proves, as the best non-fiction does, that true facts about true lives need no embellishments to be startling or moving, and while Luxenburg rattled inside his family closet it was inevitable that other skeletons would fall out. "What is the relationship between secrets and the ability to keep secrets and the integrity of the family? he asks, probing his own intentions, because he uncovers more than he bargained for.

Red: the Color that Advances...

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Sun, 10 May 2009 13:04:00 +0000

Recently I had the good fortune to interview the Maryland-based poet, Michael Salcman, about his life and work, and his complimentary careers as neurosurgeon and bard. We talked of many things, of testing metaphors and art collecting, of the social responsibility of the writer and the challenge of language. And while re-visiting his poetry, I encountered a perfect articulation of how important comparison (and therefore criticism) is to human perception and understanding, in the poem "Red: The Color that Advance" from his collection, The Clock Made of Confetti. I post it as a defense (albeit small) for the role of the book critic, and the value of being able to sift the wheat from the chaff, (which need not temper the enjoyment of both, because without one we could not distinguish the other - a thought which, taken to its conclusion, could argue for the necessary existence of the devil but that's a subject for another post...). Resist the temptation, dear readers, of settling for "good-enough"; brave the slur of elitism.

When you try to make a point, they always say

"who are we to judge?" as if it weren't

a question but a fact that everything in the world's

of equal value. But the brain is built to compare

and can't see red unless there's a green nearby,

can't know comfort without some painful contrast.

Cezanne intuitivly knew the brain sees red,

knew the eye was his touch extended,

that a green cloth and blue salver made

the apple red, that it takes two colors

to make a parade or a procession.

In a bowl of painted fruit

red is the color that advances.

Heart and Soul

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:37:00 +0000

Heart and Soul is Maeve Binchy's fifteenth novel, and my first taste of her work. It has torn to the top of the best-seller lists in Australia and Canada and is hurtling upward in the US and the UK. Having had my own work compared to Binchy (flattering for me, not so much for Ms. Binchy, I suspect), I had thought to find it more literary, more miserable, more dense, and less susceptible to the lure of the happy ending. Heart and Soul may be marked as novel but it is actually linked short stories set in and around a heart clinic in Ireland. Old-fashioned, chirpy, dialogue -heavy, it reminds me of those large-print books my grandmother loaned from the library, with their obvious pitch to entertainment and romance. I can't decide if Binchy has a light touch or is light-weight. Like a good soap opera, her book was addictive. Still, I was concerned - not by Ms. Binchy who enjoys a loyal following (and how could you say anything derogative about an author who appears from her photo to be nicest human being ever to pick up a pen?) - but on my own abilities to give my work heft. Hmm.

Ok, we can keep it....

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:26:00 +0000

Recent home renovations have resulted in a very messy basement, and last weekend his nibs and I began trying to whip it into shape. On dusty shelves at the back skulk books on death row - a mere judgement away from the re-cycling bucket, their stringy spines saved only by nostalgia - tatty thrillers, out of date guidebooks, bargain basement glossies. One of the grubbiest of all is a Thomas Cooke European railway timetable from July 1988, whose yellowed pages and miniscule type once saved his nibs and I from crashing homeless with our backpacks on the floor of Paris's Gare du Nord by informing us of the sleeper train to Rome.

I voted to toss it; he voted to keep. A hung jury until today, when I found it slotted at number 7 on Malcolm Pryce's list of the top ten expatriate tales - ever. Ok, you win, boss, we can keep it...

New British Poet Laureate Named

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:20:00 +0000

The Glasgow-born poet, Carol Ann Duffy, has just been named Britain's first female Poet Laureate. The appointment was expected but controversial, with some loving her work, and others seeing the selection as politically or culturally motivated - being both a Scot and a lesbian, she riles some on many fronts. Read a short bio and some samples of her work here. (Photo credit: Anvil).

Guernsey Literary Peelings

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:06:00 +0000

Mary Ann Shaffer's and Annie Barrow's novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society had been hovering in my peripheral vision for so long, in book stores, on review pages, that I had avoided it, feeling it had already garnered more than enough attention. But when a good friend recommended it, I succumbed and chomped through it in a day or so. It made pleasant reading, I enjoyed it, (no, really, Rhea, I did,) and I learned stuff too. Its retro combination of sugar (mild romance and Mitford-esque humor) and green vegetables (educational content and sturdy decent folk) reminded me of those Nancy Drew type novels I ploughed through as a teenager, though the anecdotes about Nazi occupation had more bite, and the romance less flush and burn. It's BBC/Masterpiece Theater material, and I couldn't stop myself from casting the sadly lost Natasha Richardson in the leading role.

Two things however did baffle me: the lack of a recipe for that much-vaunted potato peel pie, and the apparently dizzying efficiency of the postal system in post-war battered Europe. Who knew one could conduct a triangular correspondence between the Channel Islands, old Blighty and the far Aussie-Antipodes, at speeds rivaling a 3G network?

Book club chat

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:02:00 +0000

Earlier this week I was invited in to the WYPR (Maryland Public Radio) studio to chat with Tom Hall about book clubs. Listen in here.

Pulitzer Round-Up

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:26:00 +0000

I'm thrilled that one of my favorite books of last year, Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout, has just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (read my capsule review on this blog on 5th Feb). Another two winners announced yesterday also appeared in my column for Urbanite magazine - in history, The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed history, and in poetry, The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin in poetry. It seems I can pick 'em (or at least two of 'em!).

Junot Diaz at CityLit

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:01:00 +0000

I was privileged to spend part of last Saturday at the 6th annual CityLit event in Baltimore, held at the Enoch Pratt Central Library. I took part in a panel hosted by Nancy Johnston (of Baltimore Sun's Read Street blog) about first time authors, and relished my good fortune of sharing the stage with the incredibly talented Jessica Anya Blau, Elissa Brent Weissman, Eric D. Goodman and Ben Shaberman.

Unfortunately I missed the reading by poet Mark Doty but I did join the throng paying homage to multiple award-winner Junot Diaz, who read an excerpt from one of his short stories. Diaz, comfortable in front of this large audience, struck me as warm, articulate, funny and generous with his time and his insights into the writer's craft. I'm ashamed to admit that I still have not read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, so I was eager to hear his prose. Diaz, without a doubt, is a very effective reader. His voice dipped into the rhythm, tone and idiom of Dominican Spanglish to the delight of his fans though his saucy subject matter and colorful syntax sent some parents with younger kids scuttling from the room (I'm not sure what they had been expecting!). Nevertheless, Diaz's choice disappointed me, as it seemed to lack the swooping breadth for which he is renowned, and had characters who didn't surprise, a plot that didn't turn, and a literary punch hinged on a single repeated line, ("time for you to go one way, and I to go another"). He pulled it off because of the strength of his performance, not because of the strength of the material. And thinking about it later I concluded that there is a difference between mimicking nature and holding up a mirror to nature. For the reader (or listener) the pleasure of the former stems from recognition, but the power of the latter is revelatory. Yes, I recognized his characters, but it seems I must dive into his novel to experience revelation.

Grammar Slammer

noreply@blogger.com (Belletriste) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:45:00 +0000

I attended a talk at a conference in Washington D.C. recently, and not long after it began, a notable fissure split the atmosphere in the room. Some attendees were nodding approvingly, while others began tying themselves in knots in an outbreak of defensive body language: crossed legs, arms and eyebrows. What controversial subject caused such a response? The difficulty of writing sex scenes? The endless debate over “truthiness” in memoir? No, the suggestion by the presenter that writers should understand grammar in the way that an artist understands paint. When grammatical rules are broken by writers, (and these are broken frequently and with unbridled gusto by some of our most successful authors and poets), such breaks do not happen by accident, but because the writer has carefully and deliberately deconstructed our language at some intrinsic level to achieve their creative vision, and such “breaks” tend to be consistent throughout the text letting the reader know that what they are experiencing is “style” or “voice” and not simply poor craftsmanship and sloppy editing.

Not everyone in the room seemed happy with the notion that it is incumbent on the writer to know the basic rules and building blocks of sentences, in the way that a successful chef knows the flavor and use of every ingredient in nature, or a great visual artist knows how to mix any shade and intensity of color in any medium. For some, paying attention at the sentence level sounds like, well, like work, and rules run contrary to that dreamy notion of a happy artistic temperament going with the flow. And yes, I agree, the creative process is instinctive to some extent, and it must be during the first drafts, however when a writer sits down to edit his or her work, we need to be able to coolly assess, fix, and polish what we have created. Eighty percent of writing is re-writing, and it comes in darn handy to understand what the heck happened to those missing verbs, or how that modifier took up dangling. Picasso didn’t begin his career painting abstracts, but learned draughtsmanship and mastered the schools of realism and naturalism. We need to know how to construct, before we are qualified to deconstruct.