Novellas are the violas of the book world: everyone sort of knows what they are but, compared to their bigger and smaller siblings — in this case, novels and short stories — they keep such a low profile that few of us can say we’ve actually read one. Kesey, an American who lives in China [...]
Pop Art originated in Warhol’s New York, but in the early ’60s it spread to Los Angeles, where a new generation (perhaps “clique” would be a better word) of artists embraced this new fad, characterized by the ironic glamorization of mainstream cultural detritus. (Think Warhol’s soup labels and Hockney’s swimming pools.) To be frank, most [...]
Sex. Writing. Writing. Sex. You’ve always gotta wonder what those two words are doing together in the first place, because I mean … who really wants to get all cerebral and speculative about something so primal and, um, personal? Okay, writing that exists for the very purpose of turning you on, that’s one thing. (And [...]
The day a full colostomy bag figures prominently in the plot of a mystery novel is the day when you realize that mysteries have reached a whole new kind of high-water mark — which is where they should have been all along, in the graphic land of guts and gurgling noises. Nothing’s cute or cozy [...]
True-crime fans are a separate subculture. Yes, we read other kinds of books too, but a guilty incomparable I-know-what’s-coming thrill springs from these quickie page-turners that follow certain conventions: each covers a fairly recent American crime of passion in extreme detail, usually starting with a graphic description of the crime scene and then delving way, [...]
Fundamentalist Christians — in Sweden? Not just that, but Lapland, in this deeply felt character-driven mystery that starts with the partial dismemberment of a preacher and sends a smart Stockholm lawyer back to her snowy hometown. Larsson gets deep inside the heads of even minor characters who pop up only once in the narrative and [...]
The cooler you think you are, the more of a pathetic loser-drone you probably actually are, in Canadian zinester Niedzviecki’s grim vision of an American culture so co-opted by celebrity-worship and corporations (and the latter calculatingly creates the former, his theory goes) that even thinking you’re thinking an original thought is just a sad delusion [...]
What is it about food-memoirs that makes their authors choose ick-inducing titles? From Anthony Bourdain’s Bone in the Throat to Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires (which makes me think of sharp shattered gems stir-fried into food, like those times I’ve found tiny stones in tostadas) — this fourth book by the Bust columnist starts with [...]
Kate Grenville has already won the prestigious Orange Prize, and this, her latest novel, just won the 2006 Commonwealth Prize. (How could it win if it hasn’t come out yet? Well, it is out — but only in Australia. This is the first American edition.) Part historical saga, part family memoir, The Secret River traces [...]