Modern Library Revue
April 20, 2012
Modern Library Revue: #36 All the King’s Men 10
by Lydia Kiesling
This novel is written so beautifully, so stylishly, and feels so American — with all the muddled greatness and shittiness that descriptor implies — that my decrepit patriotism pricked up its ears like it sometimes does when I read a stunning novel about America, in fine American English.
January 23, 2012
Modern Library Revue: #33 Sister Carrie 8
by Lydia Kiesling
In a state of temporal foreignness, it is not always easy to read the signs of the previous century.
October 7, 2011
Modern Library Revue: #76 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 6
by Lydia Kiesling
It is a dark and lovely poem, written by the possessor of a sinister wit.
September 16, 2011
Modern Library Revue: #25 A Passage to India 4
by Lydia Kiesling
This gets to the heart of both my admiration and my anxieties about this novel. How can we write across culture, or think across culture, even, in a way that is fair? The cowardly answer is that we can’t.
March 17, 2011
Modern Library Revue: #4 Lolita 7
by Lydia Kiesling
(A signal event in English, by a Russian, about sex with children, published by a French purveyor of mostly-filth of a pretty banal sort.)
December 30, 2010
Modern Library Revue: #96 Sophie’s Choice 17
by Lydia Kiesling
There are two main narratives at work in this sad and sensational story: Sophie’s Auschwitz horrors, and Stingo’s penile travails.
