Reviews
January 23, 2006
Wade Rubenstein’s Gullboy: A Review 1
by Andrew Saikali
It’s a balancing act. How do you express yourself within a rich tradition without resorting to cliche? The deeper you go into the tradition, into the familiar, the more blindingly original your own expression really needs to be.
Take, for example, the songs of Will Oldham. A staggeringly good songwriter, his understated records resonate long after [...]
January 23, 2006
The White Earth by Andrew McGahan: A Review 0
by C. Max Magee
Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth was a big deal when it came out in Australia in 2004. His previous novels had given him a following, but The White Earth was the winner of the Miles Franklin Prize, Australia’s richest literary award, catapulting him to a new level of recognition. The book is a [...]
January 22, 2006
The People’s Act of Love by James Meek: A Review 0
by C. Max Magee
A few of the twentieth century Russian history books that I’ve read have touched on a detachment of Czech soldiers who were stranded in Russia after World War I. The Bolshevik Revolution soon followed and the soldiers remained stranded, thousands of miles from home. The soldiers who numbered as many as 40,000 and [...]
January 9, 2006
The Corey Vilhauer Book of the Month Club: January 2006 0
by Corey Vilhauer
I find myself wading through stacks of books, it seems, every month. I seek a way to read everything I’ve purchased, but for the most part I can’t. Nobody can, I suspect.
Sometimes I need structure. Sometimes I need to be willfully led to my next book. Sometimes I need something easy, [...]
November 4, 2005
Plain Heathen Mischief by Martin Clark 0
by C. Max Magee
At the center of Martin Clark’s comic legal thriller Plain Heathen Mischief is Joel King, a fallen preacher from Roanoke, Virginia, who got in a little too deep with a young female parishioner. After a stint in jail, and facing a broken marriage and a life gone to shambles, Joel is taken under the [...]
October 17, 2005
Small Island by Andrea Levy 0
by C. Max Magee
Andrea Levy’s Small Island is a post-colonial novel told from four points of view. Queenie and Bernard, separated by war, are a British couple with a tepid relationship and Hortense and Gilbert are Jamaican, married out of convenience and lured to England by opportunity. The book explores British racism in the 1950s. [...]
