The Importance of Giving a Shit: On ‘Dreyer’s English’

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I don’t mean to be grand about it—truly I wrote the book to be helpful and amusing, not to make a statement—but it seems to have struck a nerve.
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The Extraordinary Enigmatic: Kathryn Davis’s ‘The Silk Road’

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Complaining about indeterminacy in a Kathryn Davis novel is like complaining about William Gass’s love of alliteration or Bob Dylan’s singing voice.
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Stranger in a Strange Land: Dave Eggers’s ‘The Parade’

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Eggers is a master of point of view; you adhere to his protagonist, even if you have little or nothing in common with him, and even when you’re not entirely on his side.
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Parallel Lives Lost: K Chess’s ‘Famous Men Who Never Lived’

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Famous Men isn’t quite a sci-fi novel, but something more like its inverse—a book less concerned with alternate universes than their absence.
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Biography of a Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel

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Shields has composed a portrait of the complicated author and the darknesses that drove Williams to write, to overcompensate, to philander, to mansplain.
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Lost in an Infinite Twilight: Mathias Énard’s ‘Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants’

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Énard’s language lingers in these scenes, writing around the activity of the artist rather than indulging in encomia of genius. “It’s work, above all.”
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‘Mothers’ Without Mothers: On Chris Power’s Collection

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Power is careful not to over-sentimentalize. Not once does he break the delicate combination of breezy and desperate that constitutes much of his work.
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Harmony, Authentic or Contrived: On ‘Power, Pleasure, and Profit’

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Wootton’s notion of practical Aristoteilian-esque virtue in the face of limitless appetite is compelling, and he stakes his claims persuasively.
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Maryse Meijer Sketches the Figure of Cruelty in ‘Northwood’

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Most books are an experience, some books act as precious objects, but occasionally—when many stars and aesthetics align—a book can be both.
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A Horseman for the Headless: On Ismail Kadare’s ‘The Traitor’s Niche’

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Kadare’s fiction intuits the spirt of the art movements of his day, orbiting the dark ambiance of indie cinema, goth punk, shock installation.
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‘Now Say This’: Rehearsing Lines for the Role of Parent

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Turgeon and Wright have offered up scripts for a range of parenting struggles, from babies who pull their parents’ hair to eye-rolling pre-teens.
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To Make a World of Words: ‘The William H. Gass Reader’

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6. William H. Gass genuinely, audaciously, absolutely loved words. Language seemed an infinite gift that he grasped. A typographic deity.
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Hanne Ørstavik’s ‘Love’ Marries Escapism and Neglect with Force and Beauty

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The book barrels forward by the force of its language. The sentences are driving, like a hammer to a nail, coming one after the other relentlessly.
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Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Makes Sharp Observations about the Hell of Retail and the Broader World

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To a certain extent, each of these stories asks an old question: Am I too kind, or too dumb? Or are these the same things?
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Where Belief Is Lost and Found and Lost Again: Vedran Husić’s ‘Basements and Other Museums’

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Vedran Husić’s Basements and Other Museums is a collection where absence is felt acutely, where characters become strangers to themselves.
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The Wisdom of Women Shines in Najla Jraissaty Khoury’s ‘Pearls on a Branch: Oral Tales’

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The stories are full of wisdom and warnings. Pearls on a Branch is unique in emphasizing women as the creators, audience, and protagonists of such tales.
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