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Bloodshed and Three Novellas
Cynthia Ozick
Random House Inc (T), 1976
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Change Baby
June Spence
Amazon Remainders Account, 2005
Beautifully written and moving
+ Going/Finding Home
A wonderful book. Beautifully written, moving and emotionally rewarding, Change Baby follows the lives of a southern family from generation to generation. Stunning for a first novel and a great one for a book club - but perhaps even more enjoyable when savoured alone. If you want rich ...
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Amazons
Cleo Birdwell
Berkley, 1981
A Warped But Lively View of DeLillo
+ Note to Don DeLillo fans: "Birdwell" is DeLillo
+ This woman hockey player will have you howling out loud
I'm glad you've somehow heard of this book. It's a charming thing. It seems like DeLillo felt like he could use the same textual ideas found in his other books, because of the Birdwell disguise. You'll see things said exactly the same way as he said them elsewhere. That brings up a criticism of D, ...
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Loser Takes All (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
Graham Greene
Penguin Classics, 1993
Quick and Fun
+ Clever Story
This slight Graham Greene novel is really more of a long short story--I read virtually the entire thing on a two-hour flight to New York City. But Greene is still able to infuse his story and characters with the moral significance that infuses all of his work. What happens in this novel really ...
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Ratner's Star
Don DeLillo
Vintage, 1989
Ratner's Star
+ It's science! But not really, or at least not how you think
+ typewriters?
This book has quickly become one of my favorites. A beautifully written novel about language, mathematics, the fear of death, and an individuals place within the complexity of reality. There are sentences within this book that made me read them six or seven times they were so beautiful. An ...
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Relation of My Imprisonment: A Fiction
Russell Banks
Harper Perennial, 1996
An interesting book, especially as a work of SF
By SF I mean speculative fiction. This is an alternate history, where an entire religion has sprung up around the worship of the dead. Banks has invented a Bible and theology that's highly interesting, and this book is worth reading for just his creation of an interesting world. The book itself ...
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Captain Maximus (Contemporary American Fiction)
Barry Hannah
Penguin (Non-Classics), 1986
Barry Hannah, wonderful as always.
Barry Hannah, Captain Maximus (Penguin, 1985) Barry Hannah is America's most sadly neglected literary author since John Fante, and that's a shame. Hannah's place in literary history should be carved in rock, if for no other reason than having written one of the world's few absolutely perfect novels ...
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Hamilton Stark
Russell Banks
Harper Perennial, 1996
Hamilton Stark is a New Hampshire pipe fitter and the sole inhabitant of the house from which he evicted his own mother. He is the villain of five marriages and the father of a daughter so obsessed that she has been writing a book about him for years. Hamilton Stark is a boor, a misanthrope, a handsome man: funny, passionately honest, and a good dancer. The narrator, a middle-aged writer, decides ...
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The Bear Bryant Funeral Train
Brad Vice
River City Publishing, 2007
An Instant Collectible
+ If You Read the Book, You'll Understand
+ Great Book of Southern Short Stories...Great Book
+ Powerful and worthwhile.
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The Ninemile Wolves
Rick Bass
Mariner Books, 2003
You'll want wolves in your backyard.
+ Are you kidding this book is great!
Well, you won't want them in your backyard if you're raising cattle. This story about the Ninemile wolf pack in northwestern Montana is a fascinating account of a wolf reintroduction program, and it deals with the complexity of the situation thoroughly and compassionately. Bass makes no secret of ...
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The Making of the Representative for Planet 8
Doris May Lessing, Doris Lessing
Flamingo, 1994
A story of strength
+ Joining up
The people of Planet Eight had happy, productive lives. They seemed born with knowledge of themselves and their visible environment. With Canopus' teaching, they were developing as a culture, strengthening their social structures and integrating new knowledge into their world-view. They knew that ...
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Time to Go (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction)
Stephen Dixon
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984
Every page a surprise
Stephen Dixon has not been high on my list of must read authors; just never got around to him with all the competing books dragging me hither and yon. At my library, someone had put this old-ish book of short stories on a rack near the checkout and on a whim I took it home. Holy moly, was this a ...
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Boomerang/Never Die: Two Novels (Banner Books)
Barry Hannah
University Press of Mississippi, 1994
Barry Hannah Recycled
With masterpieces such as "Airships" and "Ray" under his belt, this one-volume collection of Barry Hannah's two 90s novels comes as somewhat of a disappointment. Barry Hannah is no doubt one of the most gifted and interesting writers in contemporary America, but in the 1990s his best work has to ...
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Ordinary Love and Good Will
Jane Smiley
Anchor, 2007
Nothing ordinary about this storyteller.
+ Jane Smiley is a good storyteller
+ A commentary on family values and the beauty of simplicity...
+ Thought-provoking and enjoyable
+ Good Will, an extraordinary novel
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Fall and Rise
Stephen Dixon
North Point Pr, 1985
a Miss
I haven't written a review for several years, because Amazon reviews have become so bizarre. Review space appears to have become some kind of weird political space rather than a real review space.
That said, I'm very disappointed in this book (I understand I'm the only reviewer to date, despite ...
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