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Book Reviews
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Written by Michele Filgate
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Thursday, 21 February 2008 |
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by Toby Barlow
320 pages, Harper
review by Michele Filgate
You’re in for a howling,
jaw-licking, teeth-gnashing time with Toby Barlow’s debut novel, “Sharp
Teeth.” What is it about werewolves that usually makes a book or movie
scream cheesiness? Not so in this modernist-pumped, fast-paced,
mythological, visual and innovative story. Barlow fills his pages with
blank verse, a sort of Homer meets Kerouac meets Neil Gaiman. The
biting prose works in the poetic form, and the snappy pace doesn’t
undermine the seriousness of the work.
The novel is set in modern California and follows several packs of
lycanthropes (aka werewolves) and the tenuous relationships among
them. There’s your traditional evil no-gooder (Baron) who is bent on
power and eager to betray the leader of his pack (Lark) while
undermining another. There are the loyal dogs who wouldn’t twitch their
snouts at the scent of any traitorous scheme. And there’s the
star-crossed lovers—one man, one she-wolf—trying to maintain a healthy
relationship despite an ungodly secret.
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Thursday, 14 February 2008 |
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by Jann S. Wenner & Corey Seymour
Little, Brown and Company, 2007, 467 pages
“Hunter was born
different—very different,” begins “Gonzo,” the new oral biography of
famed author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
The comment comes from his former wife, Sandy Thompson, who
provides one of the most consistent voices in the book. The text that
follows her opening statement colorfully and vividly illustrates the
fact that not only was Thompson born different, but he lived and died
different. Throughout his bizarre and incendiary career, Thompson
invented new ways of writing, reporting and behaving that have made him
an icon—albeit a mad and savage icon—for generations of authors and
journalists. All the glory, energy, hypocrisy and general weirdness
that characterizes America was contained within Thompson’s drug-fueled
ambling figure, and it was reflected to the world in his writing.
The biography is composed entirely of second- and third-hand
stories compiled by Rolling Stone founder, editor and publisher Jann S.
Wenner and Rolling Stone writer and editor Corey Seymour. Thompson’s
weird and righteous saga is gradually unfolded by a spree of friends,
colleagues, loved ones and celebrities, ranging from actors like Jack
Nicholson and Johnny Depp to musicians like Jimmy Buffet and Marilyn
Manson, from politicians like Jimmy Carter and George McGovern to
fellow authors like Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer.
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Written by Harvey Shepard
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Friday, 01 February 2008 |
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by J. M. Coetzee
Viking, 2007, 231 pages
J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003
Nobel Prize for literature, has written a fascinating new novel, “Diary
of a Bad Year.” When I first saw the form of the book, I groaned. The
page is divided into two (later three) parts, each separated by a
horizontal line. The top portion consists of a series of connected
brief essays by the novel’s narrator, a fictional famous writer. The
essays, readers learn, are to be released by a German publisher in a
book titled “Strong Opinions,” which will include contributions from
five well-known authors.
The narrator of the novel, who
signs himself “JC” in notes and is called “Seňor C” by the novel’s
other main character, Anya, who is typing his manuscript, happens to be
the author of a novel called “Waiting for the Barbarians,” which is
also the title of Coetzee’s Nobel Prize winning book. The narrator also
happens to be close to Coetzee’s age, although six years older, and,
like Coetzee, was born in South Africa but moved to Australia. Once
again, as with works by Philip Roth and other writers, readers find
themselves in a land of confusion between fiction and nonfiction.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Thursday, 24 January 2008 |
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by Stephen King
611 pages, Scribner
It is possible, after more than 50 books
and 200 short stories, that there is not an adjective left in the
English language that hasn’t been used to describe Stephen King at one
time or another. (Liquified, perhaps. Or maybe orange.) In the world of
books, King is Elvis-sized, inarguably the biggest star literature has
today. He is a whole sub-category of pop culture. But the reason for
all the attention—the fact that he is the subject of countless articles
and reviews and Web sites—can still be summed up by the simplest
adjective: He’s good.
Sure, King has had his share of
disappointing works. When you’re as prolific as he is, it’s hard to
knock them out of the park every single time. But with his latest,
“Duma Key,” the 60-year-old author has come back around to his top
form.
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Thursday, 20 December 2007 |
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The book sparked an entire mass movement of American literature and
continues to inspire new generations of ambitious writers. Beat writer
Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel “On the Road,” which turned 50 years old in
September, defined not only a period in American history, but a
timeless yearning that possesses young men and women who are greedy to
experience life to its fullest and wildest capacities.
Anyone
who is familiar with literature in this country has heard the rumors
behind the writing of “On the Road.” Supposedly crafted in a
Benzedrine-fueled whirlwind of typing that lasted all of three weeks,
the book was considered a masterpiece of improvisation, a
stream-of-consciousness outpouring as intense and emotional as a
Charlie Parker saxophone solo.
But, as it turns out, the making of “On the Road” stretched back
several years prior to Kerouac’s legendary cross-country meanderings
with co-traveler Neal Cassady. In fact, the author had envisioned a
book about life on the road almost since his literary aspirations first
developed. His plans for the novel, documented in considerable detail
in extensive archives of Kerouac’s journals and correspondences, formed
slowly over time, even while he labored through earlier works like “The
Town and the City” and “Doctor Sax.”
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