Book review – Theo & Flora by Mark Winkler © Steven Boykey SIdley Theo & Flora, a most unusual novel of love’s hopes and disappointments, past and present, is…
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Book review – French Exit by Patrick de Witt © Steven Boykey SIdley A couple of years ago, I met Canadian novelist Patrick de Witt at a bar at the…
Ian McEwan rates as one of my absolute favourite novelists who disappoints me more often than any of my other absolute favourite novelists. I read his novel Saturday when…
One of the challenges in reviewing the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction is that it has done exactly that – won one of two most prestigious prizes in…
E.L. Doctorow died yesterday. As a teenager, I had been happily snacking my way through fine mid-level fiction from Alex Haley and James Michener when I stumbled upon Doctorow’s Ragtime….
Book Review – City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg 944 pages. Really large. Large in ambition and character and plot and language and emotional scope. So large, that a…
Book Review – Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo Richard Russo sits pretty much at the apex of American literature. Much beloved, Pulitzer-garlanded and graced with a 20 year history of…
Book Review – The Safest Place You Know by Mark Winkler This is an astonishing South African novel. Some time ago I reviewed Winkler’s Wasted, which was a disturbing pleasure…
Book Review – Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer There is a sub-sub genre of American literature, a shelf labelled the American Jewish Experience. As short as this…
Book Review – Nutshell by Ian McEwan After panting and wheezing my way though a couple of doorstop books (not all of which did their weight justice), I was relieved…