Thanks to Twitter, I’ve found a good system for tracking my recent reading. Here are capsule reviews of fiction that has made an impression on me in the last 12 months:
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. Avant-garde means yield to poetic ends. A Southern King James in places. Riveting; funny too.
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. Perfectly realized meditation on New York, cricket, and the immigrant experience. Pace Zelie Smith, too perfect perhaps?
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Wish-fulfilment thriller by Swedish journalist: misogynist execs decoded, destroyed
The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek. ‘Certified idiot’ tramps about w/Austrian army during WWI, proves to be sanest there.
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler. Tintin for adults.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. A Still Life in which everything is happening.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Very Funny. Malicious Devil amuses himself in Stalin’s Moscow. Poets irrepressible.
“What I Found Out About Her” by Peter LaSalle [Antioch Review 66.1]. A short story. Nuanced meditation on sad mystery of young suicide.
Beautiful covers!
Aren’t they? I love old Penguins.