Category: book reviews

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What I Hate: from A to Z, by Roz Chast

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The world is a scary place.  Roz Chast latest book, What I Hate: from A to Z, is her alphabetic exploration of her panaphobic panoply of paranoia-inducing pictures.  Her fears run the gamut of the familiar (heights, getting lost, and nightmares) to the unusual (spontaneous human combustion, balloons, and Jello 1-2-3).  Each entry has a short introduction opposite the illustrated page.  There are single panels and other pages cluttered with details.  In one introduction, she explains her fear of rabies originating in children’s literature.  She writes, “On an ideal planet, children’s books wouldn’t be censored for references to sex, but … Continue reading What I Hate: from A to Z, by Roz Chast

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Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, by Ted Hughes

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Roberto Bolaño’s novel The Savage Detectives chronicled a literary movement named “the Visceral Realists.”  Crow: from the Life and Songs of the Crow by Ted Hughes offers the reader a kind of visceral realism.  The poetry cycle recounts the life and times of Crow, a folkloric character, comedian and trickster.  The collection ranges across various types of poems: fairy tales, lullabies, legends, comedic shtick, and parody.  Like the crows one sees everyday, Crow scrabbles in waste, carrion, and garbage.  He is a scavenger, appropriating things, a collector of junk.  The poem titles bear this out, “Oedipus Crow,” “Crow Tyrannosaurus,” and … Continue reading Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, by Ted Hughes

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The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom & Party Girl, by Marc Schuster

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Audrey Corcoran is unhappy, affected by the vague nameless malaise that creeps into those with thwarted ambitions and unrealized desires.  Audrey works at Eating Out, a “shopper magazine” one usually sees in grocery stores and restaurants.  In this case, the “magazine” – really a glorified press release and advertising delivery device – caters to the businesses on the Golden Mile, a strip of middlebrow chains and franchises.  The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom & Party Girl chronicles Audrey’s alienation and annoyance at the petty power games and trivialities in her comfortable middle class existence. Living with her two children, the … Continue reading The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom & Party Girl, by Marc Schuster

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Forgotten Classics: The Dark Labyrinth (1947) by Lawrence Durrell

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  An infrequent feature on classic books forgotten to the mists of time. The name Lawrence Durrell is not a name mentioned with any frequency these days, but his work deserves a revival.  The Dark Labyrinth, published in 1947, begins with a simple enough premise: a small group of tourists visits a Cretan labyrinth.  In the ensuing narrative, the group gets lost with certain members getting rescued while others never return.  With this basic plot, Durrell spins a tale chock full of philosophical rumination, surgical precision social satire, and capacious character development.  The foredoomed tour group includes a failed artist, … Continue reading Forgotten Classics: The Dark Labyrinth (1947) by Lawrence Durrell

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Drive Me Out of My Mind, by Chad Faries

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These days memoirs are a dime a dozen, glutting the market with tales of the self-absorbed.  Fortunately, Chad Faries stands out in this crowded field with his unique tale of childhood in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  Drive Me Out of My Mind: 24 Houses in 10 Years, a Memoir, follows Chad’s childhood from roughly 1971 to 1980.  Chad’s singularly strange upbringing and poetic sensibility create a memoir unlike any other.  Most memoirs focus on bourgeois nuclear families and the travails of growing up middle-class in the suburbs.  In childhood, Chad discerned the differences of his family and “families on TV.” Chad’s … Continue reading Drive Me Out of My Mind, by Chad Faries

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Bones Beneath Our Feet by Michael Schein

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Subtitled “A Historical Novel of Puget Sound,” Michael Schein’s Bones Beneath Our Feet tells us the story of two men, Isaac Stevens, Mexican-American War veteran and first governor of Washington Territory, and Leschi, Chief of the Nisqually tribe.  Published by Bennett & Hastings, a Seattle-based independent publisher, the novel, at first glance, appears like yet another retelling of a White Man-vs.-Native American conflict told with the subtlety of an afternoon special.  “Remember kids, the white man is a pure embodiment of evil while the Native Americans are innocent, Nature-loving gentlefolk.”  This is the simplistic moralizing found in everything from Dances … Continue reading Bones Beneath Our Feet by Michael Schein

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Hav by Jan Morris

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Hav by the Welsh travel writer Jan Morris is a very Borgesian work, bringing to mind the Argentinean writer’s love for mirrors and labyrinths.  There is even a character named Dr. Borge and Hav’s major cultural motif is the labyrinth.  Morris achieves distinction in creating a place that goes beyond being a second-rate pastiche of Borges themes.  Unfortunately, the field of science fiction is riddled with examples of good ideas soured when executed.  Poor execution usually involves sloppy writing where the author received payment by the word. New York Review Books has released a stellar volume with Jan Morris’s Hav.  … Continue reading Hav by Jan Morris

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Notes from Irrelevance, by Anselm Berrigan

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  Genealogy Anselm Berrigan comes from an esteemed family.  The son of poet Ted Berrigan and poet Alice Notley, his brother is the poet and songwriter Edmund Berrigan.  Anselm’s wife Karen Weiser also works as a poet.  Notes from Irrelevance shows that Anselm didn’t get his book deal by trading on his father’s name.  (America, despite its populist and egalitarian posturing, has a yen for dynasties and nepotism.  See: the Presidency, Ford Motor Company, etc.) Content Notes from Irrelevance could easily bear the subtitle, “One man’s search for meaning in the second decade of the 21st century.”  Throughout the short … Continue reading Notes from Irrelevance, by Anselm Berrigan

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Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice, by Kazim Ali

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Food is one of the essential requirements for existence.  One cannot go about one’s daily business without caloric intake.  However, beyond the needs food fulfils, one takes pleasure in eating.  That is why people read restaurant reviews or watch No Reservations.  Food also represents a mirror of a specific place, culture, and personality.  Why a book entitled Fasting for Ramadan has recipes in the back also requires explanation. Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice by Kazim Ali is a stunning literary jewel.  An extended meditation on the Muslim practice of fasting during the month of Ramadan has appeal … Continue reading Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice, by Kazim Ali

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