2004-12-06 03:42:08QQQ
Book World Raves (2)
Book World Raves (2)
The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst (Bloomsbury). Interlaces a Condition of England novel set during the Thatcher era, a Jamesian inquiry about a well-to-do family and their friends, and a gay coming-of-age story. If you value style, wit and social satire in your reading, don't miss this elegant and passionate novel. -- MD
Links, by Nuruddin Farah (Riverhead). In a country ripped to shreds [Somalia], an elegant statement of what actually bonds people together: common experience, love and commitment. This is the terrain Farah illuminates, one novel at a time. -- Neely Tucker
Little Scarlet, by Walter Mosley (LB). Mosley is more interested in the ambiguous state of mind of the black citizenry, the disorientation of the cops and the looted, shambolic conditions. Watts is a world turned upside down, and Mosley simply points his hero at it and rolls the camera. -- John Burdett
Madeleine is Sleeping, by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (Harcourt). In a series of brief chapters or vignettes, Bynum describes Madeleine's prolonged sleeping as well as her adventures on her dream-journeys . . . a voice at once sensuous and humorous, mellifluous and matter-of-fact. -- John Crowley
The Master, by Colm Tóibín (Scribner). Tóibín's impersonation of Henry James works beautifully. The prose is appropriately grave and wistful, the sentences stately without being ponderous, the descriptions at once precise and evocative. -- MD
The Mercy Killers, by Lisa Reardon (Counterpoint). A timely novel of terrific suspense that is as socially aware as Dreiser, as astute about working-class American character as Raymond Carver or Joyce Carol Oates, and altogether terrific. -- Richard Lipez
Mr. Paradise, by Elmore Leonard (Morrow). If a writer lives long enough to produce a steady output of good books, there comes a point when readers grow simply grateful. . . . But in the case of this novel we can rejoice. It is unputdownable, packed with excruciating suspense, and I couldn't stop reading it. -- Michael Dirda
Mortal Love, by Elizabeth Hand (Morrow). At once a painting in prose, an investigation into artistic obsession and a re-evaluation. It negotiates cleverly between its 20th-century and Victorian time frames. -- Lawrence Norfolk
My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult (Atria). The story of a feisty 13-year-old who was conceived to save her sister's life. Over the years, she dutifully serves as her sister's donor, providing her with stem cells and bone marrow. A thrill to read, and it winds up asking an important question: Can a child born to save another ever really be free? -- Katherine Arie
Old Boys, by Charles McCarry (Overlook). Paul Christopher, a romantic loner and spy who has recently survived 10 years in a Chinese prison, seems to be dead. Seems to be. McCarry has cut loose, yet again, this time in a cheerfully convoluted yarn whose tone is by turns mischievous and elegiac. -- Charles Trueheart
Our Savage, by Matt Pavelich (Shoemaker & Hoard). This story of an intellectual and physical giant takes the reader from his birth in an obscure region of Eastern Europe through his Zelig-like travels during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his character a bursting, outsized mirror of equally flush and sprawling times. -- Lizzie Skurnick
The Persistence of Memory, by Tony Eprile (Norton). A richly imagined novel of growing up, its political revelations leavened by social satire. This is a magnanimous introduction to a South Africa we haven't quite encountered before. It's not a long novel, but it's a big one. -- Frances Taliaferro
Prince Edward, by Dennis McFarland (Holt). The year is 1959, the locale is rural Virginia, and McFarland, whose prose is richly and beautifully detailed, burnishes every facet of that long-gone time and place to a virtually flawless verisimilitude. -- Madison Smartt Bell
The Ptolemies, by Duncan Sprott (Knopf). The narrator is no less than Thoth, Ibis God of the Egyptians, the supreme God of Wisdom, Keeper of Memory. Sprott has vividly evoked for us a fascinating era and done it with rare vitality and resourcefulness. -- Barry Unsworth
Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, by Alice Randall (Houghton). A dance of lengthy expository passages, memories and fantasies hinged to a narrative. The heart of the tale is in the lyricism of the telling. -- Darryl Lorenzo Wellington
The Rules of Engagement, by Anita Brookner (Random House). Though friendship seems to be the subject, the underlying motif is self-willed solitude. This melancholy story is told, however, with such elegance and polish that its surface -- satiny, flawless and smooth as an onion, as always -- holds a fascination equal to its content. -- Roxana Robinson
The Rule of Four, by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason (Dial). An unusual hybrid of adventure story and college novel; the tone and pacing are very different from that of a thriller. If they can claim an influence, it is not Dan Brown but F. Scott Fitzgerald . . . excellent writing -- elegiac. -- Alice K. Turner
The Second Death of Unica Aveyano, by Ernesto Mestre-Reed (Vintage). A marvelously poetic meditation on time and memory, and on the ways in which past, present and future relate to one another in any person's life. In this case, a Cuban exile's. -- Carlos M.N. Eire
Semiautomatic, by Robert Reuland (Random House). Notable not for violence but for subtle characterizations, moral ambiguities and exceptional writing. This is a different sort of legal thriller, one for readers who understand that good writing is the biggest thrill of all. -- Patrick Anderson
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Penguin). A mysterious book. . . . Try to imagine a blend of Grand Guignol thriller, historical fiction, occasional farce, existential mystery and passionate love story; then double it. For anyone who enjoys novels that are scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling. -- MD
Sharpe's Escape, by Bernard Cornwell (HarperCollins). A dryly witty, violent, highly melodramatic, briskly written and altogether rousing tale of revenge and derring-do. Even those of a pacific nature will find it hard not to thrill at certain moments of battle, or even at single sentences. -- MD
Skinny Dip, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf). Follows a traditional caper script, and one never really fears for any of the good guys; one simply waits to see how the baddies will receive their comeuppance. Most will enjoy it for its caper plot and pervasive, engaging wit. -- MD
Sleeping with Schubert, by Bonnie Marson (Random House). Much high comedy and even a satisfying soupçon of gravitas. But to write too much about a delicious book is to risk compromising its flavor. Suffice it to say that it is a complete delight. -- Eugenia Zukerman
Snow, by Orhan Pamuk; translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely (Knopf). His gift for the evocative image remains one of the novel's greatest pleasures: Long after I finished this book, my thoughts kept returning to Ka and Ipek in the hotel room in Istanbul, looking out at the falling snow. -- Ruth Franklin
Sweet Land Stories, by E.L. Doctorow (Random House). The master is back -- his first collection of short fiction since the superb Lives of the Poets 20 years ago. -- Kevin Baker
Transmission, by Hari Kunzru (Dutton). A deliciously satirical, humane and very enjoyable novel about the arcana of computer programming. Kunzru is an exceptionally ingratiating writer, with a skewering wit, wide sympathies and a gimlet eye for the killing or illuminating detail. -- MD
Ursula, Under, by Ingrid Hill (Algonquin). Ursula decides to chase a deer into the woods; then, in a blink, she's gone "like a penny into the slot of a bank." Hill astounds with her ability to meld simply and beautifully told stories. -- Michael Anft
Villages, by John Updike (Knopf). Serves as a wondrous sexual and social retrospective of small-town living over the last half-century. Sex life starts with the innocence of the missionary position, back in the 1950s, and progresses to the prophylactic couplings of the present. -- Fay Weldon
War Trash, by Ha Jin (Pantheon). The "war trash" of this hypnotic novel are Chinese soldiers who were taken prisoner by U.N. forces -- mainly American -- during the Korean War. Written in the modest, uninflected prose of a soldier's letter home, Ha Jin's story is a powerful work of the imagination. -- Charles McCarry
The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst (Bloomsbury). Interlaces a Condition of England novel set during the Thatcher era, a Jamesian inquiry about a well-to-do family and their friends, and a gay coming-of-age story. If you value style, wit and social satire in your reading, don't miss this elegant and passionate novel. -- MD
Links, by Nuruddin Farah (Riverhead). In a country ripped to shreds [Somalia], an elegant statement of what actually bonds people together: common experience, love and commitment. This is the terrain Farah illuminates, one novel at a time. -- Neely Tucker
Little Scarlet, by Walter Mosley (LB). Mosley is more interested in the ambiguous state of mind of the black citizenry, the disorientation of the cops and the looted, shambolic conditions. Watts is a world turned upside down, and Mosley simply points his hero at it and rolls the camera. -- John Burdett
Madeleine is Sleeping, by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (Harcourt). In a series of brief chapters or vignettes, Bynum describes Madeleine's prolonged sleeping as well as her adventures on her dream-journeys . . . a voice at once sensuous and humorous, mellifluous and matter-of-fact. -- John Crowley
The Master, by Colm Tóibín (Scribner). Tóibín's impersonation of Henry James works beautifully. The prose is appropriately grave and wistful, the sentences stately without being ponderous, the descriptions at once precise and evocative. -- MD
The Mercy Killers, by Lisa Reardon (Counterpoint). A timely novel of terrific suspense that is as socially aware as Dreiser, as astute about working-class American character as Raymond Carver or Joyce Carol Oates, and altogether terrific. -- Richard Lipez
Mr. Paradise, by Elmore Leonard (Morrow). If a writer lives long enough to produce a steady output of good books, there comes a point when readers grow simply grateful. . . . But in the case of this novel we can rejoice. It is unputdownable, packed with excruciating suspense, and I couldn't stop reading it. -- Michael Dirda
Mortal Love, by Elizabeth Hand (Morrow). At once a painting in prose, an investigation into artistic obsession and a re-evaluation. It negotiates cleverly between its 20th-century and Victorian time frames. -- Lawrence Norfolk
My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult (Atria). The story of a feisty 13-year-old who was conceived to save her sister's life. Over the years, she dutifully serves as her sister's donor, providing her with stem cells and bone marrow. A thrill to read, and it winds up asking an important question: Can a child born to save another ever really be free? -- Katherine Arie
Old Boys, by Charles McCarry (Overlook). Paul Christopher, a romantic loner and spy who has recently survived 10 years in a Chinese prison, seems to be dead. Seems to be. McCarry has cut loose, yet again, this time in a cheerfully convoluted yarn whose tone is by turns mischievous and elegiac. -- Charles Trueheart
Our Savage, by Matt Pavelich (Shoemaker & Hoard). This story of an intellectual and physical giant takes the reader from his birth in an obscure region of Eastern Europe through his Zelig-like travels during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his character a bursting, outsized mirror of equally flush and sprawling times. -- Lizzie Skurnick
The Persistence of Memory, by Tony Eprile (Norton). A richly imagined novel of growing up, its political revelations leavened by social satire. This is a magnanimous introduction to a South Africa we haven't quite encountered before. It's not a long novel, but it's a big one. -- Frances Taliaferro
Prince Edward, by Dennis McFarland (Holt). The year is 1959, the locale is rural Virginia, and McFarland, whose prose is richly and beautifully detailed, burnishes every facet of that long-gone time and place to a virtually flawless verisimilitude. -- Madison Smartt Bell
The Ptolemies, by Duncan Sprott (Knopf). The narrator is no less than Thoth, Ibis God of the Egyptians, the supreme God of Wisdom, Keeper of Memory. Sprott has vividly evoked for us a fascinating era and done it with rare vitality and resourcefulness. -- Barry Unsworth
Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, by Alice Randall (Houghton). A dance of lengthy expository passages, memories and fantasies hinged to a narrative. The heart of the tale is in the lyricism of the telling. -- Darryl Lorenzo Wellington
The Rules of Engagement, by Anita Brookner (Random House). Though friendship seems to be the subject, the underlying motif is self-willed solitude. This melancholy story is told, however, with such elegance and polish that its surface -- satiny, flawless and smooth as an onion, as always -- holds a fascination equal to its content. -- Roxana Robinson
The Rule of Four, by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason (Dial). An unusual hybrid of adventure story and college novel; the tone and pacing are very different from that of a thriller. If they can claim an influence, it is not Dan Brown but F. Scott Fitzgerald . . . excellent writing -- elegiac. -- Alice K. Turner
The Second Death of Unica Aveyano, by Ernesto Mestre-Reed (Vintage). A marvelously poetic meditation on time and memory, and on the ways in which past, present and future relate to one another in any person's life. In this case, a Cuban exile's. -- Carlos M.N. Eire
Semiautomatic, by Robert Reuland (Random House). Notable not for violence but for subtle characterizations, moral ambiguities and exceptional writing. This is a different sort of legal thriller, one for readers who understand that good writing is the biggest thrill of all. -- Patrick Anderson
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Penguin). A mysterious book. . . . Try to imagine a blend of Grand Guignol thriller, historical fiction, occasional farce, existential mystery and passionate love story; then double it. For anyone who enjoys novels that are scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling. -- MD
Sharpe's Escape, by Bernard Cornwell (HarperCollins). A dryly witty, violent, highly melodramatic, briskly written and altogether rousing tale of revenge and derring-do. Even those of a pacific nature will find it hard not to thrill at certain moments of battle, or even at single sentences. -- MD
Skinny Dip, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf). Follows a traditional caper script, and one never really fears for any of the good guys; one simply waits to see how the baddies will receive their comeuppance. Most will enjoy it for its caper plot and pervasive, engaging wit. -- MD
Sleeping with Schubert, by Bonnie Marson (Random House). Much high comedy and even a satisfying soupçon of gravitas. But to write too much about a delicious book is to risk compromising its flavor. Suffice it to say that it is a complete delight. -- Eugenia Zukerman
Snow, by Orhan Pamuk; translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely (Knopf). His gift for the evocative image remains one of the novel's greatest pleasures: Long after I finished this book, my thoughts kept returning to Ka and Ipek in the hotel room in Istanbul, looking out at the falling snow. -- Ruth Franklin
Sweet Land Stories, by E.L. Doctorow (Random House). The master is back -- his first collection of short fiction since the superb Lives of the Poets 20 years ago. -- Kevin Baker
Transmission, by Hari Kunzru (Dutton). A deliciously satirical, humane and very enjoyable novel about the arcana of computer programming. Kunzru is an exceptionally ingratiating writer, with a skewering wit, wide sympathies and a gimlet eye for the killing or illuminating detail. -- MD
Ursula, Under, by Ingrid Hill (Algonquin). Ursula decides to chase a deer into the woods; then, in a blink, she's gone "like a penny into the slot of a bank." Hill astounds with her ability to meld simply and beautifully told stories. -- Michael Anft
Villages, by John Updike (Knopf). Serves as a wondrous sexual and social retrospective of small-town living over the last half-century. Sex life starts with the innocence of the missionary position, back in the 1950s, and progresses to the prophylactic couplings of the present. -- Fay Weldon
War Trash, by Ha Jin (Pantheon). The "war trash" of this hypnotic novel are Chinese soldiers who were taken prisoner by U.N. forces -- mainly American -- during the Korean War. Written in the modest, uninflected prose of a soldier's letter home, Ha Jin's story is a powerful work of the imagination. -- Charles McCarry