Jon Fosse’s prose is
incantatory. I’ve heard him once describe it as “mystical realism,” and in Septology,
it reaches its pinnacle: the sublime becomes quotidian, and the quotidian
becomes sublime.
I will return to it, I’m sure, as I get older and its pages
reveal another, previously hidden portion of themselves to me.
2022 International Booker Prize, Finalist 2022 National Book Award, Finalist 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, Finalist New York TimesEditors’ Choice Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Bookforum
What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Asle, an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. His only friends are his neighbour, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin,…
I've recently felt down about American publishing with the closing of critical outlets and the conglomeration of publishers.This isn't the first time I've turned to Helen DeWitt's pin-sharp debut when thinking those thoughts. The book is as brilliant as the author is. I wish more contemporary writers challenged their readers in that way.
Helen DeWitt's 2000 debut, The Last Samurai, was "destined to become a cult classic" (Miramax). The enterprising publisher sold the rights in twenty countries, so "Why not just, 'destined to become a classic?'" (Garth Risk Hallberg) And why must cultists tell the uninitiated it has nothing to do with Tom Cruise?
Sibylla, an American-at-Oxford turned loose on London, finds herself trapped as a single mother after a misguided one-night stand. High-minded principles of child-rearing work disastrously well. J. S. Mill (taught Greek at three) and Yo Yo Ma (Bach at two) claimed the methods would work with any child; when…
A friend found a first edition of this book in one of my favorite used
bookstores. It has a gorgeous purple cover,
reminiscent of horror movie posters from the 1930s, and it collects many, if not all, of James’s haunting stories beyond the typical The Turn of the Screw.
As
a horror fan who all-too-often must give up a measure of aesthetic satisfaction
for genre conventions, it’s nice to refresh myself with these.
Sprinting Through No Man’s Land tells the story of
the first Tour de France after World War I, and one of the most difficult
iterations of the race in history.
67 cyclists, whittled down as they rode
kilometer after kilometer, encounter the absolute destruction of the war and
the process of rebuilding that’s gradually starting in the summer of 1919.
