I can’t decide whether I liked Cataract City. I admire it. I think it’s well written, with particular skill and grace in high-action descriptions. I enjoyed reading parts of it because I cared about the characters (enough) and wondered about their well being. But I don’t think I liked it. Continue reading
Category Archives: Fiction
Cataract City: On liking gratuitous violence
Filed under Book Club, Canadian Literature, Fiction, Giller prize, Prize Winner
Three Junes: How to start your new year of reading right.
Almost in time for Christmas I finished Julia Glass’s Three Junes, the last of the Christmas gift books from 2016. Why did I wait?! (Okay, it wasn’t on purpose. I kept the stack of Christmas books by my bed and picked one up everytime I had a lull between book club books, or top recommended, or stumbled-upon-it-and-couldn’t-resist). Anyway. Glad I finally read it. Glad for the gift (thanks, mum) and glad to be able to share it with you.
Filed under American literature, Bestseller, Fiction, National Book Award, Prize Winner
Here I Am & The Nightingale: Final Reads of 2016
I have the stomach flu. I’ve been meaning to write up these separate posts for days, but have instead been subsisting on ginger ale and popsicles and general grumpiness. Cue some commentary about a fitting end to 2016.
I did read two novels over the holidays. Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am and Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale. I have a lot to say about both, but I’m too queasy to muster much, so here’s the abbreviated version for both: don’t bother. Continue reading
Filed under American literature, British literature, Fiction, Reader Request
The North Water: Read This Instead of Moby Dick?
Mostly I find nineteenth-century Arctic shipwreck stories too familiar (even though – or because? – it’s a very particular category). One of my thesis novels, Afterlands, was all Arctic shipwreck all the time. And I must have read and re-read that novel a dozen times. Too many times to read much about whale blubber without shuddering with concern that someone might ask me about the significance of the whale. or the blubber. But how often do we read in this niche category? Obviously not often. Unless you’re someone who re-reads Moby Dick. In which case you are someone with other kinds of (whale blubber) problems. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction, Mystery, Prize Winner
Literary Vice 