You read a book like Octavia Butler’s Kindred and you get to thinking some bleak thoughts. Published in the 1970s, the ‘fantasy’ novel follows Dana through a time travelling slave narrative. Opening in the 1970s the reader is immediately hooked as Dana travels back in time to the pre-civil war South and finds herself – a black woman – among slavery. The mechanics of time travel in the novel are explained by virtue of the ‘kindred’ connection between Dana and her 1800something ancestor, Rufus: Dana is called back to the past each time Rufus is in danger of dying so that she can save his life; Dana is called back to the present each time her own life is in danger. Continue reading
Kindred: The Time Travelling Slave Narrative You Hoped Wouldn’t Be So… 2016.
Filed under American literature, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Uncategorized
Nutshell: Clearly I’m a Masochist
Here’s the thing. When you’re feeling feelings the best approach is to repress, ignore, and eat. It is not to confront these feelings by way of literary engagement. Right? Right. So what was I thinking in reading Ian McEwan’s new novel, Nutshell? The book is narrated by a fetus. A fucking fetus. Continue reading
Filed under Book Club, British literature, Fiction, Reader Request
Infinite Jest: Why Reading this Book Makes You a Hero
I started reading David Foster Wallace’s epic Infinite Jest at the cottage. I set myself an (overly) ambitious target of 100 pages a day. Ambitious because it took me an hour to read 15 pages. And I could only reasonably avoid my family and read on the dock for seven hours of the day. Because reading Infinite Jest is an exercise in focus, absorption and dedication. Like the ‘entertainment’ that so bewitches characters that they cannot look away (choosing death by starvation or dehydration rather than stopping the consumption of the entertainment) the novel asks for (demands?) complete attention if the reader is to make sense of the overlapping plot lines, constantly shifting points of view, temporal and geographic locations, narrative styles and relationships among characters. Continue reading
Filed under American literature, Fiction, New York Times Notable, Prize Winner, Reader Request
Literary Vice 