Tag Archives: optimism

The Rosie Project: What to read while the world burns

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I’m comfortable with the ‘compulsively readable’ label oft attached to  Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project. Originally envisioned as a screenplay, the novel has cinematic pacing and a powerful sense of scene (including here both a sense of the setting and a well-defined plot focus for a particular chapter). Taken together with the warm and lighthearted romance plot and you have yourself a perfect stay-up-late, read-on-the-beach, pass-the-time-while-waiting-for____ kind of novel. There is much to enjoy in the characterization of Rosie and Don, the certainty of the romance genre’s happily ever after and the unapologetically optimistic take on the world and the ability for individuals to do right. Continue reading

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Filed under Bestseller, Fiction, Funny

The Noise of Time: I’m not good at irony

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To believe in the power of art to create or change politics (for the better) is no small thing. Such belief requires an implicit optimism that the despair and risks of the political moment (of now or any time) has difficulty supporting. Cynicism is a logical, rational response to the political moment of Trump, or in the case of Julian Barnes’ The Noise of  Time : Stalin.  The personal danger of resisting the cynical impulse by creating art is the question of the novel. Continue reading

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Filed under Fiction, New York Times Notable, Prize Winner, Reader Request