tmn My bath-time reading of the Guardian Literary Review recently involved reading D J Taylor’s interesting article, rather badly titled Literary hero to zero (I am guessing that the title is a sub’s and not Taylor’s.) However, before getting to the article, I am going to go off on a tangent, which will lead to another … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s Half of a Yellow Sun, a stunning novel about the period just before and during the Biafran War. Adichie is an Igbo, the tribe on the losing side in the Biafran War so she naturally tells the tale from the side of her people who … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 蓼喰う蟲 (Some Prefer Nettles). This is wonderful little novel on the gradual falling apart of a marriage but one that it is falling apart without bitterness and recriminations but just because the couple are, as Kaname, the husband, says, no longer excited by one another. Misako, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lawrence Durrell‘s Sebastian or Ruling Passions, the fourth in his Avignon Quintet. This is definitely the weakest (and shortest) one so far and it rather seems as if Durrell is just filling in gaps and cruising. There are two main plot lines. The first concerns Mnemidis, a patient … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Karl Ove Knausgård‘s Min kamp. Andre book (Book Two: A Man In Love), the second in his six-volume My Struggle autobiographical novel series. As the third one is already out in English, I thought that I should get to this one sooner rather than later. While I admit … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Danièle Sallenave‘s La vie fantôme (Phantom Life). This is the story of a conventional love affair. He (Pierre) is married, with two children, and works as a school teacher in the school where he himself was taught. She (Laure) is single and a librarian. The affair has been … Read more
I noticed Will Self‘s tired article on the death of the novel a couple of days ago but, having skimmed through it, I felt it really was not worth reading but a tired rehash of the old story, not least the idea that the idea of the novel being dead really meant that people aren’t … Read more
I was sad to see that poet and novelist Rosemary Tonks had died. She was famously reclusive. She wrote five novels, of which I own a couple. Naturally, I have always been meaning to read them but have never got round to it but, now that she is dead, I may push them up the … Read more
This blog and the associated website are called The Modern Novel for a good reason, namely because they are about the modern novel. Since the website has been going, I have read very few non-fiction works and, inevitably, none of them has figured on my website. However, like every other intelligent reader in the Western … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Carmen Boullosa‘s El Velázquez de París [The Velazquez of Paris], another wonderful post-modernist, feminist romp through history. This one tell the story of Velázquez‘s painting The Expulsion of the Moriscos (the Moriscos were the descendants of the Moors who occupied Spain and who had converted to Christianity but … Read more