The latest addition to my website is Jane Bowles‘ Two Serious Ladies. The story mirrors, to a certain degree, Bowles’ own life and the life of her husband, Paul Bowles. It is also her only completed novel, published when she was twenty-five. It is a decidedly strange novel and got very mixed reviews when first … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Coover‘s Huck Out West. This is another wonderfully post-modern, iconoclastic, very funny book from Robert Coover. It tells the story of Huckleberry Finn and, to a certain degree, of Tom Sawyer, when they become adults and head out to the Wild West. Finn remains the loveable but … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Wright Morris‘s The Field of Vision. It tells the story of a disparate group of people who are attending a bullfight in Mexico and whose back-stories we learn as the bullfight progresses. Walter McKee, but invariably called McKee, has always looked up to Gordon Boyd, who has had … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Wright Morris‘ The Works of Love. Morris is very much an underrated writer . This is a first-class novel, which does not get the recognition it deserves. It tells the story of Will Brady, from the time his father first sought a wife till Will’s death many years … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Wright Morris‘ The World in the Attic. This book follows on from The Home Place. The two books are very similar, except that The Home Place contained photos. The book is about a visit of just under two days by Clyde Muncy (based on Morris), his wife, Peg, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Wright Morris‘ The Home Place. This is an affectionate though not too sentimental autobiographical portrait of the return of Clyde Muncy to his home place, Lone Tree, Nebraska, with his wife Peggy and their two children. The story takes place on their first day there and every page … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Susan Daitch‘s The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir. Daitch wrote two excellent post-modern novels in 1986 and 1990. Since then, she has written only one novel, till the appearance of this one, a wonderful, long and complicated post-modern take-off of the Indiana Jones/lost city novel. The novel is initially … Read more
The latest addition to my website is John Williams‘ Augustus. This is a novel of the life of Caesar Augustus, formerly Octavian or Gaius Octavius. We follow his life from when he is a young man, unsure of himself, even though Julius Caesar has adopted him as his son, till his death. Williams tells the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Don DeLillo‘s Zero K. DeLillo is a Marmite author. Marmite is a disgusting vegetable paste, used in food flavouring or as a sandwich spread. People either love it or hate it. As a result, the word Marmite has come to be used to describe someone or something that … Read more
The latest addition to my website is C E Morgan‘s The Sport of Kings. This novel has already received lots of rave reviews, generally deservedly so. It is a first-class novel about sex, racial politics, horse racing, incest, South vs North (in the USA), families, the failure of the American Dream and the striving to … Read more