Karl Ove Knausgaard is a Norwegian writer who conducted a public experiment. He wanted to see what would happen if he wrote honestly about his life, aiming to “penetrate that whole series of conceptions and ideas and images that hang like a sky above reality” in a six-volume novel. On … Read More
Category: fiction
“By turning the experiment of life into a heroic task he was able to turn Walden from a philosophical tract of unattainable goals into a guide for the perplexed.”
Jeffrey Cramer argues that if you read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden as an autobiographical record, you are bound to be disappointed. (After all, Thoreau was selective about what he included, and the bits he didn’t write about – such as having his sisters do his laundry – seem to undercut … Read More
“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”
Stating the premise of your work simply and clearly in the first sentence requires courage. Readers might say, “Is that all?” Or, some might feel skeptical about your ability to show how an original story can follow from a classic premise that Kafka, Dante, and other masters have already used. … Read More
“The waitress seemed to sense that this was not the moment to ask if they had everything they needed.”
Of course, the waitress was right: these people clearly didn’t have everything they needed. This is familiar territory for fans of Anne Tyler. We count on seeing an “eccentric ecosystem of relatives and neighbors” who aren’t getting the assurances, stability or respect they need. When the New York Times… Read More
“He felt as if he was never again going to know the reason for anything he did.”
Why read novels? Jonathan Franzen argues in a Harper’s essay that people are drawn to strong fiction because they like to engage in complex stories that don’t have simple resolutions. In Anne Tyler’s first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, the central character, a law student, tries to learn … Read More
“But what could possibly go wrong?”
Think of the funniest books you’ve ever read. Did any of them win literary awards? No? As the Washington Post points out, there has long been a “critical resistance to comic novels.” Until now. The 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to the laugh-out-loud novel Less by Andrew Sean Greer… Read More
“Without my voice, and spirit, I am dust, / This is not what I want, but what I must.”
In these memorable lines from Mike Bartlett’s play King Charles III, the lead character explains his decision to oppose a law the parliament has passed. He knows his actions will throw the modern British system of government into chaos. People will revolt, and tanks will roll into London. … Read More
“The sentences would be like bright juggler’s balls, spinning through the air and being deftly caught and thrown up again.”
Or so Rhoda – the aunt in Barbara Pym’s Less Than Angels — thought would happen when “clever” people came to visit the family. Instead, however, she found that the visitors’ sentences could be compared to “scrubbing-brushes, dish cloths, knives” which sometimes “fell to the ground with resounding thuds.” … Read More
“I was unable to decide what it was that I found so irritating about her goodness.”
Wilmet, the main character in Barbara Pym’s novel A Glass of Blessings, after spending a frustrating afternoon with do-gooder Mary, observes that wicked people were often much more fun to be with. I believe that if Wilmet were a real person, she and I would be friends: she is … Read More
“Michael reciting the Declaration of Independence was an echo of something that existed elsewhere.”
In The Underground Railroad, Michael is a slave in Georgia in the 1850s who was taught to recite, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” This is one of many powerful scenes in this novel that show how the ideal of “equality” fell short … Read More
Four Favorite Books from 2017
I’ve already written about the best books of 2017 for teachers, and so today I will focus on the other books that I’ve read this year. My “favorite” books are the ones that I am most likely to read again. Here they are:
1. Elizabeth Strout: Anything Is Possible… Read More
“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel?”
Amor Towles, author of A Gentleman in Moscow, continues: “Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli.” If you, like me, would like a break from the disasters and tragedies surrounding us, consider reading this wonderful novel about the evolution of … Read More
“We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change.”
What are the connections between memory and imagination? Is separateness only an illusion? These are the two questions that Simon Van Booy explores in this beautiful book. Readers aren’t handed the answers. Rather, bits and pieces of the lives of six people are given to us in non-linear order. We … Read More
“The pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand.”
What? Only one book for all the students to pass around? In England? In many of his novels, Charles Dickens describes how difficult it was for ordinary families to get any sort of education. In Great Expectations, Pip’s family had a hard time scraping together money for a teacher to … Read More
“The Hopper painting hung on the wall with an indifference so vast it began to feel personal, as though it had been painted for this moment”
The passage continues: “Your troubles are huge and meaningless, it seemed to say, there is only the sun on the side of the house.” The troubles of the people in this illuminating book are vast indeed: no novelist, including Charles Dickens, reveals more clearly the grim scars of poverty and … Read More