This book is an account of the day to day life of a group of British soldiers in the trenches of WWI, in the autumn of 1916. They have recently come back from the front, theoretically to rest and prepare for a return to the front later in the fall. They are moved from town to town, they deal with heavy rain, mud, lice, rats, occasional shortage of ( Read more... )

Comagu, the central character in The Heart of Redness, returns to Johannesburg after living some decades in America. Frustrated by the bureaucracy and the politics that prevent him from obtaining work suited to his qualifications, he is on the point of returning to America when he is diverted by an alluring woman and, hoping to find her, goes ( Read more... )

The Confusions of Young Törless explores the psychological struggle of an adolescent boy as he attempts to make sense of conflicting feelings and desires. The novel is set in a boarding school in a remote part of the Austrian Empire at the turn of the twentieth century. When he first goes to the school, Törless is desperately homesick. Later, his ( Read more... )

Javier Marías is celebrated in his native Spain, but much less known in the United States. A Heart So White (the title is a line from Macbeth) is the first of his books that I have read, which is my loss. A central theme in the book is the quest by the principal character, Juan, who is also the narrator, to discover more about the past of his ( Read more... )

The Black Prince is the story of Bradley Pearson, a 58-year-old novelist and self-styled artist whose meagre output has been critically praised but commercially unsuccessful. His friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, is a prolific writer of successful but--in Bradley's opinion--inferior novels. Bradley has a brief almost-an-affair relationship with ( Read more... )

Jilted by his childhood sweetheart, Florentino Ariza waits 50 years to proposition her again at her husband's funeral.


( Read more... )

Lorrie Moore is a brilliantly funny writer and Anagrams sparkles with witty lines, puns, and anagrams, as well as clever observations and surprising, amusing comparisons. On that surface level, it is a wonderful book. Peer below the surface, however, and things are in disarray.( Read more )

( Elegant Ghostly Lolita: Sputnik Sweetheart, by Haruki Murakami )

"Multatuli" was the pen name of the Dutch writer Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820-1887). Published in 1860, Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company describes the efforts of Max Havelaar, an energetic, idealistic, and honest official in the Dutch administration in the East Indies, to reform the thoroughly corrupt colonial ( Read more... )

( A Question of Scruples: Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan )