Second cold, and a book review
Having my second cold since the end of summer. This is getting a bit old.
Just finished reading, in about two sittings, the new Ian McEwan novel The Children Act. Lately there's been a mild trend for font designers to create new sans-serif fonts by sanding the serifs off familiar faces like Times and Bodoni, sometimes revealing their old forms in interesting ways. The Children Act feels like an Iris Murdoch novel that has received this treatment, metaphorically. It's a faster read than a Murdoch, at 240 pages, similar kinds of characters (but fewer of them), similar settings, similar lurches of human feeling and one minor late revelation that fails to explain much about the main character. Lots about music, so I suspect a music-aware critic might see the five chapters as analogous to musical movements, but I'm unequipped to extrapolate on that. 3½ stars.
Just finished reading, in about two sittings, the new Ian McEwan novel The Children Act. Lately there's been a mild trend for font designers to create new sans-serif fonts by sanding the serifs off familiar faces like Times and Bodoni, sometimes revealing their old forms in interesting ways. The Children Act feels like an Iris Murdoch novel that has received this treatment, metaphorically. It's a faster read than a Murdoch, at 240 pages, similar kinds of characters (but fewer of them), similar settings, similar lurches of human feeling and one minor late revelation that fails to explain much about the main character. Lots about music, so I suspect a music-aware critic might see the five chapters as analogous to musical movements, but I'm unequipped to extrapolate on that. 3½ stars.