Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer is a confession written by a nameless narrator to a nameless commandant. The narrator suffers from the ability to see both sides of events and of people. Through his confession, he reveals his life story, which is tied up with the history of his country, Vietnam, and foreign intervention there. Given his sympathetic nature, the narrator is able to see at times the good intentions but especially the bad of all those involved in his life […]
Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman
Alan Cumming mentioned After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie in a NYT piece on his ten favorite books. Having read and reviewed (and loved) Rhys’ well known classic Wide Sargasso Sea for CBR6, and being impressed with Mr. Cumming’s literary choices (seriously, check out that list; it’s gold), I decided to give After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie a go. While it isn’t a masterpiece like Wide Sargasso Sea, it is nonetheless a brilliant and bold novel. This is one of Rhys’ early novels, published in 1930 (Wide Sargasso […]
The Fibonacci Novel
Is there anything we all have in common? What could link an English Pilgrim en route to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Alan Turing, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, a middle aged computer programmer and a little girl? I suppose if there is one thing humans share that other creatures do not, it is our particular ability to communicate: we can tell stories, remember the past and form plans for the future. Louisa Hall’s 2015 novel Speak addresses that, but through her unique stories, which seem so […]
Control
All My Puny Sorrows is a poignant novel about sisters, creativity, depression and suicide. Toews touches on a number of big themes in her story but questions of control– by outside forces, over one’s life, creativity and even death– are the center of the narrative. We tend to admire and support the person who resists oppressive control from outside forces such as patriarchy and religion, the person whose creative force and innovation set her apart. But what if that person also resists more conventional societal […]
Fearsome Women
It’s hard to miss the stories in the news these days involving men sexually assaulting or abusing women, getting a slap on the wrist, and then the women being put through hell for speaking up about their assault. The women get blamed — she was drunk, she was known to sleep around, why was she with that/those guy(s) anyway, she’s a gold digger, etc. We’ve also seen many stories over the years about married men having affairs, being contrite and then the other woman being […]
If we took a holiday Took some time to celebrate Just one day out of life It would be, it would be so nice
This novel was author Muriel Spark’s favorite of her own works. It is short — a mere 107 pages — but suspenseful, dark and twisted. The NYT called it a “spiny and treacherous masterpiece.” What makes it all the more horrifying is that the reader knows from the beginning what is going to happen. Lise, the young woman going on holiday, is going to be murdered. We know how it happens but we don’t know who does it or exactly how Lise gets herself into […]
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