Monthly Archives: June 2009

David Benioff, “City of Thieves”

Posted on June 30, 2009 by carolwallace

David Benioff frames City of Thieves as his grandfather’s story of survival during the Siege of Leningrad, and it may be that. But he also tips us off very early that his book is also about story-telling. The narrator is … Continue reading →

Posted in best seller, historical fiction | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Irish Murdoch, “A Fairly Honourable Defeat”

Posted on June 27, 2009 by carolwallace

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, and not in a good way. We used to talk, in art-history graduate school, about the idea of a canvas being “transparent to” the subject; this meant that the painting itself did not get in the … Continue reading →

Posted in anglophilia, classic, literary fiction | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Margot Asquith, “Octavia”

Posted on June 23, 2009 by carolwallace

I am so happy that I live in a place where the communal book shelf in the laundry room (recent source of that Simenon novel) also yielded Margot Asquith’s Octavia. I read her autobiography years ago, while researching the heiresses … Continue reading →

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Minette Walters, “The Chameleon’s Shadow”

Posted on June 22, 2009 by carolwallace

Minette Walters’ books are a reliable pleasure. True, they are slightly creepy, but often, as in The Chameleon’s Shadow, superficially disturbing characters reveal appealing characteristics and Walters sticks to the bargain we expect from a mystery: that order be restored. … Continue reading →

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Joseph O’Neill, “Netherland”

Posted on June 15, 2009 by carolwallace

Wow! I love New York. Love the variety, the strangeness, the spectacular nature of the city, the weird pockets of mini-neighborhoods, the way we’re all thrown together here, the way the city tosses mysteries at you that you will never … Continue reading →

Posted in best seller, contemporary fiction, literary fiction | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Brenda Wineapple, “Sister Brother: Gertrude & Leo Stein”

Posted on June 14, 2009 by carolwallace

I knew very little about Gertrude Stein before reading this — the famous Picasso portrait, Biography of Alice B. Toklas, “Rose is a rose is a rose,” and 27, rue de Fleurus in Paris about summed it up. I did … Continue reading →

Posted in art history, biography, French, scholarly | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Georges Simenon, “Maigret in Vichy”

Posted on June 13, 2009 by carolwallace

Random find from the laundry room bookshelf. I have a dim memory of reading a few Simenon novels for French class a million years ago, and not caring much for them. But what was Maigret doing in Vichy?  I vaguely … Continue reading →

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Sarah Waters, “The Little Stranger”

Posted on June 8, 2009 by carolwallace

Why is this title sinister? Maybe it’s the combination of ideas: “stranger” always connotes something potentially menacing, and when you add the diminutive you tip over into the creepy. Then you fabricate a decaying English country house, a self-deceiving narrator, … Continue reading →

Posted in anglophilia, contemporary fiction, ghost story | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Christopher Buckley, “Losing Mum and Pup”

Posted on June 1, 2009 by carolwallace

It’s time for a warning to writers of my generation — “Think veeeery carefully before you start that ‘my-famous-but difficult-parents-are-dead’ book. The field is getting crowded.”  The field is not actually crowded, yet, but as I read Losing Mum and … Continue reading →

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Colette, “The Vagabond”

Posted on June 1, 2009 by carolwallace

There’s something so bracing about Colette. Sometimes the cynicism is hard to take but The Vagabond is maybe a little more disciplined than the Claudine books or Chéri. Here Colette isn’t trying to shock or titillate; it feels as if … Continue reading →

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