Fiction
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While everyone was falling in and out of love with Kundera in the 1980s, I was learning how to moo like a cow, oink like a pig, baa like a sheep, so you’ll have to forgive me for coming to this, the last of Kundera’s “middle period novels” so late in the game. Fortunately, as…
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Told through four alternating points-of-view, Kundera’s 1967 debut follows the repercussions of a joke told by an undergraduate student in soviet-occupied Czechoslovakian. Kundera draws on three traditions: the senseless labyrinth of fellow Czech writer Franz Kafka, the satirical works produced by citizens of and refugees from the Soviet Union, and the revenge tragedy in which…
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Who is Daniel Quinn? That may be the central mystery in Paul Auster’s first installment of his New York Trilogy, City of Glass. Identity and language are of the utmost importance to the novel from the very beginning, often taking precedence over the stated mystery. Chapter one opens in Quinn’s apartment in “the dead of
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As the title of this post suggests, I have recently found myself drawn to cults. Not necessarily to the more gruesome aspects, but certainly the psychology that attracts people to these groups. Before going too far, I should probably define what I mean by a cult.
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One look at the cover of Flannery O’Connor’s debut novel makes clear what is central to the story. The red heart, wrapped in barbed wire, conjures the image of the sacred heart of Jesus, but I doubt most Catholic readers will be able to persevere through this heady and often gruesome novel–but they certainly should!
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From the publisher: London, 1878. One April morning, a small boat bearing a young woman’s corpse floats down the murky waters of the Thames. When the victim is identified as Rose Albert, daughter of a prominent judge, the Scotland Yard director gives the case to Michael Corravan, one of the only Senior Inspectors remaining after
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Fans of straight police procedurals will find a lot to like in the pages of Mark Love’s newest. Also, those with an interest in seeing both sides. With his attention to Agonasti’s backstory, I was reminded of Dennis Lehane’s Joe Coughlin series.
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Taking it’s name from Charles Mackay’s classic study of crowd psychology, Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds, Louise Penny’s most recent mystery takes us back to Three Pines and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache as he first protects a controversial statistician and then must investi
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I received my first print publication of a short story last month—six months after my debut novel came out. Go figure! I was always told to focus on the short form before venturing into writing a novel. Read “The Opening of a New Spy Novel by an Author You Love” online at Calliope on the…
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When Jean-Luc collapses after eating something his wife made for him, Britt is there to give him CPR. It is after all Viane’s cheese shop her friend Arielle is trying to buy.
Steven J Kolbe 