Sand
Wolfgang Herrndorf
Le Carré meets Nabokov– with a little Kafka and Elmore Leonard thrown into the mix– in this very well-written, darkly funny, and harrowing literary thriller. It's 1972, and our nameless hero has come-to after a blow to the kopf, and finds himself stricken with amnesia and in the thick of some very nasty business, somewhere in North Africa. Amnesia is a plot device best used sparingly if at all, but Herrndorf pulls it off with bravado. A great entertainment, exquisitely translated by Tim Mohr.
A Long Way from Home
Peter Carey
A typical shaggy-dog tale from Carey, following an oddball threesome on an early cross-country auto race through Australia in the 1950s. Carey's parents ran a GM dealership in the same place and time as the novel's starting line, and he seems to know of what he writes. Funny and splendidly written with vivid, likable characters, the story picks up speed through the first two-thirds or so and then suffers a flat tire or two toward the end as it takes a political turn. Still, a good read.
Elizabeth Costello
J.M. Coetzee
Efficient, chilly and beautifully crafted, it is a novel of ideas and writing. The title character stands in for Coetzee, a person you'd only want to know on the printed page.
Sanshirō
Natsume Sōseki
Sōseki's The Gate is one of my favorite novels... a book in which not much really happens. In this wistful coming-of-age story, even less happens, if that is possible. That doesn't mean it's a better book...
Ride the Pink Horse
Dorothy B. Hughes
Hughes wrote noir but never stuck to a formula. This feverish, surrealistic tale– a revenge story featuring a sympathetic but not very bright protagonist in a southwestern town– is not as good as her masterpieces, The Expendable Man and In a Lonely Place, but it holds your attention.
Innocence
Penelope Fitzgerald
A literary rom-com a la Fitzgerald, set in Italy in the 1950s. Gramsci puts in an appearance. A decent read, but not my favorite of hers.
J.G. Farrell
A grand old hotel in Ireland crumbles as the English dominion over Ireland crumbles, along with a way of life. Well executed, I think, but it did not keep me awake.
Berlin Game
Len Deighton
Le Carré aside, I don't read much spy fiction, and I'd never read Deighton, considered one of the masters. This is a pretty good yarn with a nice twist, but I won't be running out to read his oeuvre, as I have with Mr. Le Carré.
Semiosis
Sue Burke
On an alien planet, the fungi communicate and compete and are pretty smart. Would you trust them?
Vast
Linda Nagata
This novel does a pretty good job imagining a version of human existence–if we can still think of them as humans– millions of years in the future. The problem is characterization. And sci fi without good characters is– frankly– bad fi.
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