Book Reviews — Page 3

Reaction to this book will tailor itself to the upbringing and beliefs of each reader, but it is unlikely that any reader, whether Christian or not, will remain unchanged after reading it.

The scorching eye of Ferrante does not spare us the pain – “pain” is not the right word. Pain is sharp, localized. The poverty in this book is the relentless force of the rack, slowly tearing apart normality, perpetrated by the victims as fully as the torturers. Nobody escapes responsibility in this book.

Edward Feathers, known as Old Filth (it is said that he invented the term F-ail I-n L-ondon, T-ry, H-ong K-ong), or Dear Old Filth in his dotage, is the epitome of the British character, stiff upper lip, impeccably and appropriately dressed, reliably well mannered, takes his licks without complaint, and keeps his secrets to himself.Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: OLD FILTH”

THE ORDER OF THE DAY pretends to be about February 20, 1933, the day when a clique of twenty-four of Germany’s wealthiest businessmen agreed to fund the nearly bankrupt Nazi party, but the book is a modern warning not to entrust matters of state to powerful and wealthy businessmen whose very success depends upon flexible morals and a spiritual vacuum.

A list of reading pleasures, suitable for the gift-giving/reading time of year.

I love the slyness, insider insinuations, hints, the elegance and sophistication of Barnes’s writing in The Noise of Time. He begins with a surreal scene in a train station going toward Moscow. We don’t know who is on the train platform; the character is “he” for twenty pages of panic, degradation, fear, memory, black humor,Continue reading “REVIEW: THE NOISE OF TIME, by Julian Barnes”

THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS did not take me far from the mirror. ANIMAL FARM, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, THE ROAD, and 1984 took me into more frightening and uncomfortable worlds, and they happened close to home.

Lisa Romeo’s new memoir, STARTING WITH GOOD-BYE, is an Everywoman’s tale. My father was not like her father, but her story is mine, and will resonate with all women who realize too late that their father would have been, if they had ever been able to talk to each other without bickering, their best advisor,Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: STARTING WITH GOOD-BYE”

Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, is an iconic Yankee manifesto. I am a Yankee, yet I had never read it. I opened it expecting a clarification of our American spirit, like reading Walt Whitman. As a memoirist, I found a similarity between his book and my own; man/woman goes into unfamiliar territory with the express intentionContinue reading “BOOK REVIEW: WALDEN”