I have been reading Louise Erdrich for over a decade. She has been writing novels for over three decades. She never lets me down. The new novel, set in familiar territory, the remaining Ojibwe lands of North Dakota, is engaged in spanning: generations, cultures, the spiritual world, and the moral universe. If that sounds deep, it is but her dazzling prose and sophisticated plotting create a novel that is quite impossible to put down.
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin is a compact nearly four hundred page collection of Berlin’s stories, published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien
What if a war criminal appeared in your town and passed himself off as a poet and holistic healer? What if your town was a small isolated place and the man is handsome in a brooding mysterious way? It could happen that he would be secretly sought after by women with private troubles and conned into trusting him to the point of intimacy. So does the incredible Edna O’Brien imagine how this would play out.
Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta
Michiko Kakutani and I have one thing in common. We both think Dana Spiotta is all that as an author. The illustrious critic has called her “wonderfully gifted” in her review of Lightning Field; declared her second novel, Eat the Document “stunning”; and described her as “immensely talented” for Stone Arabia. I am in complete agreement with all those accolades. Since I don’t review for the New York Times, I can be even more personal and say that every one of her novels resonates with the life I have led as an aging free-love hippy with feminist leanings and an artistic bent. Like Dana Spiotta’s characters, I have never achieved any assured success and have suffered from successive identity crises.
Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson
Why would anyone living today want to read Shakespeare? Thanks to Hogarth Press and their Shakespeare Project, I am finding out. I am only two books in, but reading the retellings after reading the plays is becoming an eye-opener for me. I have been told he is revered and still famous because he captured the timeless conundrums of human existence. I have come to find out that is true. I realize that sounds lofty but seriously, The Gap of Time based on The Winter’s Tale covered the pitfalls of jealousy. Shylock Is My Name, a retelling of The Merchant of Venice, features revenge, anti-Semitism, and cultural trickery.
The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
My problem in reviewing this novel is I can’t figure out what to say. The story of Yeong-hye, who decides to stop eating any food that comes from animals after having a dream, is so brutal and heartbreaking. It left me drained and reeling.