In her New York Times review of the late William Trevor’s Last Stories, titan of the American short story Cynthia Ozick calls the Irish writer “the supreme master of his honest art.” Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Taylor Larsen praises Sam Pink for exposing “the absurdity hidden just below the surface of everyday life” in his linked novellas The Garbage Times/White Ibis. In her Guardian review, the How I Became a North Korean author Krys Lee writes of how Hwang Sok-yong “challenges us to look back and reevaluate the cost of modernization, and see what and whom we have left behind” in his new novel, Familiar Things. We’ve also got Victor Sebestyen on Serhii Plokhy’s Chernobyl—a chilling history of the 1986 nuclear disaster—and one horror master on another as Victor LaValle consider’s Stephen King’s southwest monster tale, The Outsider.
*
“His stories are uncontaminated by principles of composition, or even by respectable generalities touching on how sentences ought to be made. His sentences are frequently in the passive voice; his verbs eschew the pursuit of energy. Overall, his prose is serviceable and ready to hand … Most notably, his stories open with comments so blandly informational, so plain and unnoticeable, that they arouse no expectation and appear to promise little … such flat and unhurried beginnings are subversions concealing a powerful slyness. Trevor’s stories traffic in plots, fated or willed, and hurtful. They may be coiled in pity, but they are never benign; their pity is unregenerative. Nor do they carry broad social vistas or axes to grind or hidden symbols … in this small, final, seemingly quiet but ultimately volcanic book of stories, Trevor denies and defies—maybe spites—the promise of decline. As for volcanic: his people, at the finish of each turning of circumstance, are stunned and stilled, like the molds lava once made of the victims of Pompeii. And it is as if he will never run out of plots … we honor him as the supreme master of his honest art.”
–Cynthia Ozick on William Trevor’s Last Stories (The New York Times Book Review)
*
“The Garbage Times is an homage to the randomness of life, the inevitability of shit, scum, and death, and the beauty that glimmers amid the filth … In counterbalance to the crassness and moments of violence that punctuate The Garbage Times, Pink’s narrator shows a deep, humanizing love and respect for women and animals … the beauty of Pink’s work — he shows the simple devastations of containment, of beings…living without dignity but still striving toward hope, over and over again, as we all do, wanting things to come out all right. This is the heart of his message, the essence of his book: we will never stop trying to keep moving no matter how confined we are … In this quest for life and dignity is an equally powerful desire to succumb to death. Its inevitability curls underneath each page, hides in each scene. Morbid readers will really dig this book … His stories are unique and true and impossible to put down — what more could anyone want?”
–Taylor Larsen on Sam Pink’s The Garbage Times/White Ibis (The Los Angeles Review of Books)
*
“…one of South Korea’s most venerated novelists urgently examines the darker side of modernisation through the micro-society of a rubbish dump … The novel’s most impassioned passages depict garbage as a social phenomenon, the visible evidence of capitalism … Familiar Things is not particularly notable for vividly rendered detail, singular language or voice. But the measure of a novel is not only its artful telling, but also the power and value of the story being told. Hwang observes what is most familiar to us, the mammoth accumulations of waste in our everyday lives, ‘the hell that we have created.’ He challenges us to look back and reevaluate the cost of modernisation, and see what and whom we have left behind.”
–Krys Lee on Hwang Sok-yong’s Familiar Things (The Guardian)
*
“Monsters of one kind or another are what the man does best, and The Outsider delivers a good one … The novel begins in Oklahoma, but eventually winds its way to Marysville, Tex. The trip south allows King to show his hand and reveal exactly whose crate of myths he’s been digging into. King makes generous use of a tale from the region, and the larger cultural context of the place as well … When writers appropriate the stories of others they do something like what I did when I was 12. It was imitation without insight. King falls on the right side of the divide and his book succeeds, in part, because of it. He’s clearly inspired by the Southwest, but he’s not fool enough to pretend ownership … He could easily churn out ‘monsters in Maine’ tales until his life ends, and he’d remain well compensated for it. But he doesn’t do that. He isn’t writing mere imitations of himself. More than 50 novels published, and he’s still adding new influences to his work. I can think of a great many literary writers who are far lazier about their range of inspirations and interests. This expansiveness allows King to highlight the idea that whether we’re talking about Mexico or Maine, Oklahoma or Texas, people the world over tell certain stories for reasons that feel much the same: to understand the mysteries of our universe, the improbable and inexplicable … here’s to the strange and to Stephen King. Still inspiring.”
–Victor LaValle on Stephen King’s The Outsider (New York Times Book Review)
*
“The Ukrainian-born Plokhy—now a Harvard history professor—was a student living less than 300 miles from the site in 1986 and this book has a strong personal angle. Using new archive material, it is also a work of deep scholarship and powerful storytelling. Plokhy is a master of the telling detail … Plokhy’s description of brave men with no protection walking on what was left of the burning reactor hall is horrifying … Plokhy is convinced there will be more Chernobyls. Despite headlines about nuclear weapons in North Korea or Iran, the greater danger to the world, he insists, is from nuclear energy in developing countries, where most of the reactors are being built and where ambitious dictators will be prepared to cut corners in pursuit of economic growth and relatively cheap energy. It’s a ghastly prognosis, and even if not entirely persuasive, so well argued that it is highly plausible.”
–Victor Sebestyen on Serhii Plokhy’s Chernobyl (The Times UK)
