PositiveThe Washington ExaminerHiggs displays Blake’s brilliance, noting the way his thought dovetailed with psychology, neuroscience, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. He also shows his familiarity with work by William Shakespeare, Emanuel Swedenborg, Jacob Bohme, and others, at a time when most people were illiterate ... chatty, somewhat wordy, and uses a few too many colloquialisms. But that’s a quibble in a book that tries to understand the mind of any person, especially one like Blake’ ... difficult but rewarding.
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, trans. by Michele Hutchison
MixedAmerica: The Jesuit ReviewPoetry spills out almost everywhere in The Discomfort of Evening...although the novel\'s tender moments are few ... Some of the poems in the novel seem to work better than the prose, mostly because the poems are presented in tight little individual knots of feeling while the prose is looser and covers much more territory. It also drags at times ... The novel is unsettling from the first sentence ... Rijneveld blends thoughts of murder and suicide into the plot along with quotes from the Old and New Testaments. The juxtaposition adds a certain irony to the narrative, as scenes of violence and the voice of God sit uneasily on the page.
Maggie O'Farrell
RaveNational Review...evocative ... Although Hamnet deals with the death of a child and its effects on his parents, the book is also life-affirming as it suggests ways art can transcend misfortune ... O’Farrell employs the techniques of drama and poetry, with vivid language as well as appeals to the five senses ... O’Farrell offers readers a penetrating look into the creative process itself, while her writing subtly becomes a metaphor for that process — which is the beauty of this novel and certainly no mean feat.
Laura Lippman
PositiveThe Baltimore SunMeet the quirky but troubled protagonist of Laura Lippman\'s novel, And When She Was Good, which looks at women\'s issues and at the sorry effects of murder, mayhem and drugs. It\'s not chick-lit; nor is it crime fiction. It\'s a little of each ... Lippman wraps her latest stand-alone novel in a who-done-it plot, but she\'s mainly concerned with such subjects as stay-at-home moms, the legalization of prostitution, abusive men and complex mother-daughter relationships. She examines the power of maternal love, specifically how a woman\'s love for her son can help her overcome dire circumstances, and glances at the role of siblings in a blended family ... Although her latest expands her traditional focus on crime, it succeeds for the most part primarily because of Lippman\'s nimble style and her delight in irony and inside jokes.
Nicola Gardini Trans. by Todd Portnowitz
PositiveNational ReviewGardini crafts each chapter so that it feels like an encounter. Offering numerous personal anecdotes from his own life, Gardini’s writing is warm and conversational yet scholarly ... His text considers the form, style, purpose, influence, and themes found in the works of these authors; quotes liberally from their work; and offers Gardini’s own translations while noting the rhetorical devices and figurative language appearing in the original Latin ... Gardini suggests that his book is for a general reader—especially for young students. But it’s hard to imagine many young students from the U.S. responding well to the \'critical and aesthetic genius\' of a writer like Horace (65 B.C.E.–8 C.E.) or to his Ars Poetica, excerpts of which Gardini translates and discusses ... The book is somewhat hard to follow because Gardini doesn’t present his material in chronological order. The authors don’t appear as they would in a history of Latin literature...But this is a quibble with an important and informative book ... Gardini is passionate about his subject and tends to be wordy ... Although Gardini mentions the inspiration of goddesses, the only woman quoted here is Sappho.
Douglas Stuart
PositiveCommonwealMost readers will find the novel compelling, especially those who have loved and tried to help an alcoholic parent or close relative ... But because of its memoir-like quality, this is more than just another hard-luck story about the damaging effects of alcoholism ... Stuart has an eye for precisely honed language and an ear for its harmonies. His chapters are composed of vivid, sensuous anecdotes meant to grab readers emotionally ... Stuart paints Agnes vividly as she emulates her heroine, the actress Elizabeth Taylor ... But Stuart reveals little about Agnes’s interior life, even though about two-thirds of the narrative focuses on her—which seems a flaw in this book and one that may explain why so many publishers rejected it. In fact, Stuart provides more insight into Big Shug than he does into Agnes, even though he is less significant to the story ... Stuart’s powerful depiction of Shuggie gives this narrative a redemptive quality that rises above its episodes of negligence, anger, and sectarianism. It is about love and loyalty, in spite of everything, but finally it is about grace.
Jeremy Treglown
MixedThe National ReviewDescribing Hersey’s books in detail, Treglown shows how his experiences meshed with his work; he discusses his childhood and his relationship with his parents as well as with several of his friends and editors ... Treglown, however, says little about Hersey’s first marriage and divorce and his second marriage to Barbara Day. He also says little about Hersey’s five children ... would have been enlivened by including more information about the Hersey family. In the early part of the book, for example, Treglown shows readers that Hersey was very close to his mother, especially after his father’s death. Yet Treglown says next to nothing about his mother’s death ... thoughtful.
Sigrid Nunez
PositiveAmericaNumerous religious references add resonance and irony to the novel ... a memoir-like quality, a plot that zig-zags on the road of real and invented, a tone that is conversational and a discursive style ... Ultimately, this novel, which is fiction about nonfiction, has many layers, perhaps too many. Yet in its essence, it is a love story.
