PositiveThe Buffalo NewsThe Shadow in the Garden spills a biographer’s secrets. James Atlas does that with élan and perhaps a bit more material than one may need to know ... Well, I’ve hardly begun to say how enjoyable the reading of Atlas is, and I’ve told you very little. Sometimes though, as the old song written in 1953 and sung by Kitty Kallen goes, 'Little Things Mean A Lot.' Atlas’ details inform large stories.
Daniel Mendelsohn
PositiveThe Buffalo NewsAn Odyssey is, all at once, a beautiful personal narrative and literary interpretation by Daniel Mendelsohn, a classicist at Bard College. It has a retrospective father-son theme, using the literary device of Homer’s Odyssey as its mirror image ...he is at pains to iterate how close he’s become to his father, and how much more he understands him now, than as a 'bothered by life' teenager ... The structure of the poem, Mendelsohn insists, underscores the importance of the father and now-grown son setting out in search of his lost parent; it is a story of fathers and sons ... The story 'twists and turns' rendering episodes and recollections used beautifully by Mendelsohn the younger. By turns he becomes closer to his father as the two men take a journey of late-life friendship until Jay dies... The Odyssey comes back to life in this 21st century story.
John Le Carré
PositiveThe Buffalo NewsJohn Le Carré’s latest spy novel, A Legacy Of Spies, is a book whose title is chosen carefully ...the outline of the novel in one careful cast of the pen. Not a word out of place. Seemingly truthful, but don’t bet on it ...is translated in the language of espionage and deceit with built-in modifiers attuned to one’s necessarily jaded perception of the world ...is a robust piece of work that doesn’t want to shut down ... All of this detail may make younger readers admire the intrigue involved with the Cold War and its machinations ... Legacy shows Le Carré at his consummate best.
Mary V. Dearborn
MixedThe Buffalo News...these apparent insights of themselves are not enough for this slog of a book. There’s something more that gives the book its value. It’s almost inexplicable. And that is the influence that this one man and his ideas of masculinity have had on writers in America, even until now. The book is a nuanced portrait backed up by dogged research, medical records, FBI and KGB files and family letters of that influence. It is surely not the first but it’s an academically solid portrait.
Richard Bausch
RaveThe Buffalo News...another fine collection of stories – surprising, diverting, and endearing ... Every one of these stories is a treasure ... Read Living in the Weather of the World and see if it doesn’t give you some new ideas of how to deal with misery and love.
Steven Price
PositiveThe Buffalo NewsAt its best, it will remind you of the work of Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle. It exudes an abundance of atmospherics mixed with indirection and subtle plotlines ... By Gaslight is a novel crammed with images and description. In this way, the author can hide clues in the seams of the novel’s dense packing. But the immense detail of the novel comes with a risk. Its effect on the reader is that it can be wearing, tempting one to miss the broader pattern of life and loss being examined ... a novel bordering on exceptional. But it requires endurance to make it to the end.
Mark Haddon
RaveThe Buffalo NewsWhat makes such a bizarre story ['The Pier Falls'] so special? The way that Haddon does it: his own cool verbal magic of plain and complete description ... Haddon’s capacity for literary variation in this collection is admirable: 'Victorian adventure story, science fiction, morality tale, contemporary realism.' All the pieces show how compassionate he is, and how anxiously he desires to make the best of what are sometimes awful experiences ... The Pier Falls is a tour de force of memory – accentuated with lively imagination – that makes us wonder if what we think happened, really did.
Roger Angell
PositiveThe Boston GlobeAngell nails the reader every time with his casual, dead-on observations about life. It’s OK to laugh, even if his shot hits you in the knee.
