RaveThe Portland OregonianIn his collection of stories, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Pakistani American author Daniyal Mueenuddin transports us into the world of the feudal landowning class in late 20th-century Pakistan, and, more intimately, into the lives of the cadre of servants that sustain and are sustained by these sprawling households. Mueenuddin gently exposes us to this richly textured culture while drawing us in with stories about universal human longings for love, status and security … K.K. Harouni may be the common link, but at the end of the book he remains the least in focus. He is simply what holds it together, the hole at the center around which the spokes – the servants, the stories and the collection itself – revolve.
Roberto Bolaño, Trans. by Natasha Wimmer
PositiveThe Oregonian2666 can be described as a novel of disappearance, and it's fitting that the meaning of the title goes missing within it ... A labyrinth of stories as murky as they are brilliant, the novel weaves together plots surrounding the serial disappearances and murders of hundreds of women in central northern Mexico over the past 15 years, and the mysterious life of a fictionalized and reclusive literary figure, Benno von Archimboldi ...each crime creates a vacuum, which Bolaño fills with stories, and the ever-progressing developments create more possibilities than it's possible for the novel to answer ... The novel's major fault is the jarring transition from the section about the crimes into the final part, which covers the life of Benno von Archimboldi ...a true-crime page turner, as well as the work of one of this generation's finest authors at the height of his powers.
