PositiveVol. 1 BrooklynKlara’s detachment from the human world combined with her unusual empathy suit Ishiguro’s narrative purposes perfectly. In particular he uses Klara’s artificial sight to indicate to the reader how differently she perceives the world ... For Ishiguro this makes Klara the ideal narrator. Unsure with her restricted perception of what anything truly means, she is forced to sift through the data she receives to make (narrative) sense of it. Her naivety and her capacity to empathize with the feelings of others makes her a typically Ishiguran figure – puzzled, slightly distanced and yet sympathetic. Strangely we come to realize that the non-human Klara is more human than the humans, none of whom can be fully trusted, not even Josie.
Salman Rushdie
RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksThe novel’s time is virtually the present, post-2016, and who better than Rushdie with his well-known exuberance and inventiveness to attempt to give fictional life to this crazy, scary era in which we all find ourselves ... These dual narratives offer a challenge to Rushdie: how successfully will they be integrated within the book as a whole? Rushdie rises to the occasion with skill and panache and produces a tightly controlled plot line, something that has sometimes been a weakness in his previous novels ... Just as Cervantes used Don Quixote as a means for exposing the dirty underside of Spanish society, so Rushdie offers a satiric and humorous portrait of America in the age of Trump ... a typical Rushdie mélange: partly a mess, yet spilling over with invention and defying narrative conventions with glee ... another marvelous concoction by a masterly writer.
Julian Barnes
PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of Books[Barnes] has overcome the challenge of living up to his previous novel by doing what he has always done — producing something totally different ... Barnes tells us little about the content and effect of Shostakovich’s music. Instead he uses musical form and motifs to both shape the work and stand in for the music. Dividing the book between three time periods 12 years apart, all leap years, these three sections act like movements in a work of music, each with its own mood.
David Mitchell
PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksMitchell’s talent lies in his ability to infuse the supernatural with deep human feeling. It is the human in his work that makes those of us who enjoy his fantastic fictions swallow the fantasy willingly.
