MixedThe Stinging Fly (IRE)It is every bit as cutting a depiction of the foibles, minutiae, and everyday deceptions of Irish life as his previous work ... Turns...sombre tone towards depicting not only the various private hells each member of the Barneses must endure, but also the self-deceptions needed just to get through the day when the world is on fire ... Contains little... solace ... Unsparing ... confess that I wish he’d applied his natural comic touch more liberally to The Bee Sting, and wonder what a slightly streamlined version of this novel—or one where the author went a bit easier on his characters—might look like.
Annie Ernaux, Tr. Tanya Leslie
MixedTotally Dublin (IRE)Exteriors is perhaps best enjoyed when leafed through at random. Many of Ernaux’s quotidian observations on the train and in the supermarket probe and amuse, while giving pause for thought ... Nonetheless, however well observed Ernaux’s accounts are, even the sharpest of them are surface-level examinations that don’t quite add up to a satisfying whole. Some fragments include questionable assumptions about the people the author sees[.]
