Customer Comments

W S Krauss has commented on (40) products.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

W S Krauss, April 5, 2013

An excellent batch of short stories from a talented writer, Wells Tower. Tower has a real knack for description. Each of these stories was a world itself, which is, I suppose, the point of a short story. The real challenge is to make the reader care about these characters in just a few pages. Sometimes he merely sets the scene and the story ends, leaving the rest to your imagination. Many of these characters seem slightly damaged, marginal and vulnerable. I'll look forward to reading some of his other work.

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Elegy for April by Benjamin Black

W S Krauss, February 25, 2013

Benjamin Black's (AKA John Banville) third book in the Quirke series finds Quirke just out of rehab for alcoholism. His daughter Pheobe comes to him concerned that she has not seen or heard from her friend April, whom she is fairly close to and speaks to daily. The story unfolds slowly as we learn more about Quirke, Pheobe and her friends. The suspense builds as Quirke and Hackett confront April's family, who don't seem to care what has happened to her, and that they have disowned for her wild lifestyle. Black describes 1950's Dublin as a city of beauty and atmosphere, but also prejudice, class and religious divides and conservative social mores. You will want to keep reading late into the night to find out how this one ends.

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Elegy for April by Benjamin Black

W S Krauss, February 25, 2013

Benjamin Black's (AKA John Banville) third book in the Quirke series finds Quirke just out of rehab for alcoholism. His daughter Pheobe comes to him concerned that she has not seen or heard from her friend April, whom she is fairly close to and speaks to daily. The story unfolds slowly as we learn more about Quirke, Pheobe and her friends. The suspense builds as Quirke and Hackett confront April's family, who don't seem to care what has happened to her, and that they have disowned for her wild lifestyle. Black describes 1950's Dublin as a city of beauty and atmosphere, but also prejudice, class and religious divides and conservative social mores. You will want to keep reading late into the night to find out how this one ends.

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Life Itself: A Memoir by Roger Ebert

W S Krauss, January 28, 2013

Roger Ebert has written a thorough account of his life. Faced with a severely disfiguring cancer and the subsequent inability to speak, eat or drink, he perseveres through, or rather he transcends, his disabilities to make use of his talents through the medium of writing, which has always been a big part of his life. I enjoyed reading about his family and how his life was shaped by his upbringing. The chapters on some of the actors and directors he has known were very personal and unearthed some interesting aspects of these celebrities. Especially poignant were the chapters on his wife Chaz, his Sneak Previews co-star Gene Siskel, and those about his cancer, his many surgeries and facing his own mortality. It's a very personal book and I quite enjoyed his style of writing. I would recommend this to anyone, regardless of their interest in the movies or movie critics. It has as its focus the human condition, or "life itself".

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The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black

W S Krauss, January 9, 2013

This is the second book in the series by Irish writer Benjamin Black, AKA John Banville (the Sea, for which he won the Man Booker prize in 2005). This book follows the further adventures of Dublin pathologist Quirke and his complicated family. Quirke has quit drinking, which has made him grumpier than usual and on edge, as he confronts the circumstances of an old acquaintance from college. His curiosity gets the better of him when he is pulled into the mystery of the apparent suicide of this man's young wife. His daughter is involved in the events as well, which puts her in great danger. The descriptions of Dublin's streets, atmosphere and climate combine with the action and mystery to create a haunting sense of place. The writing is brilliantly suited to the crime genre, yet a step above most I've read. I look forward to following these characters in many books to come.

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