|
Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh: The Height of His Powers
A review by L. E. Sissman
[Ed. note: This review first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, March 1972.] Nineteen seventy-two marks the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of a novel that nobody seems to read these days, a novel of breathtaking symmetry, grace, craft, and discipline, a novel from which many of our younger writers of self-indulgent, sprawling, amorphous fiction could learn the structure of their art. It is generally and uncritically accepted these days that A Handful of Dust (1934) was the greatest of Evelyn Waugh's novels, fulfilling the early promise of Decline and Fall (1928), and that his...
Orphans: Essays by Charles D'Ambrosio
A review by Jill Owens
Charles D'Ambrosio's essays are excitingly good. They are good and relevant in the way that makes you read sections out loud -- to your boyfriend who's trying to read his own book; to three of your friends in a pitch-dark bar, squinting in the light of a pathetic candle; to your sister on the East Coast who's trying to tell you about her new job. To D'Ambrosio's great credit, although each of these people may have been initially irritated at the uninvited interruption of their respective good times, they all also professed an immediate desire to pick up Orphans for themselves. Clear Cut...
Nehru: A Political Life by Judith M. Brown
Rational Elitist
A review by Pankaj Mishra
The headmaster's report was unambiguous when Jawaharlal Nehru left Harrow in 1907. "A thoroughly good fellow and ought to have a very bright future ahead of him." As it turned out, the good fellow did rather less well at Cambridge, ran up a few debts living fashionably in London's West End, and struck a few political poses in his letters to his father. During his seven years in England, Nehru was often, as he confessed, "almost overpowered by the sense of my solitary condition". This was the loneliness of the man who feels deprived of intimacy with his native as well as his adopted culture...
|
Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare by Philip Short
The 20th century's most disastrous drive for rural utopia
A review by Clayton Jones
Reading the biography of a 20th-century tyrant takes courage. The tales of atrocities can be numbing, the motives unclear, and the lessons uncertain. Evil seems like a lurking character in such books, either in one man, the body politic, or foreign players, and is eventually exposed as, well, a rather stupid mistake. British journalist Philip Short has already led readers through the prickly thicket of one tyrant's murderous story with his acclaimed 1999 biography of Mao Tse-tung. In Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, he probes deeply into the background of a man who launched the world's...
Thirteen Moons: A Novel by Charles Frazier
$20,000 A Page
A review by By Noah Oppenheim
The slush pile is a hospice for the dreams of wannabe writers -- where their unsolicited manuscripts go to die. When Charles Frazier was a complete unknown, his first novel, Cold Mountain, was reportedly plucked from just such a garbage stack to sell four million copies and win the National Book Award. It's the literary equivalent of not only making the team as a walk-on but winning the Heisman. After Cold Mountain, Frazier -- newly powered, newly moneyed -- scribbled out a one-page book idea and sold that. For $8.25 million. The result, four years later, is Thirteen Moons -- the...
Big Machine by Victor La Valle
ToB: Big Machine vs. The Year of the Flood
A review by Tournament of Books
Powell's Books and The Morning News present the 2010 Tournament of Books
The annual NCAA-style battle between literary titans rages on! There are some serious contenders this year, including The Lacuna, Wolf Hall and The Year of the Flood. Review-a-Day is bringing you a week at a glance -- every Sunday through March. Tune in each week for our featured battle, see how your favorites fared and catch up with fun commentary and other tidbits from The Morning News.
Another week has passed and we have made it to the end of the opening round with some truly exciting results.
Read the entire review
More reviews from The Morning News
|
Don't Miss
