Synopsis:
While working on a novel in Tunisia, a writer encounters his own heart of darkness.
Review:
I had written a truly brilliant review of Patricia Highsmith’s The Tremor of Forgery, but it got eaten. Fie! The salient points were:

Patricia Highsmith plays cat and mouse with the reader just like her most famous creation Tom Ripley [...]

Popularity: 21% [?]

[Read more →]

Synopsis:
After his release from prison, a troubled man befriends the man he crippled, and awakens his demons with tragic result.
Review:
Though strong in characterization (as always), Live Flesh doesn’t hold up as one of Ruth Rendell’s strongest. On its publication in 1986, I’m sure it made much more of an impact, but in today’s serial [...]

Popularity: 22% [?]

[Read more →]

Reading is only one of my many loves. I also enjoy knitting, cooking, and running. I am not superfast at any of those. In fact, when it comes to running, I’m superslow.
I received review copies of three DIY books from the publisher Watson-Guptill, and I’m going to my best to let you [...]

Popularity: 17% [?]

[Read more →]

Synopsis:
The last of a dying breed, a proper English butler reflects on his life in service.
Review:
I had no idea I would love The Remains of the Day as much as I did. To be honest, I love Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go so much that I was afraid that if I didn’t like [...]

Popularity: 34% [?]

[Read more →]

Synopsis:
Hired to be an au pair to a schizophrenic man, a Swedish girl watches as interfamilial tensions come to a boiling point, with deadly results.
Review:
Barbara Vine (the alter ego of best-selling crime novelist Ruth Rendell) has carved out a niche as deft portrayer of tightly interwoven groups of people who are all set to go [...]

Popularity: 37% [?]

[Read more →]

Synopsis:
One man’s harrowing journey up the Congo in search of enlightenment.
Review:
Blogging really wasn’t invented for talking about a book like Heart of Darkness. I am utterly incapable of coming up with anything approaching an instant reaction to this book. I need to sit with it for a long time, then read it again, [...]

Popularity: 42% [?]

[Read more →]

Synopsis:
On the eve of the sale of the family’s multimillion dollar business, black sheep Alban makes his way home where he will have to confront the truth about his mother’s death and the love that lingers for his cousin Sophie.
Review:
I was intrigued by the plot of The Steep Approach to Garbadale, hinging as it does [...]

Popularity: 29% [?]

[Read more →]

Synopsis:
A young man with severe amnesia comes to realize that he is being stalked by a conceptual shark (which is much, much scarier than you might think).
Review:
What surprised me most about The Raw Shark Texts was how fast it moved. For all its high-minded metaphysical aims and experimental underpinnings, the book has the pacing [...]

Popularity: 86% [?]

[Read more →]

Synopsis:
An English society family is thrown into turmoil when one of their own marries a shifty Italian, and they’ll do anything to see that their child is raised properly–that is, in England.
Review:
EM Forster has been my latest classic discovery. I’d never read anything of his before last year, and I’m completely in love. [...]

Popularity: 30% [?]

[Read more →]

I was making my way through The Radiant Way by Margaret Drabble, thinking I was really enjoying it, when I realized on about page 75 that it was utterly failing to hold my interest. I couldn’t figure out why, because I generally love these kinds of books–portraits of women rooted in a time and [...]

Popularity: 22% [?]

[Read more →]