The Noise of Time

This Julian Barnes novel about the life of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich hits, forgive me, all the right notes. It presents biographical information, the political background, and a credible account of the composer's inner thoughts all in a compact, three-movement "sonata" package. The scenes describing a performance of Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District, its rejection by Stalin, and the mortal fear this caused in Shostakovich are particularly effective.

Adjustment Day

The themes in this Chuck Palahniuk novel are intriguing enough: another American revolution, a new nation segregated by race (or sexuality), a misunderstood guru. But the execution has a dashed-off quality that never succeeds in lifting the characters or the concept off the page. A novel that is not believable cannot be called a success, no matter how entertaining the special effects.

Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death

Alexander Cockburn puts chess on the psychiatrist's couch with mixed results. The stories of the lives of some unusual chess champions (Alekhine and Morphy) and other figures like Stefan Zwieg will be of general interest. Plumbing the depths of Freudian theory in relation to chess, less so.

The Only Story

Julian Barnes's novel reminded me of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. Both are about young affairs that sour and a man who settles into a humdrum life. Barnes falls into the trap that just about every novelist falls into -- including especially English ones like McEwan and Graham Greene -- in treating love as a noun, a freestanding wondrous entity that someone "falls into"; instead, it should be seen as a verb, something that is done, worked at, the art of placing another person above oneself. If  a novelist could read Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving and base characters on its truths, that might be a great book.

Wonder Hero

J.B. Priestley's novel came out in the 1930s, long before the "15 minutes of fame" quip. Here, an ordinary worker is turned into a hero for something he didn't entirely do. Earnest, a little plodding, but pleasant.

It's a Battlefield

Graham Greene's early novel concerns a Communist bus driver who struck and killed a policeman during a demonstration and who is scheduled to be hanged. Something about the style of this one rubbed me the wrong way: congested and unnatural and showoffy are adjectives that come to mind.

Double-Barrel

Nicolas Freeling's inspector Van der Valk heads out to the boonies to investigate a poisoned-pen campaign that has resulted in suicides. The story provides an excellent picture of small-town life, its jealousies and pettiness. The solution to one of the two "barrels" of the title was evident to me long before the end; the other proved more surprising.

All in All

Stacy Keach's memoir is a companionable blend of personal history, acting practicalities, and enjoyable anecdote. It was a little saddening to learn that one of my favorite of his films, Fat City, had scenes cut by the studio on the grounds that they were too depressing; scenes which as Keach describes would have made a very good movie even better. He is also candid and informative on the subject of his drug arrest.

The Dying Animal

Entertaining and frank, this Philip Roth novel (like many others) places sexuality at the center of the human experience. Think you can escape it? Rise above it? You are deluded, he is saying.

Long Day's Journey Into Night

It is difficult for me to imagine anyone but Ralph Richardson speaking when reading the lines of James Tyrone, but the other three characters take on lives of their own apart from Sidney Lumet's filmed version. A tough play, one that reveals its secrets like a slow drip that eventually erodes everything.

Barry Lyndon

William Makepeace Thackeray's Barry Lyndon is much more audacious, interesting and mendacious than the version that appears in Stanley Kubrick's film. The ultimate unreliable narrator, Redmond Barry (his birth name) is always ready to draw his sword (or shoot off his mouth) to defend his supposed honor. The likable rogue reaches its apotheosis in this excellent novel. 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Had it not been for the popular stage production of this Mark Haddon novel, which I kept hearing about but have never seen, it's likely I would not have picked this up in a Salzburg shop (in a slight panic that I would run out of books before the end of a vacation). It is a diverting read, and useful in explaining to the ignorant (me) the characteristics of Asperger's. The mystery of the title is fairly transparent.

Black Robe

Brian Moore's Black Robe is a harrowing and unblinking treatment of the intersection of indigenous people and French missionaries. Superstition and carnality are given full rein in what is both a philosophical exploration and a taut adventure story.

Ma'am Darling

Craig Brown's account of the life of Princess Margaret is compulsively readable. The format of vignettes, public statements, even invented alternate histories, is brilliant. The woman who was so (justly) detested becomes in the end, miraculously, an object of no small amount of pity.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

Anatole France's first novel, published in 1881, traces the intersection of a bookish, moral man with a young woman in trouble. With deep understanding of human nature and luminous prose, France thus begins a literary journey that would conclude with the Nobel Prize in 1921. The "crime" of the titular Bonnard is an example of France's irony par excellence.

Hunger

A second reading of Knut Hamsun's Hunger (the first was recorded in this blog in 2010) confirms the author's striking originality. This re-reading was prompted by a play based on the novel I will see in Salzburg this month.

The Counterlife

Philip Roth's novel is bursting with ideas, family dysfunction, and his usual sexual themes. The intelligence underlying the book practically hums, but it is worn lightly and not as an instrument to bludgeon the reader. It is to the writer's credit that all of the alternative paths presented, and all of the political arguments pro and con, are persuasive.

Pulse

I finished Julian Barnes's collection of short stories less than two weeks ago, and yet I am having a hard time locating anything memorable about them. The prose style is pleasant enough, and the observations on human behavior can penetrate, but other than a historical story about Garibaldi the entries all seem to run together. Whether that's the fault of Barnes or a middle-aged memory is an open question.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

Brian Moore's breakout novel, set in dreary 1950s' Belfast, is an astute character study of loneliness, self-deception, and pride. Among the novel's most successful elements is its treatment of Judith Hearne's struggle with her Catholic faith. It's a subject that very few novelists have had the courage to tackle.

The Ghost Writer

Philip Roth's introduction of the writer Nathan Zuckerman in this novel is spellbinding, a word that is overused but is entirely apposite here. The action is confined to a New England country home, which intensifies the drama. The introduction of a young female character, and the imaginative flight that this inspires in Zuckerman, is hugely compelling.

The Waterworks

E.L. Doctorow's novel, set in New York's Boss Tweed era, opens with the mystery of a missing freelance reporter and unfolds into a sinister and gothic tale worthy of Poe.

The Groucho Letters

Groucho Marx's letters will not produce gales of laughter, however they do show him to be intelligent and perceptive. His dinner with T.S. Eliot is one of the high points of this volume. 

The Black Swan

Thomas Mann's late novella addresses the desperate delusions arising from a woman's loss of youth. It makes a suitable bookend with Death in Venice.

Scat

Carl Hiaasen's YA novel is a pleasant diversion for readers of all ages, with timely themes of habitat loss and rampant development.

Tough Guys Don't Dance

The story in this Norman Mailer novel put me in mind of the 1946 film version of The Big Sleep: The plot is both labyrinthine and not all that important to the finished product. Tough Guys is a neo-noir with plenty of drinking, dames, and sex. The prose quality exceeds the standards of the genre, making it a fascinating hybrid.

Catastrophe and Other Stories

Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe is one of a handful of novels whose impact on me will never fade, so I was eager to read this collection of short stories. What comes through, in addition to the supernatural and bizarre effects, is Buzzati's keen and penetrating understanding of the mass mind, especially in "The Scala Scare." Herd mentality, willful disbelief of obvious facts, pursuits of chimeras -- these are the ways humans engineer their own downfalls, and Buzzati is there to point a finger, with just the merest trace of a smirk on his lips.

Brave New World

Huxley impresses more as a thinker than as a stylist, and the issues raised in Brave New World remain vital nearly a century later: security vs. freedom, high culture vs. low, and what it is that makes life worth living.

Portnoy's Complaint

For all the complaining Portnoy does about his mother, the tender heart of this novel consists of the nostalgia with which a lost 33-year-old looks back to the home, neighborhood, and family of his youth. All of that anger and sex and bitter humor is but a flimsy screen behind which resides love.

We Bombed in New Haven

Joseph Heller's play was first seen in New Haven, as it happens, in a Yale production with Stacey Keach in a leading role. It went to Broadway in 1968 and had a respectable run. It is a tribute to the playwright that, reading the play 50 years later, it is possible to imagine a relevant and hilarious staging today. Problems of war, death, and individual autonomy never go stale in the hands of a skilled writer.

South and West

It is to Joan Didion's credit that her notebooks from a trip through the South and to California in the 1970s remain startlingly relevant 40 years on. The observations of Southerners and their habits are particularly keen.

Lincoln in the Bardo

I detected a tiny bit of padding in this inventive and affecting novel, but that is about the only negative that comes to mind. The tone and language are perfectly pitched: resembling the speech of 1862 but not exactly, more like formal modern speech heard through a sepia filter. The story is grave and the emotions are pure and real. The technique is redolent of the Dos Passos newsreels but comes off as strikingly original. A beautiful and memorable work.

The Uncommon Reader

Alan Bennett's short novel finds Queen Elizabeth II discovering the joys of serious reading. In a way she stands in for all readers who attempt to tackle difficult or unknown books: All she needs is a quiet room and focused attention. Reading turns her to writing, and to a surprising and satisfying ending.

City of Green Benches

Published in the 1980s about St. Petersburg, Fla., this work of contemporary anthropology focuses on how old people live and, more importantly, the factors that allow them to have a full and satisfying old age. Some of the successful programs mentioned here (adult day care) have since been discontinued, although Meals on Wheels continues to be a vital social link and nutritional necessity for many aged in St. Petersburg. The author, Maria Vesperi, is the best kind of observer: sensitive and meticulous.

Conversations with John Schlesinger

Captured by his nephew, these accounts by the British film director John Schlesinger (1926-2003) reveal his skills in all aspects of filmmaking. Literate and talented, Schlesinger left a substantial oeuvre that repays repeated viewings. Among his best: The Day of the Locust.

Ragtime

On reading Ragtime for the second time (the first being 36 years ago), what stands out are Doctorow's beautifully chiseled sentences and his cool intelligence. There is a debt to be paid to Dos Passos for the kaleidoscopic and intersecting story, and like that earlier author a clear-eyed realism reveals a mostly dark landscape. Still, a bit of light is allowed to emerge.

A Tokyo Romance

Ian Buruma's memoir of his time as a young film student in Tokyo in the 1970s is a vibrant and instructive look into Japanese culture and customs.

Astral Weeks

Ryan Walsh has excavated 1968 Boston to uncover the origins of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. A prominent role in the account goes to the Mel Lyman "family" and its compound, which although it had little to do with Morrison, was a centerpiece of the city's alternative and radical milieu. Walsh does a fine job of placing the reader into the social, political and artistic world of the time.

The Mangan Inheritance

The perils of romanticizing ancestry are on display in this Brian Moore novel, which has agreeable gothic elements. 

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

A stray mention of this title in a book about Van Morrison's Belfast sent me down a path to a probable new favorite writer. I knew of Brian Moore, but not by name. Meaning, Black Robe has always been a favorite film, but I never bothered to find out who had written the screenplay (and the book). Moore's Emperor is set in World War II Belfast and centers around the young Gavin Burke, a member of a first aid team who is a middling academic performer (but loves poetry) and can't get very far with his girlfriend. War has left Belfast unscathed as the novel opens, and many Catholics are in fact rooting for Hitler against the British. Moore excels in the use of gentle humor, irony, and sharp characterizations. A dramatic set-piece leads into a tremendously satisfying conclusion.

Go

Kazuki Kaneshiro's novel tells of the ethnic Korean experience of living in Japan. It is both instructive in cultural and social senses, and a winningly told story of young love.

Pure Hollywood

These short stories by Christine Schutt are appalling. The characters are inhuman literary constructs. And the writing is, as another reviewer put it, evasive.

In Praise of Wasting Time

Alan Lightman's short book on the need for the brain to wander, and rest, to be productive is timely. Yet it was Pascal who wrote 400 years ago that most of the world's problems can be traced to a person's inability to sit quietly in a room, so Lightman would have done better to include a bit of context, or at least a tip of the hat, to earlier thinkers. This topic was also covered more entertainingly in Tom Hodgkinson's How to be Idle. Still, Lightman's scientific observations are welcome, even though he and everyone else on this campaign is almost certainly doomed to failure.

The Neighborhood

Mario Vargas Llosa's new novel tackles issues of privacy and power in 1990s Peru. Into the mix he adds a fair amount of eroticism. The Neighborhood serves as both a critique of declining Western institutions and a template for the defense for liberty. A book that will never be ranked among his best, it is nonetheless a bracing effort.

When I Hit You

Meena Kandasamy has written a novel that is moving, horrifying and poetic all in one. In sum, it is the story of an abusive husband. It puts the reader inside the skin of the woman, but not in any facile or melodramatic way. For example, in one section the wife, in order to cope, imagines herself playing a part in a film about an abuser and walks through the apartment setting up camera angles. The author also explores the cultural and family aspects of this kind of abuse in India. Her parents are slow to face reality, for example, and suggest the daughter's suffering is probably her own fault. Through it all runs Kandasamy's beautiful prose.

Chicago

David Mamet's new novel is didactic. It has many things to impart and it wants to make sure they end up inside your thick skull. For starters, there is the overuse of italics in dialogue, which tells the reader: You must say this line this way. Then there are the pearls of wisdom and philosophy that are dropped by a whorehouse madam and other characters. When it is not teaching, there is a lot of drinking on display as well as unaccountable grief. (Unaccountable because the love story makes little sense and has no predicate. The woman, in fact, says maybe three words.) Mannered and cold, Chicago sinks with barely a bubble.

Man's Fate

I suspect this Andre Malraux novel about the defeat of Chinese Communist insurrectionists in Shanghai in 1927 would benefit from a better translation. I picked it up on the recommendation of Mario Vargas Llosa, who surely read it in the original French. Still, despite chunks of clunky philosophical exposition, there are passages of great insight into the minds of the characters: revolutionaries, businessmen, intellectuals, and opportunists.

Last Exit to Brooklyn

With this novel, Hubert Selby Jr. extended the literary ground broken by John Dos Passos outward into new areas of frankness and downward into new levels of depravity. It is a work that is both horrifying and tender.

The Sound of Things Falling

This novel by Colombian Juan Gabriel Vasquez examines the price the nation's drug economy exacted on everyday people in the 1980s. Themes of transgression, ambition and benevolence are cooked into a compelling stew.

Lock No 1

The first disappointing Maigret in the reissue series, this novel is dreary and plodding. The characterizations are mostly astute but the action is tentative and blandly presented.

Fire and Fury

Other than the urge to take a long, hot bath after finishing this book, what stands out is the almost total absence of interest by Michael Wolff, the author, or anyone in the White House for that matter, in addressing issues of policy. You know, the business of government. It is all backstabbing, lying, and plotting at about the level of an MTV reality series. The problem is, the institutional damage will endure long after the clown show leaves town.

Ethan Frome

The New York Times review of Ethan Frome in 1911 talks of the novel's cold, harsh physical climate as a kind of chorus accompanying the narrative, and that is what is likely to leave its mark on the reader.

Count Bruga

Is it possible for a satire published in 1926, about a poet now largely forgotten, to provide a reader nearly a century later with enjoyment? With Ben Hecht writing, the answer is a qualified yes. Hecht's send-up of his friend, Maxwell Bodenheim, has no doubt lost some of its punch as the mists of time have obscured the public character of the Greenwich Village poet. And the fictionalized version, Count Hippolyt Bruga, is mostly tedious. But there is a long section in the novel's core, about a magician, that is as sensitively done as Mann's Mario and the Magician and just about as creepy.

In Another World

Subtitled "Van Morrison & Belfast," this brief volume by Gerald Dawe collects previously published work and weaves it into a mini-history of postwar Belfast and its music. The book is particularly good in evoking the city before the sectarian strife created no-go zones, when youths of all religions could come together in clubs to hear visiting and local bands play R&B and jazz. It was out of this milieu that Morrison developed his skills as a musician and songwriter, never losing sight of his hometown but eventually transcending it.

The Peron Novel

Tomas Eloy Martinez's fictionalized account of Juan Domingo Peron's return to Argentina in 1973 from exile in Spain is richly detailed, drawing from sources both real and imaginary to paint the general, his three wives, his hangers-on, and the opposition forces awaiting his return. The story is by turns poignant, tragic, and ludicrous. Martinez shows here, as the best novelists can, how fiction illuminates fact.

Class Trip

This short, creepy novel by French writer Emmanuel Carrere follows an awkward adolescent to a school ski trip at which his imagination and, eventually, events run wild. It is a cold, perceptive study of youthful alienation.