M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists' Writings, Theory, and Criticism Edited by Susan Bee and Mira Schor Duke University Press ($22.95) by Charles Alexander M/E/A/N/I/N/G, a journal published from 1986-1996, was an oddly effective burst of energy located somewhere in New York between the quiet smugness of an overblown art market and an undeniable outsider-artist cultural […]
Sophocles Translated by Anne Carson Oxford University Press ($10.95) by Justin Maxwell When looking at a canonical play that's been translated again, both the translator and the reasons for the translation warrant more attention than usual. Oxford University Press's Greek Tragedy in New Translations series operates from the standpoint that with contemporary poets as translators, […]
Renate Dorrestein translation by Hester Velmans Viking ($23.95) by Deborah J. Safran According to the back jacket copy, Renate Dorrestein is one of Holland's best-loved novelists. If her writing reads as smoothly in its native Dutch as it does in this English translation, it's easy to see why—her words are liquid and flowing, and they […]
Bonnie Burnard Henry Holt ($25) by Kiersten Marek Bonnie Burnard's first novel is a good book, just as the characters are good people, who live in good houses. The Chambers clan seems better than most, able to handle the death of their mother by cancer without undue havoc, able to accept their father's remarriage and […]
Ross King Walker & Company ($26) by Kris Lawson Fans of The Name of the Rose will enjoy Ex-Libris, an unconventional bookish mystery. Books inform and consume the characters, who struggle to survive in the bleak England of post-Cromwell and the ravaged Europe of the Thirty Years War. From collections of dangerous books, the possession […]
Alvin Lu Four Walls Eight Windows ($22) by Peter Ritter As a typhoon closes around the island of Taipei, hungry ghosts intermingle with the living, causing mischief and stealing souls with impunity. Meanwhile, a shape-shifting killer called K grips the island's already-fevered imagination. Is K real, or, like the comic-book stories of suicide and haunting […]
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Doubleday ($23.95) by Michelle Reale Propelled by the conventional wisdom that what is unknown in our lives hurts and corrodes more than what we know, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's latest book of short stories subtly takes the possibility of good in our lives and gives it a little twist. Her human but flawed […]
Susan Coll Simon & Schuster ($23) by Julie Madsen “I'm not a Marxist!" Coll's protagonist, Ella, exclaims repeatedly throughout the novel. It is the defining sentiment for the entire book, whose title could woo real champions of Marxist theory with its Marx-from-a-postmodern-perspective allusion. The book will probably not be such a disappointment for readers who […]
Fanny HoweSemiotext(e) / Native Agents Series ($11.95) by Christopher Martin . . . the history of a head is unavoidable being everywhere This is the history of the head of Henny: estranged wife, surrogate mother, and mothering friend. If you add to this list her intensely religious brand of atheism, it appears, clear as ether, […]
Nicholas Mosley Dalkey Archive Press ($13.95) by Jason Picone The difficulty of relating the disparate fields of literature and science, the invasiveness of technology in people's lives and the search for the mythical Garden of the Hesperides are all at the center of Nicholas Mosley's latest novel. Narrated by a nameless teenager, The Hesperides Tree […]