Tag Archives: fall 2005

THE TRUTH BOOK: Escaping a Childhood of Abuse Among Jehovah’s Witnesses

Joy Castro Arcade Publishing ($25.00) by Anne F. McCoy You might be tempted to pass over The Truth Book because of its appearance. But in spite of the subtitle and the blood-red dust jacket, this is not a sensationalized story. There are no clear-cut good guy/bad guy themes. Neither is this a work of exhaustive journalism about […]

TRUE STORY: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa

Michael Finkel Harper Collins ($25.95) by Elaine Margolin Michael Finkel made a serious mistake. An up and coming reporter for the New York Times Magazine, Finkel had just returned from the Ivory Coast where he had spent weeks researching a story on the child slave trade there. While meeting with his editor, he outlined how […]

H. P. LOVECRAFT: Against the World, Against Life

Michel Houellebecq McSweeney’s Books ($18) by Joel Turnipseed Michel Houellebecq’s novels have had a violent reception—his last, Platform, landed him in court for inciting racial hatred. Even his supporters have praised him at an uneasy distance, praising his work as caustic satire. Céline’s name comes up a lot. Now, with the translation of his first […]

WRITTEN ON WATER

Eileen Chang Translated by Andrew F. Jones Columbia University Press ($27.50) by Lucas Klein By now, Chinese Communist Correctness has long since receded, changing Eileen Chang’s writing from being a guilty pleasure to simply a pleasure. The trend began in the West, as Chinese literature scholars in American universities during the ’60s promoted her vision […]

MAPS FOR LOST LOVERS

Nadeem Aslam Alfred A. Knopf ($25) by Scott Esposito In Maps for Lost Lovers, Nadeem Aslam develops a set of relationships that reveals the ways in which love—often abetted by religion and nationalism—can divide people instead of bring them together. Dasht-e-Tanhaii, Aslam’s stylized community of Pakistani immigrants to England, is "a place of Byzantine intrigue and […]

HAUNTED

Chuck Palahniuk Doubleday ($24.95) by Kevin Dole From the references to The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales in the jacket copy, one might expect Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted to establish mainstream literary credibility for its author. It doesn’t: Haunted is no more or less literary than any other book by Palahniuk. Similarly, early reference in the text to Poe’s “The Masque of the Red […]

AN OUTLINE OF THE REPUBLIC

Siddhartha Deb The Ecco Press ($24.95) by Niranjana Iyer The Republic of India is often imagined in the shape of a diamond, with Kashmir and Kerala marking the north and south, and Bombay and Calcutta defining the western and eastern regions respectively. Such a map, however, would be incomplete; north of Calcutta lies a fragile […]

10:01

Lance Olsen Chiasmus Press ($12) by Scott Esposito Early in 10:01, the accomplished new experimental novel from Lance Olsen, we're told that movie directors employ a technique called a zip pan, in which "the camera moves so quickly the image in between the original subject and its successor is blurred." This is far from trivial information; 10:01 is […]

HOLY SKIRTS

René Steinke William Morrow ($24.95) by Garin Cycholl It’s not sure whether the end of the century will be noted by the striking of typewriter keys or the blast of a horn, but many artists in these days of disposable apocalypse are standing in line for their chance to chronicle the last shovel full of […]