The Occupational Hazards of Book Critics
– February 18, 2009Posted in: Book Reviewing
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (Bat Segundo interview with Murphy)
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (Bat Segundo interview with McClear)
Aw, you sound like you need a hug! Get the screaming out beforehand though, those pipes would bust my eardrum but good. Also, you got hazard pay BEFORE the economy collapsed?? Man, pre- this video book reviewing sounds like the land of wine and roses and Brian Francis Slattery novels…
I am glad you are on the floor and not on the ledge.
A book has to be bad and insult my intelligence for me to go from one to the other. You know like the Reader. Which reminds me, we need an infograph for the “pyramid of suck” of bad lit.
Now I can’t wait to read it! (Which is what a fellow churchgoer said to me after I exhibited a similar reaction in print.)
You’ve probably just finished Littell’s The Kindly Ones.
I have ruts worn in my floor from doing almost exactly the same thing….