B. Morrison's Blog, page 67

Writers Tell All

I was tagged by the marvelous Sarah Bartlett to participate in this blog hop, so I’ll postpone telling you about the satisfying books I’ve been reading just for this week. A blog hop is where you move from one blog after another to read the entries or to leave comments. This is one way my online writing community stays in touch and has conversations.

I’ve mentioned this group before and my surprise at what an effective community it has become despite the fact that we’ve never met in 3D. In a...

Molly Fox's Birthday, by Deirdre Madden

Another remarkable novel from Madden, who is rapidly rising in the ranks of my favorite authors. On this midsummer’s day, which happens to be the birthday of the fine and famous actor Molly Fox, our narrator wakes to find herself in Fox’s bedroom in Dublin. The two are long-time friends and have swapped homes for a bit while Molly does some work in London and our narrator works on her new play. It has her a bit stymied. She’s struggling to find the meaning of the image that has captured her i...

The Cove, by Ron Rash

Deep in the mountains, outside the small Carolina town of Mars Hill, there’s a hidden cove. You approach it by walking past Slidell’s farmhouse and then going down a trail past a tree hung with bottles that clink like wind chimes, crunching old salt licks and broken glass underfoot. You pass through a grove of dead chestnut trees and find another farmhouse, standing alone amid fields starved of sunshine by the granite overhang.

Ron Rash is expert at summoning up a sense of place, selecting ju...

Collected Poems, by Hope Mirrlees

Born in 1887, Mirrlees was a poet, novelist, and translator who is best known for her fantasy novel, Lud-in-the-Mist (1926), and an influential modernist poem, “Paris” (1920). After graduating from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1913, Mirrlees came to Paris where she eventually settled and was joined by her former tutor and great friend, Jane Ellen Harrison, well-known as one of the first women academicians and someone whose books on the function of ritual I’ve long treasured.

In the 1920s, Mi...

The Art Forger, by B.A. Shapiro [1]

I’m still thinking about artists and their process. Here we have Claire Roth, a young painter who has somehow made herself anathema to the art world. She is still painting, alone in her hardscrabble Boston studio, one of a warren of studios carved out of an old handkerchief factory where she—illegally—also lives. She’s working on what she calls her windows series. As she describes them to the gallery owner who has come to view her work:

“It’s urban windows, Boston windows. Hopper-esque them...

The Art Forger, by B.A. Shapiro

I’m still thinking about artists and their process. Here we have Claire Roth, a young painter who has somehow made herself anathema to the art world. She is still painting, alone in her hardscrabble Boston studio, one of a warren of studios carved out of an old handkerchief factory where she—illegally—also lives. She’s working on what she calls her windows series. As she describes them to the gallery owner who has come to view her work:

“It’s urban windows, Boston windows. Hopper-esque them...

Authenticity, by Deirdre Madden

Finding a new favorite author is a lovely bit of serendipity. Sometimes the prose itself blows me away and, as for example with Cold Mountain, I stop at the end of the first page and tell myself to slow down and savor it. Sometimes, as with Last Orders or Angela’s Ashes, I fall in love with the voice. With other books, the plot grips me or the protagonist is someone I want to spend time with. Here all of these elements are done well, but none stands out. It is simply a good story well-told, a...

Last Orders, by Graham Swift

I first read this Booker-prize-winning novel several years ago, and it’s just as good as I remember it. I don’t always agree with the Booker judges or those that select the Pulitzer winners; the Governor General’s Award is usually a more reliable indicator of a book I will enjoy. But the Booker judges were on the mark with this story of one day in the life of four men. Ordinary men, working men, they have set this day apart to fulfill the last wish of their friend, Jack Dodds, to have his ash...

The Way to Paradise, by Mario Vargas Llosa

Some years ago I went through a beachcomber phase. I was fascinated by a slew of books and films featuring men who had thrown off the bonds of civilisation and taken refuge on a South Seas island. Generally barefoot, with rolled up khaki trousers and a partially unbuttoned white shirt with its tails hanging out, they eked out a precarious existence trudging the beach looking for something salable surrendered by the sea. Unshaven and often drunk, you wouldn’t think they’d seem attractive, much...

Three Weeks in December, by Audrey Schulman

In this novel, Schulman gives us two stories, told in alternating chapters. One takes place in 1899 and follows Jeremy, a young engineer from Maine who has been brought to British East Africa (now Kenya) to help build a railroad for the British. Specifically, his job is to oversee seven hundred men in building a bridge for the railroad over the Tsavo River. Plagued by insects, shivering with malaria, and terrified by the mysterious dangers in this new environment, Jeremy struggles to act like...