L.S. Popovich's Blog, page 5

Review of The Academy Outside of Ingolstadt by Damian Murphy

A very readable short novel by one of my favorite living authors.  I feel like when you say ‘living author’ you’re talking about someone about to keel over. But Damian Murphy may put out dozens of more books in his time. At the rate he is going we can look forward to many more descents […]

Review of Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati

The author depicts the daily travails of individuals encountering bizarre and unexplainable phenomena. The details of the stories accumulate in subtle shifts of tone, always sliding toward uncanny doom. The consequences the hapless heroes face are sometimes uncertain – the tales are often abandoned at the perfect moment, when the destructive incident is about to […]

Review of War by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

A nasty brutish and short book.   But rewarding. The perils of war. We follow Ferdinand, a wounded soldier, as he is taken in and variously abused by nurses and doctors. As he inhabits the tenuous zone of the infirmary, striking out periodically to escape an uncertain fate, he is haunted by the memories of his […]

Review of Notes from the Underworld by Vik Shirley

A very short fantastical exploration of the traditional Greco-Roman underworld, full of gods, monsters and characters compiled from popular Greek myths.  It is far to short, with prose poems or paragraphs taking up 1/4 of a page. It would have made a fine short story, but is packaged like a novella. The illustrations help pad […]

Review of The Nun by Denis Diderot

A brutal and brilliant satire, but atypical for its time.  Diderot was jailed for his polemic writings. Rightfully indignant toward religious men of power of the time. His most famous works were published posthumously – the only ones still in print – regarded as classics. He fits snuggly next to Rousseau on the bookshelf, although […]

Review of Tears of a Komsomol Girl by Audrey Szasz

An experimental novel with photographs.  The plot revolves around a young female protagonist rebelling against her harsh upbringing by transgressing in various typical ways. She makes the perfect target of a notorious serial killer. The author spends ample time describing the Brutalist cityscape of the USSR, which is a place she is familiar with. She […]

Review of The Architect by Brendan Connell

Connell delivers another absorbing fictional account of bizarre people acting in satirical fashion.  This is a baroque and elegant gem about a brilliant architect driven mad by his vision of the greatest edifice ever to be imagined. His eldritch genius spreads to others, infecting them with illusions of grandeur, leading them to fall under his […]

Review of Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan

The supremacy of storytelling. A fantastic and magic realist tale about a giant, a movie theater and a lot of other things. The author managed to conjure a surreal setting, painting sympathetic characters I will never forget and tying seemingly disparate events together through unbelievable, but clever, coincidences. The writing was super smooth throughout. I […]

Review of Mystery Train by Can Xue

Can Xue is one of the recurring nominees for the Nobel Prize. I can see why. Her body of work is varied and unique, relevant, and large. This short novel takes place mostly on a train. One of my favorite literary settings. The main character undergoes a kafkaesque series of mishaps, ending up in a […]

Review of Authority (Southern Reach, #2) by Jeff VanderMeer

I am sad to say I did not get any entertainment out of this one.  Sure, it put a few of the pieces into place, but the ever expanding mystery of Area X remains largely unexplained. But we did not go into it hoping for explanations, I would think. We went into it for that […]