David Butler (Author of The Judas Kiss)

David Butler and 1 other person liked Derville Murphy's review of Scorched Earth: "Fred Hart, an Irish junior officer in the Second Boer War (1899-1902) witnesses an atrocity perpetrated by his major, Cecil Havelock-Saunders. Stunned by the mindless brutality of the act and despising himself for not intervening, he deserts. Ten yea" Read more of this review »
Nov 27, 2025 09:42AM · see review
David Butler liked Andrew Verlaine's review of Scorched Earth: "If you like historical fiction set not super long ago, but are a bit tired of the two world wars, this could be your next read. It tells of a deserter (2nd Lt Frederic Hart) who witnessed an atrocity during the Second Boer War, who is now hiding out " Read more of this review »
Nov 12, 2025 01:41AM · see review
David Butler liked Patrick Doherty's review of Scorched Earth: "Scorched Earth is a potent and poignant novel about a person struggling to come to terms with trauma and guilt. Masterfully paced, I found it to be both very easy and very difficult to read, especially given everything that's going on in the world to" Read more of this review »
Oct 28, 2025 07:00AM · see review
David Butler liked Jonathan Cosgrove's review of White Spirits: "I'm still reading my way through White Spirits but I absolutely love the collection so far. I haven't hit a story I didn't enjoy yet! Every story has either won a prize or been shortlisted and it's providing lots inspiration for trying to formulate m" Read more of this review »
Oct 19, 2025 05:41AM · see review
David Butler is now following Alan McMonagle's reviews
Oct 10, 2025 09:56AM · like
David Butler rated a book really liked it Scorched Earth by Dara Kavanagh (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Aug 22, 2025 07:29AM · like
David Butler rated a book it was ok The Passenger (The Passenger #1) by Cormac McCarthy	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I don't generally give up on a book after 150 pages, but.... Bad enough the sister's hallucinations, like something escaped from Joyce's Nighttown or Donoso’s Obsceno pajaro de la noche, and featuring a particularly annoying wise-arse thalidomide dwar ...more
Jun 22, 2025 02:13AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Butler rated a book it was amazing The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The Magic Barrel (1958) is one of those collections in which the whole seems greater than the sum of the memorable parts. If the three longest stories deal with ex-pats in Italy, the remaining ten are very much of a piece, and together constitute a c ...more
Jun 07, 2025 07:28AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Butler rated a book really liked it Tenth of December by George Saunders	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
What impresses most about Saunders' fourth story collection, Tenth of December, is a new psychological acuity, not to say a humanistic centre of gravity, in the presentation of characters' interior lives. While several of the stories - 'Escape from S ...more
Jun 05, 2025 03:26AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Tenth of December by George Saunders. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Tenth of December by George Saunders <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Butler rated a book really liked it A Heart So White by Javier Marías	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jun 01, 2025 06:39AM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of A Heart So White by Javier Marías. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — A Heart So White by Javier Marías <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

David Butler and 1 other person liked Derville Murphy's review of Scorched Earth:

"Fred Hart, an Irish junior officer in the Second Boer War (1899-1902) witnesses an atrocity perpetrated by his major, Cecil Havelock-Saunders. Stunned by the mindless brutality of the act and despising himself for not intervening, he deserts. Ten yea" Read more of this review »

David Butler liked Andrew Verlaine's review of Scorched Earth:

"If you like historical fiction set not super long ago, but are a bit tired of the two world wars, this could be your next read. It tells of a deserter (2nd Lt Frederic Hart) who witnessed an atrocity during the Second Boer War, who is now hiding out " Read more of this review »

David Butler liked Patrick Doherty's review of Scorched Earth:

"Scorched Earth is a potent and poignant novel about a person struggling to come to terms with trauma and guilt. Masterfully paced, I found it to be both very easy and very difficult to read, especially given everything that's going on in the world to" Read more of this review »

David Butler liked Jonathan Cosgrove's review of White Spirits:

"I'm still reading my way through White Spirits but I absolutely love the collection so far. I haven't hit a story I didn't enjoy yet! Every story has either won a prize or been shortlisted and it's providing lots inspiration for trying to formulate m" Read more of this review »

David Butler is now following Alan McMonagle's reviews

David Butler rated a book really liked it

Scorched Earth
by Dara Kavanagh (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

David Butler rated a book it was ok

The Passenger (The Passenger #1)
by Cormac McCarthy

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

I don't generally give up on a book after 150 pages, but....
Bad enough the sister's hallucinations, like something escaped from Joyce's Nighttown or Donoso’s Obsceno pajaro de la noche, and featuring a particularly annoying wise-arse thalidomide dwar ...more

David Butler rated a book it was amazing

The Magic Barrel
by Bernard Malamud

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

The Magic Barrel (1958) is one of those collections in which the whole seems greater than the sum of the memorable parts. If the three longest stories deal with ex-pats in Italy, the remaining ten are very much of a piece, and together constitute a c The Magic Barrel (1958) is one of those collections in which the whole seems greater than the sum of the memorable parts. If the three longest stories deal with ex-pats in Italy, the remaining ten are very much of a piece, and together constitute a compelling mosaic of immigrant Jewish New York. They are set (somewhat surprisingly) in the 1950s, given that Malamud’s city of run-down tenements is peopled by solitary or unhappily married males whose identities are defined by age-old trades – cobbler; tailor; baker; store-keeper; change-maker; fur-cutter; fish-monger; janitor; match-maker; rabbinical student; (frustrated) author. In the manner of folk-tales, stories typically open: ‘Feld, the shoemaker…’; ‘Manischevitz, a tailor…’; ‘Davidov, the census-taker…’ ‘Kessler, formerly an egg-candler...’
This socio-economic backwardness, which may be accounted for by their status as first-generation immigrants with imperfect English (Malamud was born in 1914 Brooklyn to Russian-Jewish immigrants who ran a grocery store) makes the author’s 1950s New York feel contiguous to turn-of-the-century pre-industrial ‘centres of paralysis’: Joyce’s Dublin; Anderson’s Winesburg; Babel’s Odessa; Bashevis Singer’s Lublin; perhaps even the Petersburg of Dostoevsky and Gogol; an anachronism even more apparent when one contrasts the vibrant city of big corporations, radio shows and suburban commuters in contemporary New York collections – JD Salinger’s Nine Stories (1953) and Franny and Zooey (1961); John Cheever’s Enormous Radio (1953) and Housebreaker of Shady Hill (1958); Richard Yates’ Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (1962). Even the Jewish tenements of Grace Paley’s The Little Disturbances of Man (1959) bristle and bustle with brio in comparison.
It is not merely the home-based trades and lack of twentieth century technology that make of Malamud an essentially nineteenth century writer. His conception of story and character is, here, very much in the tradition of the parable or folk-tale; this is a significant part of the charm of the collection. All are related by an omniscient third person narrator in unshowy language, and are uniform in tone. The much-anthologised title story opens: ‘Not long ago there lived in uptown New York, in a small, almost meager room, though crowded with books, Leo Finkle, a rabbinical student in the Yeshivah University.’ The stories’ structures typically involve conflicting views between two antagonists in relation to a problem involving a third character – marrying off a daughter; finding a wife; incurring and dealing with a debt; providing (or not) a loan; evicting an unpopular tenant; dealing with a young shop-lifter. Characters are not psychologically complex, and to the extent that they display an inner life, this manifests in direct relation to the story’s problem.
This is not to say that the characters aren’t compelling. There is something marvelous in Pinye Salzman, the ancient matchmaker with a predilection for fish who may or may not be tricking Leo Finkle into a marriage with his daughter - Salzman may well have acted as a prototype for Greg Solomon in Arthur Miller’s 1967 play The Price. The language in which Malamud’s people converse has the foreign syntax and wry humour typical of Yiddish: ‘A sliced tomato you have maybe?’ inquires Salzman. In other stories, ‘that he/it’ replaces the relative pronouns ‘who/which’: ‘Who throws out of his house a man that he lived there ten years and pays every month on time his rent?’, or ‘she is a little lame on her right foot from an auto accident that it happened to her when she was twelve years…’.
One of the markers that place the stories squarely in the post-war era is the imagery of the Holocaust. There are echoes throughout, and these are often pointed up by direct references to Hitler. When Kessler, an old Jew living, pointedly, between German and Italian tenants, is being forcibly evicted: ‘he shouted, struggled, pleaded with his neighbours to help him, but they looked on in a silent group outside the door [while] the two assistants, holding the old man tightly by the arms and skinny legs, carried him, kicking and moaning, down the stairs.’ ‘Are you a Hitler or a Jew?’ Kessler pleads with Gruber, the landlord. Or again, just after a hard-hearted baker’s wife recalls how her relations ended up ‘in one of Hitler’s incinerators’, she ‘wrenched open the oven door. A cloud of smoke billowed out at her. The loaves in the trays were blackened bricks – charred corpses.’
If the lives of these characters are as petty, circumscribed and inescapable as any in Joyce’s Dubliners or Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Malamud nevertheless achieves a remarkable dignity in their deportment, and the very simplicity of the plots and the language contributes in no small way to the effect. Jhumpa Lahiri comments ‘now that I have read them, I cannot believe there was ever a time I had not’. The stories of this collection achieve the inevitability and permanence of true art. ...more

David Butler rated a book really liked it

Tenth of December
by George Saunders

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

What impresses most about Saunders' fourth story collection, Tenth of December, is a new psychological acuity, not to say a humanistic centre of gravity, in the presentation of characters' interior lives. While several of the stories - 'Escape from S What impresses most about Saunders' fourth story collection, Tenth of December, is a new psychological acuity, not to say a humanistic centre of gravity, in the presentation of characters' interior lives. While several of the stories - 'Escape from Spiderhead', say, or 'The Semplica Girl Diaries' - are vintage Saunders, cut from the same 'Po-Mo' cloth as 'CivilWarLand in Bad Decline', 'Sea Oak' or 'Ghoul', and others - 'Exhortation', 'My Chivalric Fiasco' - founder under the weight of parody and/or pastiche - the collection is book-ended by two finely structured, engaging, conventionally realist stories presented from multiple perspectives.
Here are the imaginative inscapes of characters who might have stepped from Joyce Carol Oates' 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?' or Tobias Wolff's 'Hunters in the Snow', with a nod perhaps to William Faulkner or even Chekhov - Saunders' recent A Swim in the Pond in the Rain is evidence of his long appreciation of the Russian Masters. The eponymous 'Al Roosten', meanwhile, has the morbidly sensitive interior life of a character out of Dostoevsky, while Mikey, the war veteran narrator of 'Home', keeps at bay whatever troubling event led to his court-martial as he negotiates a world of platitudes (the comically repeated 'I'm grateful for your service') in which his mother and her partner Harris are facing imminent eviction.
Joel Lovell's suggestive Introduction notes the formative importance of an early encounter with Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five in Saunders' aesthetic, and places it alongside David Foster Wallace's, and this is fair enough so far as it goes. For me, though, even the much-discussed 'The Semplica Girl Diaries' (at 60 pages almost of novella length) is successful more for the understanding with which Saunders' depicts the diary writer's feelings of inadequacy as an under-earning father than for the surreal horror of the treatment of the titular girls. The biographical aspect of Lovell's introduction suggests where Saunders' empathy comes from. ...more

David Butler rated a book really liked it

A Heart So White
by Javier Marías

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

David Butler’s Followers (26)

David’s Bookshelves

David’s Friends (230)

David Butler

Goodreads Author

Combine Editions
David Butler’s books

rss
David’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

See a Problem?

Preview — The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

See a Problem?

Preview — Tenth of December by George Saunders

See a Problem?

Preview — A Heart So White by Javier Marías

David’s Quotes

David’s Friend Comments

	The Judas Kiss 4.50 avg rating — 40 ratings — published 2012 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	City of Dis 4.76 avg rating — 29 ratings — published 2014 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fugitive 4.86 avg rating — 14 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	No Greater Love 4.64 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2013 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	All The Barbaric Glass 4.83 avg rating — 12 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	White Spirits 4.90 avg rating — 10 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Via Crucis 4.38 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2011 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Liffey Sequence it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 7 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Vigil really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 4 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	An Aid to Reading Ulysses 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

David Butler’s Followers (26)

David’s Bookshelves

David’s Friends (230)

David Butler

Goodreads Author

Combine EditionsDavid Butler’s books

rssDavid’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

See a Problem?

Preview — The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

See a Problem?

Preview — Tenth of December by George Saunders

See a Problem?

Preview — A Heart So White by Javier Marías

David’s Quotes

David’s Friend Comments

Combine Editions
David Butler’s books

rss
David’s Recent Updates