Posts filed under “reviews”.
reviews
Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neil’s Hotel by William Trevor
Reads like this:
He had bought a small plot of ground a few miles from where they lived and he had just erected on it two glass-houses in which he proposed to cultivate tomatoes for profit. He had come back one evening and asked her if she’d ever noticed tomatoes in the shops. ‘A full chip [...]
An Enemy of the People
I’ve made a great discovery. . . and I’ll tell you what it is: the strongest person in the world is the one who stands alone
Dr. Tomas Stockmann.
Henrik Ibsen’s opening play at the newly refurbished Sheffield Crucible, is An Enemy of the People, with Anthony Sher in the role of Dr Stockmann.
It’s a disturbing drama, [...]
Disturbing the Peace by Richard Yates
The second chapter opens with a Kafkaesque scene:
He woke up soaked with sweat, breathing stale and fetid air. A naked light bulb shone in his eyes and he found he was in a steel-framed bunk slung by chains from the wall, like a bunk in a troopship or a jail.
“. . . Everybody out,” a [...]
Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller
First published in 2003, Heller’s novel opens like this:
1st March 1998
The other night at dinner, Sheba talked about the first time that she and the Connolly boy kissed. I had heard most of it before, of course, there being few aspects of the Connolly business that Sheba has not described to me several times over. [...]
By Night in Chile – review
Roberto Bolaño’s novella By Night In Chile is a slim volume, 130 pages in the English translation by Chris Andrews, and is a narrative comprised of only two paragraphs.
It reads like this:
In the fifth class I talked about Wages, Price and Profits and discussed the (Communist) Manifesto again. After an hour General Mendoza was sleeping [...]
