Author Archives: mkevane

Just, pretty amazing. Ruiz-Tagle was actually a writer in the Pinochet period?

Very competent writing, starts off strong with good plot and characterization, but then just becomes plodding as the obvious plot slowly (excruciatingly so) unfolds. Will they cross the mountain pass? Yes! Will he marry the princess’s handmaiden? Yes! Will the … Continue reading →

Camille Bordas Colorin Colorado. I read it twice. Second time with a close read, three pages of notes. Great short story for breaking down structure. Shame seems to be the central theme on the surface. Is there something lurking underneath? … Continue reading →

Sparingly, I use godawful. This was one of those occasions. Lots of imagination, fine. But as a novel where the reader is immersed and transported? It did not work for me at all. Too many adjectives?

A very nice review from The Guardian is here. I enjoyed this short collage-novel. Lots of abrupt paragraphs, but a coherent mood and flow. A bit absurd, a bit melancholy. Apparently it is part of a quartet of similar approaches. … Continue reading →

Lo único que quiero escribir es que estoy bastante seguro de que en mi lista de 10 libros a leer otra vez antes de que me muera esta novela estará incluida.

People who are older than me often speak in hushed tones of Somerset Maugham… his world-weary tone, the wry commentary, the idea that some special humans grapple with BIG decisions and we should all strive to emulate them or perhaps … Continue reading →

Beautiful writing. I’m inspired a little bit, to think more cosmically. But in the end, it seemed like a Koyaanisqatsi. Without plot, there is just the music of Harvey’s language evoking images.

Almost done with Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House and a nice chart of all the characters imgur.com/gallery/8OLD… reinforced for me that there doesn’t seem to be theme or plot or nada and I guess that’s what people like in novels … Continue reading →

I really liked Doomsday Book, but these two novels, Lincoln’s Dream and Passages, were just awful. Reading goodreads reviews it seems that this is well-known… I wish I had known. Repetitive, constantly dropping obvious hints, incoherent transitions. I gave up … Continue reading →

Our neighborhood book club read a few short stories, including of course “The Lottery.” I had read that long ago, and probably several times since, and there is an excellent reading aloud of the story on The New Yorker website. … Continue reading →

El espíritu de la ciencia-ficción / Roberto Bolaño (stopped after awhile) Nocturno de Chile / Roberto Bolaño (When he goes to the house at the end where they used to have the literary conversations, and it was a torture house… … Continue reading →

I have been working through short stories by Bolaño, in a collection I bought when I accompanied MBA students to Chile. “William Burns” has that narrative ambiguity that I guess is his trademark: the occasional narrator remark that a detail … Continue reading →

I read about 100 pages of Passage, by Connie Willis. I really liked Doomsday Book. But Passage was typing, not writing. Dialogue and inner monologue that repeated itself, the complicated hallways and stairways of the hospital. After 100 pages the … Continue reading →

Read Gene Wolfe’s Shadow & Claw… part of ‘The Book of the New Sun’. Reviews suggest amazing. First part, Shadow, indeed great- wonderfully written, A+ narrator voice. Then falls apart. Claw a hodgepodge. Wolfe seemingly lost track of what we … Continue reading →

My book club read The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis, and discussed today. All agreed: a ham-fisted, boring allegory for thinking about the meaning of life and how to be a person who will be closer to God. God turns … Continue reading →

Published back in 1994 and 1998, the novels seem very prescient about our new cusp-of-AI age. In the novels, scanning and uploading of conscious human sentience is achievable. It feels like that could be 50 years away, at this point … Continue reading →

I loved the narrator voice here. It’s a picaresque farce of a novel, drawing a lot on Shakespeare’s comedies. Very enjoyable read, although in the end maybe more like a delicious trifle. Possibly there is a deeper literary subtext going … Continue reading →

I really wanted to like this, but in the end it seemed more trifling that substantive. A foreword tries hard to make the case for the novelette as a showcase for writing craft mastery, in the device of the narrator … Continue reading →