Monthly Archives: November 2013

The Pregnant Widow

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Robert Earle

The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis is a challenging novel for a number of reasons. The first challenge is that is too long. The second challenge is that it is too silly. The third challenge is that it is too … Continue reading →

Posted in The relationship between fiction and fact | Tagged divorce, gender roles, growing old, love, marriage, personal identity, sexual revolution, the 60s | Leave a comment

Drama City by George Pelecanos

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Robert Earle

Drama City by George Pelecanos is an absorbing crime novel because it focuses more on intricacies of character than it does on crime itself. Beyond that, it shines a bright light on two protagonists who are in the struggling phase … Continue reading →

Posted in The relationship between fiction and fact | Tagged characterization, crime fiction, drugs, literary fiction, redemption | Leave a comment

The Unwinding by George Packer

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Robert Earle

The Unwinding by George Packer is a book about the way the United States got off track, crushed its middle class, created a gilded moneyed class, and passed through what sometimes is called The Great Recession and sometimes The Bailout … Continue reading →

Posted in The relationship between fiction and fact | Tagged Bailouts, collapse of American middle class, financial collapse, Great Recession | Leave a comment

Peace by Richard Bausch

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Robert Earle

Peace is a novel by Richard Bausch that captures the brutality, loneliness, and moral complexity of war. It’s effectively written, highly controlled, vivid, and disturbing. There’s really no peace at all in this novel. The setting is Italy, WWII. Three … Continue reading →

Posted in The relationship between fiction and fact | Tagged post-traumatic shock disorder, the literature of war, war, wars lacking popular support | Leave a comment

A Bit on the Side by William Trevor

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Robert Earle

William Trevor’s collection of short stories, A Bit on the Side, is uniformly excellent, each story a minor masterpiece of narrative, character, theme and setting. The closest comparison in English is Dubliners, by James Joyce, and not only because both … Continue reading →

Posted in The relationship between fiction and fact | Tagged Irish writing, masterful writing, short stories, understatement | Leave a comment

Oracle Night by Paul Auster

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Robert Earle

Paul Auster’s Oracle Nights is a novel about a young, rising novelist writing his way into the realization that his wife has had a lengthy intermittent affair with an older, very successful novelist–to the point that the wife, when she … Continue reading →

Posted in The relationship between fiction and fact | Tagged clumsy endings, fluid writing, noir versus irony | Leave a comment

Civilwarland in Bad Decline

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Robert Earle

George Saunders’ collection of stories cum novella, Civilwarland in Bad Decline, is a comic, satirical assault, sometimes fighting with paper tigers, that repeats certain formulae, perhaps strategically, perhaps obsessively. In numerous stories a questionable protagonist is trapped in some kind … Continue reading →

Posted in The relationship between fiction and fact | Tagged anti-heroes, comic writing, dystopias, satire, short stories | Leave a comment

All the Little Live Things

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Robert Earle

All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner is a mid-career novel written in the middle of the 1960s, with all that era entailed as its subject. Our narrator, Joe, has moved to California with his wife, Ruth, and hopes … Continue reading →

Posted in The relationship between fiction and fact | Tagged 1960s, effort versus inspiration, goodness, mishaps, naturalism | Leave a comment