Toibin imagines the life of Thomas Mann, focusing less on his work and artistic development than on his unconventional marriage, his complicated relationship with Germany through both world wars, and his homoerotic preoccupation with young men. A vivid and engaging read if you're curious about Mann, particularly the strains of suicide, open homo- and bisexuality, and marriages of convenience that seem to recur in the family.
However, be warned:
If you like intelligent, disturbing literary thrillers that challenge your beliefs about violence and its perpetrators, this book’s for you.
Two young teenaged girls have turned up dead in the past year in a small Missouri town. A Chicago reporter, who grew up there, is sent to cover the story. She has recently emerged from a stay in a psych ward and is struggling to refrain from her habit of carving words into her own skin.
Powers is in a league all his own when it comes to writing about the environment and impending climate catastrophe. He speaks with crystalline emotional and moral clarity about the natural world crashing down around us; we should be terrified, he says, and we must confront the political and economic powers invested in keeping us blithely indifferent.
Oops. I so much wanted to love this. But this sprawling family saga sprawls so far and wide that it's nearly impossible to keep track of who's who, how they're related to each other, and why they do what they do. I was desperate for at least a family tree, or a cast of characters, but there was no help to be found.
There were also descriptions, ideas, and whole paragraphs that struck me as way-too-familiar. Either I'd seen them earlier in the book, or remembered them from Power of the Dog--a disconcerting deja vu. Plus, there were sudden shifts in time, place, and speaker that just ... happened ... from one sentence to the next, with no speaker tag, paragraph break, or segue. Even the two most important characters, The Sheep Queen (Emma) and her daughter Elizabeth, seemed hard to distinguish from each other, which further muddied the central mystery: who, if anyone, gave up her infant daughter for adoption?
Savage can write, no doubt about it. And I think I get what he was intending to do, and partially accomplished at the end. But the book was a slog to get through and I almost gave up several times in frustration.
With some better editing, this book could've been great. As it is, it feels like a rough draft--a messy pool of scenes and people and events not yet honed into a work of art.
I love discovering new authors--or in this case, old, dead authors--whose works are vivid, powerful, and not-widely-known. As for Power of the Dog, you may have seen the movie with Benedict Cumberbatch (always worth watching!) and been either mystified or blown away by its ending. Whether you have or haven't seen the movie, it's well worth reading the book. The novel fleshes out some of the more mysterious elements of the plot and characters--especially what motivates two of the central characters, Phil and Peter. The abusive Phil of the novel is more sympathetic, and the Peter of the novel more chillingly remote.
The movie (directed by Jane Campion, best known for The Piano) is beautiful and deeply affecting, and treats us to a wholly unanticipated ending. In the novel, the ending is shocking but also deeply poignant. We question the neatness of good and bad, and experience the tragedy of simply being human.
Read the book.
Klara is a robot, one of many designed to serve as nannies/companions for children. Ishiguro traces the development of her emotions and understanding as she cares for a young girl, and ultimately asks: what makes us human? Can a robot be more compassionate, more loving, more self-sacrificing, than ourselves? Like everything by Ishiguro, a fascinating, thought-provoking, and touching read.
The Vixen
At his first job as a slush-pile editor, Simon, a young Jewish man grapples with fallout from the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Should he help bring to market a book that portrays Ethel as a seductive, greedy, and fully complicit traitor? As Simon's anxiety grows, the truth becomes ever harder to pin down.
Prose forces us to confront our own desires for approval, money, and influence, and see our complicity in the lies perpetuated by those who will benefit from them most.
