William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses
Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner My rating: 4 of 5 stars Go Down, Moses (1942), though not always grouped with Faulkner’s indisputable masterpieces, is nevertheless one of his most … Continue reading
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon My rating: 5 of 5 stars A summary of this classic 1965 short novel’s unsummarizable plot: California housewife Oedipa Maas becomes executor … Continue reading
Jean Giono, Melville
Melville: A Novel by Jean Giono My rating: 4 of 5 stars Twentieth-century French novelist Jean Giono is currently being introduced (or re-introduced by NYRB Classics) to American readers, and … Continue reading
Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer
The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Ghost Writer is the good Roth, the safe Roth, wholesome enough to give to children and kittens … Continue reading
Herman Melville, Benito Cereno
Melville’s Short Novels: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism by Herman Melville My rating: 5 of 5 stars Benito Cereno is one of the post-Pierre short works of the 1850s by which Melville … Continue reading
Nella Larsen, Quicksand
Quicksand by Nella Larsen My rating: 5 of 5 stars This rigorously ironic 1928 novel of the Harlem Renaissance (its author’s first) has itself, in its afterlife, succumbed to an … Continue reading
Vladimir Nabokov, The Enchanter
The Enchanter by Vladimir Nabokov My rating: 3 of 5 stars VN’s first pass at the Lolita subject matter, The Enchanter was written in 1939—making it one of the author’s … Continue reading
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo My rating: 5 of 5 stars It sometimes seems as if great novels—where “great” implies success at the historico-political task of summing an epoch or … Continue reading
Justin Torres, We the Animals
We the Animals by Justin Torres My rating: 2 of 5 stars We the Animals is Justin Torres’s well-received 2011 debut. A short novel made up of discontinuous vignettes, it … Continue reading
César Aira, How I Became a Nun
How I Became a Nun by César Aira My rating: 3 of 5 stars To recap, following on from my review of the brilliant An Episode in the Life of … Continue reading
