California Literary Review

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Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• Book Review: Cleopatra: A Biography by Duane W. Roller
  Posted on 10 May 2010 in Biography, Egypt, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  Pity Duane W. Roller, author of Cleopatra: A Biography. I can just imagine the initial conversation at the Oxford University Press: “We want you to write a biography of Cleopatra, sensuous queen of the Egyptians, famed figure of ancient history.” “Excellent, as Professor Emeritus of Greek and Latin at The Ohio State University, I’d be thrilled to delve into a world of intrigue and shifting political sands.” “Good. But no sex, please, we’re British.”

• Book Review: Wild Romance: A Victorian Story of a Marriage, a Trial, and a Self-Made Woman by Chloë Schama
  Posted on 26 Apr 2010 in Biography, Great Britain, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sex
  

  A secret affair. A scandalous sex-filled trial. A tell-all novel. If it’s any consolation to Tiger Woods and Jesse James, they’re not the first to be stripped down to their Jockeys on a worldwide scale. Welcome, William Charles Yelverton, Victorian seducer.

• Book Review: Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom: The True History of Shakespeare and Elizabeth by Charles Beauclerk
  Posted on 06 Apr 2010 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Theatre, Writers
  

  I would have thought Shakespeare in Love might have advanced our understanding of the authorship debate, but apparently not. Writers are still assuming that Shakespeare, be he lowly or lordly, wrote in some kind of mysterious vacuum, where learning stopped after the age of twenty. The idea that an Elizabethan dramatist could collaborate with his fellow actors, seek advice from scholars, listen to firsthand accounts from worldly patrons, observe royal scandals from backstage or borrow a bloody book now and again is apparently impossible.

• Book Review: The American Girl by Monika Fagerholm
  Posted on 04 Mar 2010 in Fiction Reviews
  

  It’s a radioactive fairy tale, with adults known only by nicknames (the Black Sheep, the baroness) and facts twisted into fantasies. Ever seen Heavenly Creatures? There’s a bit of that in here – the overheated imaginings of two girls on the edge of puberty.

• The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
  Posted on 12 Jan 2010 in Art, Fiction Reviews
  

  Oliver won’t socialize. He won’t even speak. He simply spends his days wrapped in his obsession, a pattern that is only slightly modified when he is given painting materials. For then he takes to painting a dark-haired woman over and over again.

• Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving
  Posted on 07 Jan 2010 in Fiction Reviews
  

  For Last Night in Twisted River is the work of a seasoned tale-teller, a writer who can blend his own life (a breakthrough novel on the fourth try, stints in Iowa under the tutelage of Kurt Vonnegut) with Danny’s and still manage to erase himself in the process. It’s the old story within a story trick, the character we thought to be a third person passive now metamorphosing into a first person active. So by the time we reach the finish, a finish that Irving ties neatly back to the beginning, Danny has provided us with an intriguing meditation on the process of fiction writing.

• The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War by James Bradley
  Posted on 08 Dec 2009 in History, Japan, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  James Bradley doesn’t like Theodore Roosevelt. Let’s get that clear from the get-go. Nor does he have much time for William Howard Taft, the gargantuan gourmand, Roosevelt’s right-hand man and his successor as president. And after reading The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War, I have the sneaky suspicion that there’s not much love lost for George Bush, either.

• Nicole Atkins: Femme Noir
  Posted on 26 Oct 2009 in Music, Performing Arts
  

  She’s been called the female Roy Orbison, a psychedelic metalhead who grew up listening to Elvis and Patsy Cline. She adores Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin, does covers of Patti Smith and reminds listeners of Dusty Springfield. She has a voice like gray autumn skies and a fondness for nightmares. Classify Nicole Atkins at your peril.

• Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series by Mark Frost
  Posted on 21 Oct 2009 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Sports
  

  Baseball’s World Series. 1975. The Cincinnati Reds, manager Sparky Anderson’s Big Red Machine, are up 3 games to 2 against Darrell Johnson’s scrappy Red Sox. After a three-day rain delay that has drowned any hope of an inning, the sun rises on the oldest Major League stadium still in use. It’s Tuesday, October 21, at Fenway Park.

• The Bigness of the World by Lori Ostlund
  Posted on 13 Oct 2009 in Fiction Reviews, Short Stories
  

  The Bigness of the World, Ostlund’s first collection of short stories, was good enough for the judges of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She won the prize in 2008. Deservedly so, for Ostlund has an ear, an appendage often ignored by writers in favor of the flashier eye. Alive to the subtext of the everyday, she uses flat conversations as a front for complicated back-stories…

• Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates
  Posted on 08 Sep 2009 in Fiction Reviews
  

  Krista and Aaron eventually do meet, in a shocking incident that leaves little space for spoken words. What Aaron does to Krista and how Krista responds – these are not things that can be easily classified. They are the actions and responses of broken souls. And broken souls don’t have the energy to behave appropriately.

• Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow
  Posted on 31 Aug 2009 in Fiction Reviews, Historical Fiction
  

  Sing in me, Muse quotes Homer (the original one). “Jacqueline, my muse, I speak to you directly for a moment,” quoth our modern man. It is no accident that Homer addresses his story to a French reporter whom he briefly met. For, in a way, his account is his own universal newspaper, an elegy to the disintegration of 20th century America, the winding down of the clock.

• In the Kitchen by Monica Ali
  Posted on 13 Aug 2009 in Fiction Reviews, Great Britain
  

  Yuri is a porter, one of Britain’s penniless immigrants that Ali would like us (and Gabe) to finally acknowledge. He dies alone in the kitchen’s basement, the victim of a tragic accident. Or is it more…?

• The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton
  Posted on 23 Jul 2009 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Philosophy
  

  The concept of Pleasures and Sorrows is a good one. De Botton sets out on a quest to explore a wide range of professions – biscuit manufacturing, rocket science, career counseling – and reflect on modern work. This idea leads him from the jungles of French Guiana to the wilds of suburban South London. He follows the journey of an African fish to the plate of an English boy.

• Sunnyside by Glen David Gold
  Posted on 09 Jul 2009 in Fiction Reviews
  

  For Gold, like Koontz and Høeg, has a way of combining farce and futility that says something about contemporary fiction. They make you laugh, they make you cry, at times they make you want to strangle them for an overuse of irony. I wouldn’t call it magic realism, though there are certainly aspects of the fantastic in each book. It’s more like acid realism, as if they were all on an amazing trip that could go bad at any moment.