California Literary Review

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http://www.squamcreativeservices.com/

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• 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.

• Marlee Matlin: Bold Moves and Few Regrets
  Posted on 10 Jun 2009 in Biography, Disability, Movies, Movies & TV
  

  “I worry about nothing except doing work that I like and that I look at as quality work. I don’t think of legacies or what people think. They are bold moves because I’ve found I can get the most attention with doing things that people don’t expect of me. It’s just the way it is.”

• The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker
  Posted on 27 May 2009 in Agriculture, Fiction Reviews, Netherlands
  

  Deceptively plain in its phrasing, almost lethargic in its pace, The Twin is about as flat as the Dutch landscape in which it’s set. Yet lurking in the white spaces is something one can sense, if not pin down precisely. A moody sense of colors – of grey and blue – of silvery insights breaking through a dull day, and of moving between the modern world and a rural life untethered to minutes.