Quantcast

California Literary Review

Fiction Reviews

The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir

by Elinor Teele

June 16th, 2008

If you’re going to mix brains with bosoms, however, you have to be very careful stylistically. Readers don’t mind sex, we’re very fond of it in some cases, but we do mind when it’s over the top. And what jars in the racier bits jars overall. Underneath the adjectives and adverbs, there’s a streamlined, engaging book in here. It just needed a firm editor on passages like these

The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson

by Julie Ellam

June 14th, 2008

Jeanette Winterson’s latest novel, The Stone Gods, is a science-fiction novel-within-a-novel adventure and might come as a pleasant surprise to the fans who have seen her through the days of feast then famine.

The Cape May Stories by Robert C.S. Downs

by Jascha Kessler

June 4th, 2008

Rare in our time, the writing in THE CAPE MAY STORIES is superb, even magical in its clear-sighted modesty of style, one that implicitly offers in plenitude, examples of decency. A surprising, and exhilarating, visit to Cape May awaits readers.

Gas City by Loren Estleman

by John Holt

June 2nd, 2008

The characters and the settings in Gas City are rife with intriguing promise that never seems delivered. The story seems one- two-dimensional, never fully realized. That’s why I was unable to remember much of the book. There are a number of good scenes, but with so many quality novels out and about, including several by Estleman himself, these brief flashes of excellence are not sufficient to recommend the book.

The Pearl Jacket and Other Stories: Flash Fiction from Contemporary China

by Elinor Teele

May 5th, 2008

Flash fiction, or the “smoke-long story,” or the “skinny story,” as it is sometimes called in China, is short, true. But as anyone who has tried to write a thank you card knows, brevity ain’t easy. Nor is it truly fair to view this book as a kind of primer on all thoughts Chinese. After all, one doesn’t expect E. Annie Proulx’s work to bear much relation to T.C. Boyle’s, despite the shared vocabulary.

Girl Factory by Jim Krusoe

by John Matthew Fox

April 28th, 2008

And, in true Krusoeian fashion, the oddities are delightful. Jonathan, the adult narrator with a childlike perspective who has a penchant for endangered animals, attempts to free a genetically modified dog named Buck who might or might not be recreating Boris Spassky’s game against Anatoly Karpov during the 1973 Soviet Chess Championship. That’s before Jonathan discovers women cryogenically frozen in yogurt (would that be yogurgenically frozen?) in a basement. It’s the acidophilus in the yogurt that makes things work, apparently—using the type of wink, wink logic that would make slavish devotees to realism queasy.

Hocus POTUS by Malcolm MacPherson

by John G. Rodwan, Jr.

March 31st, 2008

Satire, of course, does not depend on subtlety. However, there are more effective ways to wield it than like a hammer bludgeoning readers. Imagining a more plausible premise also would have helped.

Coffee with… Series

by Elinor Teele

March 20th, 2008

Barnes’s giant of the Western world is short, sharp, and funny, and well worth spending time with, even if he is, perhaps, more modern Englishman than ancient Greek in some places. As a taste of philosophical ideas Coffee with Aristotle is just right – now if only the longer treatises were as palatable.

Double Cross By James Patterson

by John Holt

March 18th, 2008

I love John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series but always thought that his love scenes were clunkers to the point of being embarrassing. Compared to Patterson’s portrayals, MacDonald comes off like Arthur Miller.

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

by John Holt

March 7th, 2008

Often written in a quiet, understated style that belies the madness and violence that seep through every aspect of life in this jungle country more than forty years ago, Tree of Smoke subtly hammers the reader with an unceasing rage that is the true nature of war’s insanity.

Search

CLR's most popular articles

Get The Latest California Literary Review Updates Delivered Free To Your Inbox!

Powered by FeedBlitz

Recent Comments: