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Kim Echlin: The Disappeared

October 21, 2009

Trevor reviews Kim Echlin’s The Disappeared.

Anne Michaels: The Winter Vault

October 17, 2009

Trevor reviews Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault.

2009 National Book Award Finalists

October 14, 2009

This year’s National Book Award finalists have been announced.

Colin McAdam: Fall

October 13, 2009

Trevor reviews Colin McAdam’s Fall.

E. Lockhart: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

October 9, 2009

Trevor reviews E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks.

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Episodes of The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast: discussions of books and authors, shaped by curiosity, rereading, and the pleasures of talking things through.

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The Reading Life

The Mookse and the Gripes Instagram features a more immediate space with posts and videos about current reads, recent finds, including a steady dose of Criterion films.

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Host with @bibliopaul of The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast. Reviews of books and film. Judge of the 2017 Best Translated Book Award.

Happy May! #Reading #BookReel #Bookstagram #Readin

Happy May! #Reading #BookReel #Bookstagram #ReadingLife #SpringReading

📚April Releases from @nyrbooks I had not heard o

📚April Releases from @nyrbooks

I had not heard of Nancy Lemann before, and Geoff Dyer’s introduction to Lives of the Saints (not to mention my sampling of the first bits of each of the books she has out this past month) make me very excited to get to know her. I already love Riley, and the Carlisle and Fiedler have me excited to contemplate literature and writing! So much to explore and discover in just this one month!

Have you read any of these yet?

#NYRBClassics #bookstagram

In our new episode @bibliopaul and I got to sit do

In our new episode @bibliopaul and I got to sit down with Nick During and Abigail Dunne from @nyrbooks. We talk about the various series at NYRB (Classics, Comics, Contemporary, Children’s, and Poets), get excited by recent and forthcoming releases (including some exciting books just over the horizon). Episode 131 is out! #NYRBooks #NYRBClassics #BookReel #BookPodcast #LitPodcast

A few years back, NYRB Classics published Inès Cag

A few years back, NYRB Classics published Inès Cagnati’s debut novel, Free Day (1973), and last month we got her second novel, Crazy Genie (1976), both in lovely translations from the French by Liesl Schillinger. Cagnati wrote four novels, and if these first two are any indication, I really hope we’ll see the others soon!

Crazy Genie is a sad story told by the young Marie, whose voice reminded me of the plainspoken yet profound narrator of Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns. From the beginning we come to understand that pretty much the only thing Marie wants is affection from her mother, whom the rest of the community calls Crazy Genie. Her mother, though, is more often than not distant, brushing Marie off, telling her to get out of her hair.

Yet Marie loves her. More than that, Marie simply loves. Starved for love in return she turns to a few pets, forming bonds that sustain her slightly while her mother works endlessly for villagers who can’t believe that a woman from one of the “best” families has fallen so far.

Marie, so often left outside, uncertain of her heritage or what might happen next, is essentially an unreliable narrator when it comes to details. But reading between the lines we understand well enough the ongoing tragedy. And then there’s always Marie’s yearning underlying it all:

“I always wanted to tell her that I was there waiting for her, that I was so happy, so happy that she had come back this night again, that me, I loved her. But her face was full of silence.”

How Cagnati managed to convey a heart so full of love and the desire to be loved amidst so much ugliness…amazing.

#InesCagnati #CrazyGenie #NYRBClassics #FrenchLiterature #WomeninTranslation

My first time reading Peter Taylor. #PeterTaylor #

My first time reading Peter Taylor. #PeterTaylor #ShortStory #AmericanLiterature #BookReel #LibraryofAmerica

Maybe I go a bit overboard when asked about favori

Maybe I go a bit overboard when asked about favorite translations by Margaret Jull Costa. #MargaretJullCosta #TranslatedLiterature #LiteratureInTranslation #SpanishLiterature #PortugueseLiterature

And that cover—from Kay Sage’s The Passage—perfect

And that cover—from Kay Sage’s The Passage—perfection! #NYRBClassics #AdolfoBioyCasares #TheInventionofMorel #MargaretJullCosta #ArgentinianLiterature

Marie NDiaye’s work, which I love, often explores

Marie NDiaye’s work, which I love, often explores the instability of identity and the way women are asked to accommodate. To do this, she has a way of introducing a seemingly straightforward and grounded story that shifts into the surreal, where the narrator seems to always be trying to keep up while their impression of the world gets radically transformed. Her latest to be translated into English (and also just shortlisted for the International Booker Prize) is no exception.

The Witch begins with our narrator, Lucie, telling us that when her twin daughters turned twelve she initiated them “into the mysterious powers.” Lucie comes from a line of powerful witches, though she herself has always been limited. I love how in the first paragraph NDiaye deflates any sense of wonder. For her daughters, these powers are not a source of awe at all. At best they seem ambivalent, but maybe that’s just how they feel about anything coming from their mom. Lucie says her daughters “no more understood the need to care about it or suddenly somehow master it than they saw the interest in learning to cook the dishes I served them.”

From there, the novel moves in series of disorienting shifts, both for Lucie and the reader. Lucie’s husband is suddenly gone, and the initial confusion she feels at the loss quickly becomes acceptance. Her parents, whose relationship seemed exemplary, separate just as abruptly, and her mother’s new partner appears as an already established fact. The world around Lucie rearranges itself without explanation.

The way NDiaye does this made me think of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, where long-established facts seem to materialize out of nowhere, and the narrator is left wondering how they failed to notice what has always been true until they simply move along as if it always were true. NDiaye seems to use this technique to explore a survival mechanism. Lucie has little control over what happens around her, and so each shift is absorbed. All the while she has these powers, but the men in her life in particular prefer to not just ignore them but to insist they aren’t real.

#MarieNDiaye #TranslatedLiterature #FrenchLiterature #InternationalBookerPrize

Responding to a comment on my dusty unread books r

Responding to a comment on my dusty unread books reel. After listening, do you have a hankering to read Great Expecations? #UnreadBooks #GreatExpectations #CharlesDickens #VictorianLiterature #BookReels

What books have been sitting unread on your shelf

What books have been sitting unread on your shelf the longest? #BookReel #ReadingLife #UnreadBooks

I’m absolutely loving getting better prepared to t

I’m absolutely loving getting better prepared to talk about Faulkner in June with @bibliopaul for our next author focused episode. I’ve been intimidated by The Sound and the Fury for years and years. This particular edition, I see, was given to me by my parents for Christmas in 2001 (thanks Mom and Dad!), and so it’s made its way around my shelves for just shy of a quarter century.

But no regrets. I’m so glad I finally read this. That’s not quite the right word. I’m glad it finally experienced this. Because perhaps more than any other book I’ve ever read, The Sound and the Fury was an experience.

For the first section, I had no real idea what was going on. The story is told through a stream-of-consciousness narrative by Benjy Compson, who moves from past to present often without much indication of the shift. Things are happening around him, but we (like him) cannot capture it fully. I found the raw immediacy surprisingly emotional.

We get to understand the story in more detail in the next two sections, told by his two brothers, Quentin (on his last day on earth) and the deeply unlikable Jason. The final section goes to a third-person narrator, which probably helps clear plot points up, but the parts that stay with me are the three brothers. Somehow Faulkner made those sections terrifyingly real as they often fussed about their family, in particular their sister Caddy.

I’m looking forward to more. I’ve already started Absalom, Absalom!

#WilliamFaulkner #TheSoundandtheFury #SouthernLiterature #AmericanLiterature #BookReview

What can you read while waiting for @markhaber ‘s

What can you read while waiting for @markhaber ‘s Ada? Of course, if you haven’t, his three novels that are out from @coffeehousepress right now. Also, two (almost three) short pieces in @southwest_review can help mitigate your Haber hunger. #MarkHaber #Literature #BookReel #CoffeeHousePress #SouthwestReview

Episode 130 is up! Here @bibliopaul and I start a

Episode 130 is up! Here @bibliopaul and I start a short three-part series on beginnings, middles, and ends! #BookReel #ReadingPodcast #BookPodcast

I think Richard Wright said it well when he wrote

I think Richard Wright said it well when he wrote about The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: “I don’t know what the book is about; the nearest I can come to indicating its theme is to refer to the Catholic confessional or the private office of the psychoanalyst.” It’s the novel we read for this month’s library book club, and tonight we get to sit down and discuss it. I’m glad I don’t have to feel the pressure to put my finger on just what it’s all about. The best I can say, having just finished it, is that it is a book about a host of unreciprocated relationships, connections people depend on just to keep going.

Central to the story is a deaf man named John Singer. In the first chapter, we learn that the man Singer lived with for a decade has been placed in an insane asylum. Now Singer lives alone but is always thinking about his friend, who, to be honest, doesn’t (and didn’t) seem to care. Meanwhile, four other individuals in the small Georgia mill town see Singer as a safe place for their own confessions, though they don’t know not the first thing about Singer himself—and they don’t seem to care to ask. In particular, there is the young girl Mick Kelly, who wants to be a musician . . . and turns to a deaf man as the one who might understand her desires best.

And I’m not entirely sure what to make of it all. There’s loneliness and pain throughout, and we watch hopes and dreams rise and fall. But sitting in the aftermath, I’m most intrigued by and mystified by those who come to Singer and who “did not look him in the eye, and in their faces there was neither love nor hate.”

I’m excited for the discussion tonight. I may not come away with clear answers, but I’m looking forward to where the questions lead.

#CarsonMcCullers #TheHeartIsALonelyHunter #SoutherLiterature #AmericanLiterature

One of my favorite memories from our trip to Engla

One of my favorite memories from our trip to England last October was a rainy day in Winchester. We visited Austen’s home, Chawton, the cathedral, and the new Jane Austen statue. We walked a lot and were cold and soaked through, and it’s still one of those days I wish you could step back into.

#JaneAusten #WinchesterCathedral #JaneAustenHouse #ChawtonHouse

Spark’s 1960 novel The Ballad of Peckham Rye is th

Spark’s 1960 novel The Ballad of Peckham Rye is the fourth book in my 22-month chronological journey through Muriel Spark’s novels, inspired by @literary.woman. It was new to me, but I’d heard folks speak fondly of this one.

I mentioned in last month’s review of Memento Mori that once I got into that book I felt a bit disoriented because Spark tends to set things spinning and then let us observe what the characters say and do without a whole lot of explanation between the lines. I appreciate it, but it does mean I often find her novels more challenging that they seem on the surface.

That was the case with this one as well. The Ballad of Peckham Rye’s opening set me up with a false sense of security: Humphrey Place is outside the door of his former fiancée’s home but he is denied entry. After all, at the wedding, when asked if he would take Dixie to be his wedded wife, Humphrey said, “No, to be quite frank I will not.” There is a consensus that Humphrey would not have done this had Dougal Douglas not come to town.

Spark then takes us back to when this Douglas first arrived in Peckham Rye, joining the firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley to do “human research.” While it is not always clear just how he does it (“I have the powers of exorcism . . . The ability to drive devils out of people.”) everyone’s lives begin to wobble; things are just not quite the same once he arrives.

As I mentioned, I continue to find Spark a tricky writer. Spark just doesn’t guide me in the way I expect. Nevertheless, I am enjoying the journey.

It was great reading this alongside The Comforters and Memento Mori because we see the recurrence of Spark’s disruptive force. In The Comforters, it’s the disembodied voice from the typewriter. In Memento Mori, it’s the anonymous phone call reminding the listener of their death. Here, it is Dougal, who may be literally diabolical, or may simply be a person whose presence unsettles everyone around him. In each case, something enters the social world and disturbs it. Ultimately the force does not control outcomes; it reveals the characters.

Next up: The Bachelors.

#22MonthsWithMuriel #MurielSpark #WomensLiterature #Reading #BookReview

One of my favorite books is Stone Upon Stone, by W

One of my favorite books is Stone Upon Stone, by Wiesław Myśliwski, translated by Bill Johnston. It won the Best Translated Book Award. This lovely edition was published by @archipelagobooks. #WieslawMysliwski #ArchipelagoBooks #PolishLiterature #TranslatedLiterature #WorldLiterature

My copy of William H. Gass’s The Tunnel has arrive

My copy of William H. Gass’s The Tunnel has arrived from @dalkeyarchive, along with the audiobook! I’ve read what @nyrbooks has published; time for the big one. #WilliamHGass #DalkeyArchive #TheTunnel #BookReels #NYRBClassics

One of my book clubs is reading Steven L. Peck’s 2

One of my book clubs is reading Steven L. Peck’s 2022 novel Heike’s Void. Before diving into that, I wanted to go back and read Peck’s 2009 novella, A Short Stay in Hell.

In this intriguing, unsettling work, Peck examines the insanity of eternity. His protagonist, Soren Johansson, was a Mormon in life. He believed that after death he would be reunited with his family and live with them forever. Instead, he finds himself confronted by a demon who informs him that the one true religion was Zoroastrianism, and that since he was not of the true religion and would therefore need to spend some time in hell, eternal damnation does not exist. “Hell is for your edification and wisdom. Punishment? Yes. But not forever.”

What, then, is Johansson’s particular hell? It resembles something like Borges’ Library of Babel: a practically (but not actually) infinite library containing every possible book that could be assembled within 410 pages, most of them nothing more than nonsensical arrangements of letters, symbols, and spaces. Somewhere among them is the book of Johansson’s life. Find it, and he will be released from hell, though not from infinite time.

On the one hand, while task is clearly difficult it’s not impossible. If Johansson proceeds one book at a time, it’s inevitable that he will eventually find the right one. But as the total footage of shelves and the number of years grow, beyond anything the mind can reasonably hold, meaning begins to collapse.

Johansson is not alone in this vastness. One of the novella’s strengths lies in its exploration of relationships over time, and what becomes of them when time itself ceases to have any meaningful boundary. What does it mean to consciously exist, with or without another, for a thousand years? How about a million? How about 100 billion, and to know that someday this will all just be a distant memory?

Ultimately this book was one of the most effective explorations of unfettered time I’ve ever read. Is eternity something we truly want, or is it only meaningful because we can never actually grasp it?

#AShortStayInHell #StevenLPeck #ExistentialLiterature #Reading #Bookstagram

Episode 129 is live! @bibliopaul and I talk to @lu

Episode 129 is live! @bibliopaul and I talk to @luis.panini about reading projects! #Reading #BookReel #ReadingPodcast #BookPodcast #bookstagram

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