AltWeeklies Wire
Wells Tower's 'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned': Short Stories to Pillage Bynew
There’s a great moment in Retreat, a new short story by Wells Tower. Two brothers have been out deer hunting on a chilly island in Maine. They haven’t bagged anything, and they’re wet and cranky. But just as they’re packing up for the day, one spies an enormous moose.
Willamette Week |
John Minervini |
02-03-2010 |
Fiction
In Matthew Flaming's Debut, the Secret, Sordid Origins of... Toledo?new
Life before the internal combustion engine was no damn fun. That, along with a vague sense of disquiet, is the thrust of The Kingdom of Ohio (Amy Einhorn Books, 322 pages, $24.95), the debut novel of Matthew Flaming, who lives either in Brooklyn or Portland.
Willamette Week |
Ben Waterhouse |
12-30-2009 |
Fiction
A Father and Son Connect by Way of the Summer Game in 'The Opposite Field'new
The Opposite Field blends Jesse Katz's both painful and comic struggles as a single dad to remain connected with his growing son through baseball. And like a crafty pitcher, Katz is deft at mixing speeds in his book so that readers are always surprised at what's coming next.
Willamette Week |
Henry Stern |
11-04-2009 |
Fiction
Manhattan Goes Meta in Jonathan Lethem's 'Chronic City'new
Unlike Pynchon in The Crying of Lot 49, which this book at first resembles, Lethem keeps his readers (and his narrator) at too critical a distance, and explains far too much, and thus leaves me still waiting for that novel where Lethem finally knocks one all the way into the bleachers.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
10-21-2009 |
Fiction
Ali Sethi's Debut Novel is a Hitnew
For anyone wishing to write about Pakistan, a well-developed perspective is essential. Auspiciously, the perspective in The Wish Maker is its great victory.
Willamette Week |
John Minervini |
06-17-2009 |
Fiction
Behind Every Great Man, There Are Often Several Womennew
It is Frank Lloyd Wright's tumultuous romantic life that T.C. Boyle re-animates in his novel The Women: Wright married three times, rebuilt a house for each new love and lost a mistress to murderous fire.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
02-18-2009 |
Fiction
'People Of The Book': Like 'The Da Vinci Code' by Someone Who Can Actually Writenew
The two stories certainly have a lot of the same elements: a holy book with an untold story, a rare-book expert with plucky, unconventional methods who causes everyone a lot of trouble, and a whole lot of history. But People of the Book is actually for people who like books.
Willamette Week |
Michael Kimber |
01-15-2009 |
Fiction
'Famous Suicides' Takes on Love and Loss, in Chicago and Ancient Japannew
Mura's book takes as its epigraph Walter Benjamin's oft-repeated statement that history is a tale told by the victors, but the novel shows up this line as a lie. History belongs not to the winners but to the writers and the survivors, who never really win.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
10-16-2008 |
Fiction
Paul Auster Builds an Elaborate Fantasy to Reflect on Real-life Lossnew
The first sentence of Brooklyn novelist Auster's new book reads like Proust channeled through Kafka: "I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle with another bout of insomnia, another white night in the American wilderness."
Willamette Week |
Matt Buckingham |
09-17-2008 |
Fiction
Tags: Man in the Dark, Paul Auster
Chuck Klosterman Attempts Fiction in 'Downtown Owl'new
The standard complaint about Klosterman as a pop-culture essayist is that he is a literary slacker, stubbornly quotidian: He can write about the familiar with fresh insight, but he refuses to write about anything other than the familiar.
Willamette Week |
Aaron Mesh |
09-17-2008 |
Fiction
Tags: Chuck Klosterman, Downtown Owl
Dirk Wittenborn Explores Psychopharmacology and Murder in 'Pharmakon'new
Wittenborn's previous novels, back in the early '80s, before his coke habit and virus-calcified heart brought him low enough to write screenplays, dealt with the safety-netted high wire of art brokers and the congenitally rich.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
08-13-2008 |
Fiction
David Wroblewski Rewrites 'Hamlet' but with Puppiesnew
His debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle , tracks a young dog trainer as he tries to get up the nerve to murder his murderous uncle.
Willamette Week |
John Minervini |
07-09-2008 |
Fiction
Andre Dubus Ill Gets Pulpynew
Dubus III, who also wrote House of Sand and Fog, has achieved some Houdini-caliber misdirection, and his third act may bring you tumbling to the ground.
Willamette Week |
John Minervini |
06-25-2008 |
Fiction
Sasa Stanisic's Debut Novel Explores How Children Discuss Warnew
There is a reason, of course, why Stanisic might choose a child to give voice to atrocity: it's that the adult language of casualty counts and "shelling at Srebrenica," the newsman's reflex, no longer carries much meaning.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
06-18-2008 |
Fiction
Louise Erdrich Returns with a Crazy Quilt of a Novelnew
The Plague of Doves stitches together several of her recent short stories, most of them previously published in The New Yorker. The remarkable thing is how seamlessly the final product fits together.
Willamette Week |
Matt Buckingham |
05-01-2008 |
Fiction
