This is a review I wrote for The Quarterly Conversation a few years ago. I’ve linked to it before, during a past Women In Translation months even, but now that the site is no longer — RIP QC! — I’ve revised and moved it permanently to Reader at Large. Bohman is one of my favorite writers. She doesn’t coddle her characters or give her heroines … Continue reading Two Novels by Therese Bohman, both translated by Marlaine Delargy.
Read on its own, outside the context of a body of work that includes 13 novels, 4 plays, 3 children’s books, 1 screenplay and assorted essays, The Cheffe: A Cook’s Novel by Marie NDiaye is a deceptively straight-forward tale about the life of a gifted French female chef told by her lovelorn protégé. For readers familiar, passionate even, about NDiaye, it seems an outlier. Traditional … Continue reading The Cheffe: A Cook’s Novel by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump
There’s an emotional stoicism to Hwang’s characters that might be misconstrued as flatness, but should be perceived as an idiosyncrasy of the author’s prose. The lives Hwang depicts are not easy ones, and could have been twisted into distasteful melodramas. The pain and suffering that Bari, Woohee, Minwoo, and the two brothers experience is more powerful for being muffled, filtered, as if their spirits and … Continue reading Korean Writer Hwang Sok-yong
I do love a good mystery. And I’ve been a fan of Anthony Horowitz, sometimes without even realizing it, for years. I’ve enjoyed his television series — New Blood, Midsomer Murders, and Foyles’ War. And I truly love his Sherlock Holmes pastiches: The House of Silk and Moriarty. His latest series, featuring a detective named Hawthorne, is wonderfully cheeky. Horowitz puts himself in a starring … Continue reading The Sentence Is Death by Anthony Horowitz
My review of Dual Citizens, Alix Ohlin’s novel about mothers, daughters, and sisters, was my first review for Ron Slate’s On the Seawall. Plot- and character-driven novels can be difficult to write about when you’re trying to avoid a plot dump. It took more than one draft (or three) for me to figure out what I wanted to say about this particular book. Fortunately, I … Continue reading Alix Ohlin’s Dual Citizens
READER AT LARGE 