A random non-fiction plucking from a library shelf is my usual remedy for a reading slump, allowing me the chance to sober up from a month-long binge A random non-fiction plucking from a library shelf is my usual remedy for a reading slump, allowing me the chance to sober up from a month-long binge of glorious fiction with the hard slap of fact. This book from a polling wonk at IPSOS presents a series of charts and glosses on those charts showing how wrong people are when called upon to make assumptions based on no prior data. As I discovered reading this detailed pseudo-academic thesis, the world of people making inaccurate assumptions about issues with no prior data is far less interesting than I previously assumed—20% less tedium, 40% more intellectual fireworks, and 80% quicker reading time were my predictions—meaning I will lower my expectations around social science books from polling wonks on how wrong people are when they are asked to make assumptions from a position of ignorance in future. Lesson learned. ...more
A mordant tragicomedy of the fractious familial fumbling between a guardian angel saleswoman and her terminal mother told with Rudan’s uncompromising A mordant tragicomedy of the fractious familial fumbling between a guardian angel saleswoman and her terminal mother told with Rudan’s uncompromising waspish prose panache. As in her other (better) novels Night and Love at Last Sight, the novel explores grim themes—in this instance child sexual abuse, the capriciousness of caring for burdensome relatives, and violence (child and domestic)—with a flip and bitter humour that puts the reader at remove from the narrator, whose endless stream of sardonicism becomes tiresome and less amusing as the story rambles repetitively onward....more
Ned is an unmuscular coder who takes steroids to enhance his beefiness when his girlfriend chucks him for being too much of a neghead. Once the muscleNed is an unmuscular coder who takes steroids to enhance his beefiness when his girlfriend chucks him for being too much of a neghead. Once the muscles start a-poppin’, Ned finds himself elevated from the shallows of unassertive nerdery to the realm of illicit snake oil selling on internet forums, where he obsessively runs dozens of sockpuppet accounts to build up an illegal mail-order business. A dryly humorous tale of toxic masculinity, where simply bulking up and conforming to physical ideals of manliness is enough to launch one into a world of unbending self-confidence and uninhibited sex with blonde actresses, Astroturf is an unflashy Houllebecqian fable, a tongue-in-cheek romp told with a perfectly straight face that ponders the silliness of gym culture and the delusion of beefing up to beat one’s mental hang-ups....more
Guardant rant supremo from Croatia’s cross between Lucy Ellmann and Louis Ferdinand-Cèline. A suffocating 200+ pages of spleen from a woman in an abusGuardant rant supremo from Croatia’s cross between Lucy Ellmann and Louis Ferdinand-Cèline. A suffocating 200+ pages of spleen from a woman in an abusive relationship, who narrates her tale with blackly comic bitterness and violent candour—periodically tiresome, yet confrontationally exhilarating. ...more
Surreal Serbian mischief-maker constructs sublimely weird and uncategorizable novels that ultimately convey the restless, twitchy, digressive mind worSurreal Serbian mischief-maker constructs sublimely weird and uncategorizable novels that ultimately convey the restless, twitchy, digressive mind working overtime in his weird old Serbian bonce, and offer a tortured critique on the art of writing itself. This one’s tremendous. For more detail, see a professional reviewer....more
Lethem follows the stellar bruiser A Gambler’s Anatomy with this mirthless stinker. The problems are many and obvious. The first, Lethem’s writing froLethem follows the stellar bruiser A Gambler’s Anatomy with this mirthless stinker. The problems are many and obvious. The first, Lethem’s writing from a female POV in the first person. The protagonist’s voice simply veers across the page with the knock-kneed misaplomb of a pissed-up aunt making a beeline for the quiche at a cousin’s wake, mixing badly mishandled faux-Fleabag sass with Lethemian stylistic flurries. Second, heaped upon this wince-inducing narrative voice is a plot so showily incoherent, insane, and irritating that trying to follow the madcap antics from page to page is really only recommended for readers whose heads resemble Bond of Union by M.C. Escher in a blender. Spinning multiple plates of surreal and frenetic plot lunacy is usually Lethem’s forte, in this one the plates very speedily shatter. Lastly, the novel painfully strives to shoehorn topicality, with pointless Trump references and frequent insertions of conspiratorial hip-shit like contrails. It’s a violently nonsensical mess, easily the worst novel in Lethem’s otherwise consistently zaftig canon....more
Sometimes amusing and deceptively readable (short chapters and tuggy staccato sentences), this novel ultimately collapses under the punishing weight oSometimes amusing and deceptively readable (short chapters and tuggy staccato sentences), this novel ultimately collapses under the punishing weight of the narrator’s excruciating narcissism. The story is narrated by a character unselfconsciously living her life as though her life itself is literature, trying to elevate a banal, self-indulgent soap opera of casual affairs and middle-class über-hip bed-hopping twattery into hallowed prose—the result being screeds of wince-inducing pseudo-literary non-profound wankeroony, riddled with laughably pretentious conversations with the men-friends she arrogantly refers to as “The Lover” (Dumas, innit?) and “The American”. The chapters have irritating titles stolen from European movies, indie rock bands, and literary classix, to help propel the novel’s super-literary literariness to proper heights of hallowed wowness. If this review sounds like the unfair rantings of an exasperated reader, that’s because this review is the unfair rantings of an exasperated reader, close to beddy-byes and needing a kip. But this really is one outrageously self-aggrandising and annoying piece of patience-testing bollocks from a writer utterly besotted by her own narrative allure (the story is autofiction, so the mirror-mirror-on-the-wall drag of this really drags). I’m off to bed. If this review seems unfair in the maw of Monday, I will amend....more
This short primer on the funkiest fictioneers in North Macedonia (for the geographically rusty, Macedonia is a region in the Balkans, not a country), This short primer on the funkiest fictioneers in North Macedonia (for the geographically rusty, Macedonia is a region in the Balkans, not a country), includes sixteen stories from the hippest contemporary writers. Among my favourites, the satire on post-communist bureaucracy ‘A Slip of Paper’ by Dragi Mihajlovski, where an academic encounters the waning powers of fascistic bank clerks; ‘Strained’ by Tomislav Osmanli, a where a party leader arrives at A&E having enveloped an entire computer and a range of acolytes from party headquarters; ‘The Nonhuman Adversary’ by Kalina Maleska, where a translator is tormented by the undwindling page count remaining in his word document; and Žarko Kujundžiski’s ‘Story Addict’, where a deranged fiction-junkie howls for his latest fix of literary smack. The collection showcases a range of styles, from interior melodrama, realist snapshots, to quiet nightmares. Translator Paul Filev has Englished these stories wonderfully, bringing these North Macedonian marvels to the page with truckles of flair. An essential read for any purveyor of post-communist European fiction. ...more
Wild Milk is a truly radiant story collection. A sense of the absurd up there with Flann O’Brien, Marvin Cohen, and Sam Beckett runs through these shoWild Milk is a truly radiant story collection. A sense of the absurd up there with Flann O’Brien, Marvin Cohen, and Sam Beckett runs through these short anti-fables and anti-stories, surreal bursts of irreal comedy that are seriously playful and seriously funny. A world where relationships transgress the bodily and reality is bent around Mark’s fantastical, kindly cynical, and hypnotic prose, Wild Milk is a singular work of inspired madness....more
Curtis White’s latest novel since America’s Magic Mountain in 2004 is an improvisatory comic romp in the style of Gilbert Sorrentino (at his silliest Curtis White’s latest novel since America’s Magic Mountain in 2004 is an improvisatory comic romp in the style of Gilbert Sorrentino (at his silliest and crankiest), Raymond Queneau (at his zippiest), and Raymond Federman (at his most meta-playful). As co-founder of FC2, White’s latest hearkens back to the freewheeling witty madness of that vintage postmodern era, serving up hilariously flippant prose, absurd digressions, and apt aperçus below each chapter heading. A welcome return to form for an extremely underrated comic novelist (see also the fantastic Requiem and Memories of my Father Watching TV)....more
While not a triumph of style, for a book that attempts to précis the entire Vietnam conflict across 650 fact-packed pages, you would find Hastings’s mWhile not a triumph of style, for a book that attempts to précis the entire Vietnam conflict across 650 fact-packed pages, you would find Hastings’s monster tough to trounce. The writer’s pellucid approach is perfect when seeking to suck on a mere information pipe, though what is missing are the sphincter-tightening descriptions of the average Vietnamese villager’s experience living a life of collateral damage for decades, or the perspective of the black grunt facing constant racism from an institutionally racist marine corp, headed by a sequence of institutionally racist presidents. These things are perhaps better left to novelists or memoirs, from whom Hastings cribs when required, so that criticism could be slapped away without snark. Hastings’s forensic detail and skill for concise, fuss-free summation makes this a tremendous, essential history, with requisite scorn heaped on the administrations trading in human lives for reasons of pec-flexing nationalism....more
The third title from Galley Beggar Press that has my mind blown. In Lucia, Pheby reconstitutes the fragments of fact known about Lucia Joyce, the schiThe third title from Galley Beggar Press that has my mind blown. In Lucia, Pheby reconstitutes the fragments of fact known about Lucia Joyce, the schizophrenic only daughter of Nora Barnacle and Jimmie Joyce. In a series of unstinting scenes lingering on the mistreatment and exploitation of Lucia’s body (at the hands of her uncle, brother, father, and employers), the novel presents a clinical and compassionate snapshot of an enigmatic and unknowable historical casualty, with alternating chapters on an unearthed Pharaonic tomb (presumably inspired by the famous photo of Lucia posing in Pharaonic apparel) with illustrations. A highly original and beautifully written novel that summons up Lucia with far more flair and aplomb than an another cacademic hagiography....more
Another scabrously droll satire from one of America’s funniest novelists, this one cocks a snook at the rise of far-right fascism from the perspectiveAnother scabrously droll satire from one of America’s funniest novelists, this one cocks a snook at the rise of far-right fascism from the perspective of a celebrity Indian academic whose seminars on ‘Was Slavery All That Bad?’ are taking conservative audiences by storm. Locking antlers with this mayhem is Peter Bowman, an increasingly insolvent academic wheeled out to counter the popularity of not apologising for slavery. As with Reed’s other comic rambles, this novel veers off happily into other tangents, including a strange story of the well-endowed Bowman pleasuring as succession of wang-keen sirens intent on sapping his strength, with frequent forays into the Hindi language and how the horrory legacy of the British occupation of India remains a lesson unlearned among comfy 2010s fascists. Reed also writes a withering portrait of his doddery self whenever he appears in the novel’s pages. Riotous. ...more
