I am currently reading four books.
One is called The Moment by Douglas Kennedy. I only had time to read the first chapter before it was snatched inconsiderately from me by my daughter. But one chapter was all I needed to get well and truly hooked. Kennedy is a born storyteller but he can be much more than that, just as Patricia Highsmith was so much more than a crime writer. His storytelling art allows him to say some important things about human relations and relationships.
Stephen King is the Charles Dickens or Honoré de Balzac of our age: sprawling, uneven but beyond doubt a genius. His latest novel is called 11.22.63. Curiously enough, it is written 11/22/63 in the American edition. On the strength of the first few chapters, I do not find it quite up to the level of Under the Dome but that's the thing about King: you never quite know how what's going to happen next. I will say that, on this occasion, I think he owes a certain debt to a woefully underrated film called Groundhog Day.
I'm sorry to report that I'm rather marking time with A Time of Gifts. It is not such an easy read as the above two, and besides I'm engrossed in the first few pages (free on my iPad Kindle app) of The Unabridged Journals of the extraordinary, wonderful and tormented Sylvia Plath. Her words fly off the page and hit you with incredible force: "And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long."
One is called The Moment by Douglas Kennedy. I only had time to read the first chapter before it was snatched inconsiderately from me by my daughter. But one chapter was all I needed to get well and truly hooked. Kennedy is a born storyteller but he can be much more than that, just as Patricia Highsmith was so much more than a crime writer. His storytelling art allows him to say some important things about human relations and relationships.
Stephen King is the Charles Dickens or Honoré de Balzac of our age: sprawling, uneven but beyond doubt a genius. His latest novel is called 11.22.63. Curiously enough, it is written 11/22/63 in the American edition. On the strength of the first few chapters, I do not find it quite up to the level of Under the Dome but that's the thing about King: you never quite know how what's going to happen next. I will say that, on this occasion, I think he owes a certain debt to a woefully underrated film called Groundhog Day.
I'm sorry to report that I'm rather marking time with A Time of Gifts. It is not such an easy read as the above two, and besides I'm engrossed in the first few pages (free on my iPad Kindle app) of The Unabridged Journals of the extraordinary, wonderful and tormented Sylvia Plath. Her words fly off the page and hit you with incredible force: "And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long."
No comments:
Post a Comment