Whether to live within the limits of our most fragile selves? Whether the safe harbor or the open ocean? A suffering mind or the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?
These are core questions, urgent questions, in life and in literature. They were central for Hamlet and for Bilbo Baggins, and they remain so in the world around us – for astronauts, for Shark Tank contestants and for commercial fishermen. The questions are also central for Daphne, the protagonist in this insightful and completely lovely novel. Continue reading
In a long-ago American village, an ordinary place settled by people with Anglo-Saxon names like Patterson and Abernathy, spirits occupied unlit corners of dank basements. Some of them trolled for sex. They picked out village daughters whose extreme niceness grew from fear of rejection. Slithering past intact hymen, the spirits entered the girls, impregnated them. They talked in false confidence with select villagers and conspired to divide friends. Some, they followed at a distance. They whispered, were heard by strangers and inspired fear, then turned dramatic; they allowed themselves to be felt and seen for moments at a time. What follows is, for a reader, Frankenstinian dread.
One can speculate about charismatic extremists who might thrive in the shadow of a hateful president, a man greedy for control of an entire country. Christopher Wilde has done so in his new novella, a provocative read that is absorbing, realistic and deeply frightening.
There are many windows into our past. Few offer a view that is as detailed, as accurate or as absorbing as ‘Manhattan Beach.’
Some lives get so ugly and hopeless that, even to an outsider, crystal meth and murder look perfectly sensible. That’s one of several Faulknerian themes baked into this thin, memorable novel.
One hundred pages into ‘My Absolute Darling,’ it was already the best book I’ve read this year. Like many others, I picked up this first-time novelist’s work only because Stephen King called it a masterpiece. Mr. King admitted feeling green because (his words) he could never have written anything so good. The book is a masterpiece: You will marvel at the writer’s gift for making you eagerly turn pages so that you can keep up with a story rooted in the disgusting.
There are two big things about Bruce I took from his accessible, cozy autobiography. The first: The Boss is a businessman. He’s all about the contracts, the rights, the residuals. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Given what Bruce admits, the label sticks. He is the bandleader. Always. Everybody else is an employee; their work and compensation are defined by written contracts. Bruce and his manager dictated all the thousands of things that made up a Springsteen tour: dates and locations, the players, the rehearsal schedule, transportation, hotels, meals. The songs are his. The set list is his. The profits? His. He tells of one band member (Mr. Springsteen is discreet and doesn’t identify him) who, mid-tour, demanded a raise. Bruce asked for proof there was one comparable musician who made more. End of conversation.
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