Tag Archives | literary fiction

“Too Loud a Solitude” by Bohumil Hrabal

4 July 2011 · Reading · Comments { 9 }

The narrator of this book is an idiot. His boss despises him, others laugh at him. He drinks beer all day, and works in a cellar compacting wastepaper. He has been compacting wastepaper in the same cellar with the same hydraulic press for 35 years, and has picked out classics of world literature from the [...]

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“Written on the Body” by Jeanette Winterson

13 April 2011 · Reading · Comments { 5 }

There is a lot of beauty in this book. Every sentence is like a poem. You can feel the care and attention that went into every choice of word. For the first few pages, I was blown away and thought I had discovered a new favourite writer. But towards the end my enthusiasm faded. I [...]

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“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz

18 June 2010 · Reading · Comments { 3 }

I quite liked this book. I think that, perhaps, if I had come upon it by chance in a neglected corner of a bookshop and read it without any preconceptions, I would have really liked it. But I did have preconceptions. A couple of years ago this was a hot book, recommended in all the [...]

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“The Enchantress of Florence” by Salman Rushdie

9 March 2009 · Reading · Comments { 3 }

I don’t quite know what to make of this book. There were so many storylines in so many countries at so many different times, all overlapping and sloshing around at the same time, that at times the book became overwhelming. The writing is beautiful, the concept fascinating, but somehow I didn’t find the book as [...]

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