book review Archives - Andrew Blackman

Reading

Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos

When I moved to New York City as a 22-year-old, I immediately loved the chaotic, frenetic energy of the place. I’d grown up in London, another big city, but this was something else. Manhattan seemed like a place where it…

Reading

Borges Marathon, Part 10: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

What would a world with no objective reality look like? How about a language with no nouns? Jorge Luis Borges explores these ideas in a fascinating thought experiment.

Reading

Snow by John Banville: Review

I was surprised by Snow: it's very different from John Banville's usual style. There's some beautiful prose as usual, but in the end it's quite a formulaic detective novel.

Reading

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid: Book Review

What would happen if white people started turning brown, one by one? Mohsin Hamid explores the question in his latest novel.

Reading

Freedom and Death by Nikos Kazantzakis: Book Review

"Captain Wildboar was his apt nickname in Megalokastro. With his sudden rages, his deep, dark, round eyes, his short, stubborn neck and that jutting fang, the heavy, broad-boned man was really like a wild boar, rearing for the spring."

Reading

The View From Belmont by Kevyn Alan Arthur

The View From Belmont raises interesting questions of race and gender amid the barbarousness of a slave-owning society. The dual narrative was a promising technique, but it didn't feel fully realised to me. I'd have liked more of 1990s Trinidad…

Reading

Book Review: Cambridge by Caryl Phillips

This dual narrative set in a 19th-century Caribbean island is an interesting exploration of a critical period, but the narratives feel unbalanced: we spend a lot of time immersed in the prejudices of the plantation owner's daughter, while the account…

Reading

Race & Class in Jamaican Fiction: Dog-Heart by Diana McCaulay

Dog-Heart tells the story of two Jamaicans from very different worlds. Sahara is a light-skinned “uptown” woman who runs a successful Kingston restaurant. Dexter is a poor, dark-skinned boy from the “ghetto” neighbourhood of Jacob’s Pen.

Reading

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

How can human relationships be formed without shared memories? Can mathematical order overcome the chaos of a life without memory? Yoko Ogawa's novel explores these fascinating themes through the simple story of a professor and his housekeeper.