Book of the Month – Page 11

Euphoria (2014) by Lily King

Stephanie Whetstone2015-08-01T12:00:21-04:00

Critical Assessment "It's the rare novel of ideas that devours its readers' attention. More often . . . we work our way through these books carefully and with frequent pauses, rather than gulping them down in long, thirsty drafts. It's not a literary form known for its great romances, either, although of course love and sex play a role in most fictional characters' lives. Lily King's 'Euphoria,' a shortish novel based on a period in the life of pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead, is an exception. At its center is a romantic triangle, and it tells a story that begs to be [...]

Euphoria (2014) by Lily KingStephanie Whetstone2015-08-01T12:00:21-04:00

Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis

Stephanie Whetstone2015-07-01T12:00:38-04:00

Critical Assessment "Mr. Amis has successfully accomplished at first shot the rare feat of creating a genuinely comic yet credible character. Dixon is a young lecturer at a northern university, determined to stand on his own feet, who finds that in so doing he is unable to avoid treading on the toes of many of the people around him. Mr. Amis shows him off sympathetically as well as humorously, and his account of the various incidents that cause Dixon's academic career to be a short but not glorious one makes most enjoyable reading. . . . "The style of Lucky Jim [...]

Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley AmisStephanie Whetstone2015-07-01T12:00:38-04:00

Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison

Stephanie Whetstone2015-06-01T12:00:47-04:00

Critical Assessment "This novel is a searing and exalted record of a Negro's journey through contemporary America in search of success, companionship, and, finally, himself; like all our fictions devoted to the idea of experience, it moves from province to city, from naive faith to disenchantment; and despite its structural incoherence and occasional pretentiousness of manner, it is one of the few remarkable first novels we have had in some years. . . . "For Ellison has an abundance of that primary talent without which neither craft nor intelligence can save a novelist; he is richly, wildly inventive; his scenes rise [...]

Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph EllisonStephanie Whetstone2015-06-01T12:00:47-04:00

Gilead (2004) by Marilynne Robinson

Stephanie Whetstone2015-05-01T12:00:40-04:00

Critical Assessment "Nowadays, when so many writers are acclaimed as great stylists, it's hard to make anyone notice when you praise a writer's prose. There is, however, something remarkable about the writing in 'Gilead.' It's not just a matter of writing well, although Robinson demonstrates that talent on every page . . . . It isn't just the care with which Robinson can relax the style to a Midwestern colloquialism: 'But one afternoon a storm came up and a gust of wind hit the henhouse and lifted the roof right off, and hens came flying out, sucked after it, I suppose, [...]

Gilead (2004) by Marilynne RobinsonStephanie Whetstone2015-05-01T12:00:40-04:00

Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999) by Tracy Chevalier

Stephanie Whetstone2015-04-01T12:00:11-04:00

Critical Assessment "Chevalier's novel . . . is a wondrous, enthralling piece of work, told through the eyes of a 16-year-old girl who goes to work as a maid in Vermeer's household after her father is blinded in a kiln explosion. "Like Vermeer's paintings, 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' is deceptively simple, its events recounted in a matter-of-fact language that belies the novel's immense ambition and sophistication. Its narration, after all, enacts a hoch feminist maneuver: relating a monumental event (in this case, the genesis of one of Vermeer's most unsettling masterpieces) from the perspective of a 'marginal' participant (a woman, [...]

Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999) by Tracy ChevalierStephanie Whetstone2015-04-01T12:00:11-04:00

A Separate Peace (1959) by John Knowles

Stephanie Whetstone2015-03-01T12:00:44-05:00

Critical Assessment "It is an old publishing custom to make smooth the path of a promising book by assembling as many advance tributes as possible, but seldom have so many been printed on the jacket of a first novel as on that of 'A Separate Peace,' by John Knowles. These eleven garlands of praise were written by such diverse men of letters as E. M. Forster, Truman Capote, Aubrey Menen, Angus Wilson and Peter Fleming and might conceivably antagonize more prospective readers than they allure. If they should, it would be a pity, because 'A Separate Peace' is just as good [...]

A Separate Peace (1959) by John KnowlesStephanie Whetstone2015-03-01T12:00:44-05:00

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) by Mark Twain

Stephanie Whetstone2015-02-01T12:00:04-05:00

Critical Assessment "Mr. Clemens, on the contrary, has taken the boy of the Southwest for the hero of his new book, and has presented him with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree, and which gives incomparably the best picture of life in that region as yet known to fiction. . . . The local material and the incidents with which his career is worked up are excellent, and throughout there is scrupulous regard for the boy's point of view in reference to his surroundings and himself, which shows how rapidly Mr. Clemens [...]

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) by Mark TwainStephanie Whetstone2015-02-01T12:00:04-05:00

Old Filth (2004) by Jane Gardam

Stephanie Whetstone2015-01-01T12:00:34-05:00

Critical Assessment "Anglophile readers wondering who their next favorite British writer will be need look no further than Gardam, who, despite having won numerous literary awards and been short-listed for the Booker Prize, is not nearly as well known in the U.S. as she deserves. The title of this, her twelfth novel, seems to promise that satiric bite British authors do so well, but although there’s plenty of sharp humor here, the book has many other moods. Sir Edward Feathers – called Filth (even by his wife, Betty) for 'Failed in London Try Hong Kong' – is now retired and living [...]

Old Filth (2004) by Jane GardamStephanie Whetstone2015-01-01T12:00:34-05:00

The Moon is Down (1942) by John Steinbeck

Stephanie Whetstone2014-12-01T12:00:20-05:00

Critical Assessment "Most works of propaganda do not survive the crises that produce them. The Moon is Down is an exception. . . . The novel's endurance suggests that while The Moon is Down may have been conceived, written, and used as propaganda, it is probably best described as a work of literature that served as propaganda. Judged by purely artistic standards, it is not among the author's best efforts. Scholars and reviewers have most frequently criticized its wooden characters and transparent didacticism, flaws characteristic of novels of ideas. But few literary works in our time have demonstrated so triumphantly the [...]

The Moon is Down (1942) by John SteinbeckStephanie Whetstone2014-12-01T12:00:20-05:00

On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac

Stephanie Whetstone2014-11-01T12:00:47-04:00

Critical Assessment "What matters about 'On the Road' is the book's raw energy yoked to its sense of promise in 'all that raw land,' the shove it offers to get out of one's own chair and see what lies over the horizon. . . . The book is a hymn to purposelessness, an antidote to what John Fowles once decried as our modern 'addiction to finding a reason, a function, a quantifiable yield' in everything we do. "Above all, 'On the Road' matters for its music: its plaintive, restless hum. In it, Kerouac perfected a melancholy optimism and a yearning for [...]

On the Road (1957) by Jack KerouacStephanie Whetstone2014-11-01T12:00:47-04:00

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