Book of the Month – Page 12

Persuasion (1818) by Jane Austen

Stephanie Whetstone2014-10-01T12:00:15-04:00

Critical Assessment "There is a peculiar beauty and a peculiar dullness in Persuasion. The dullness is that which so often marks the transition stage between two different periods. The writer is a little bored. She has grown too familiar with the ways of her world; she no longer notes them freshly. . . . But, while we feel that Jane Austen has done this before, and done it better, we also feel that she is trying to do something which she has never yet attempted. There is a new element in Persuasion, the quality, perhaps, that made Dr. Whewell fire up [...]

Persuasion (1818) by Jane AustenStephanie Whetstone2014-10-01T12:00:15-04:00

The Sea (2005) by John Banville

Stephanie Whetstone2014-09-01T12:00:19-04:00

Critical Assessment "If one can invoke the idea of fierce lyricism without it sounding either coy or oxymoronic, surely that is the term to signal the chill and beauty of the Irish writer John Banville's novels. . . . "'The Sea,' then, which last month received England's coveted Man Booker Prize, is a piece of violent poetry – an autumnal, elegiac novel whose desolate story is carried along by the sweet and stormy tides of its exquisite, sometimes too exquisite, prose. . . . "The bulk of 'The Sea' is an exploration of how a man so brilliantly cultivated and articulate [...]

The Sea (2005) by John BanvilleStephanie Whetstone2014-09-01T12:00:19-04:00

The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) by Booth Tarkington, Class of 1893

Stephanie Whetstone2014-08-01T12:00:25-04:00

Critical Assessment "The total effect of 'The Magnificent Ambersons' is, as a Tarkington novel, extraordinary. One begins it with lively entertainment. Along toward the middle something appears to be the matter. The abounding verve which we have come to expect from Mr. Tarkington does not seem to be present in this patient, earnest progress in the accumulation of detail in elucidating the growth of character. . . . And altogether one is not so comfortable as one expected to be. Then comes a third stage, when it comes over one that his queer feeling arises from the fact that this book [...]

The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) by Booth Tarkington, Class of 1893Stephanie Whetstone2014-08-01T12:00:25-04:00

The Optimist’s Daughter (1972) by Eudora Welty

Stephanie Whetstone2014-07-01T12:00:28-04:00

Critical Assessment "Eudora Welty's novel, The Optimist's Daughter, which first appeared in The New Yorker of March 15, 1969, is a miracle of compression, the kind of book, small in scope but profound in its implications, that rewards a lifetime of work. Its style is at the service of a story that follows its nose with the instincts of a good hunting dog never losing the scent of its quarry. And its story has all those qualities peculiar to the finest short novels: a theme that vibrates with overtones, suspense and classical inevitability. . . . "Two kinds of people, two [...]

The Optimist’s Daughter (1972) by Eudora WeltyStephanie Whetstone2014-07-01T12:00:28-04:00

The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London

Stephanie Whetstone2014-06-01T12:00:24-04:00

Critical Assessment "The key to London's effectiveness is to be found in his complete absorption in the world he evokes. The author is in and committed to his creations to a degree very nearly unparalleled in the composition of fiction. The resulting go-for-broke, event-intoxicated, headlong wild-Irish prose-fury completely overrides a great many stylistic lapses and crudities that would ordinarily cause readers to smile. . . . "He is an artist of violent action, exemplifying what the American poet Allen Tate meant when he said: 'I think of my poems as commentaries on those human situations from which there is no escape.' [...]

The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack LondonStephanie Whetstone2014-06-01T12:00:24-04:00

A Gesture Life (1999) by Chang-rae Lee

Stephanie Whetstone2014-05-01T12:00:00-04:00

Critical Assessment "Lee's portrayal of Hata is written in unfashionably decorous prose, a language so fine and poised that its carefully situated eruptions seem even more radical. (When the absence of simple courtesies can seem viscerally disturbing, you know you're in the hands of a virtuoso.) There are flourishes of language and lovely summaries of character that seem from time to time like the last lines of a torch song. Lee takes on history, war and peace, life and death, the class system, the ghosts of American progress, the family, aging and unresolved international war crimes. . . . His novel [...]

A Gesture Life (1999) by Chang-rae LeeStephanie Whetstone2014-05-01T12:00:00-04:00

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel (2009) by Jeannette Walls

Stephanie Whetstone2014-04-01T12:00:18-04:00

Critical Assessment "Like most good New Journalism adherents, Walls offers this account in first person, completely putting her readers in Lily's position and telling the stories of Half Broke Horses in a conversational tone that makes you feel like you're sitting on a porch somewhere with a cool drink and an even cooler companion. The stories during the Depression – when Lily gave birth to her children and times everywhere were beyond tough – make expected and indelible marks on the reader, perhaps creating the most impact in all the book's different eras. "However, the first Christmas lights on the ranch, the one-room [...]

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel (2009) by Jeannette WallsStephanie Whetstone2014-04-01T12:00:18-04:00

The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway

Stephanie Whetstone2014-03-01T12:00:53-05:00

Critical Assessment ". . . one should not forget that his narrative skill often attains its highest point when cast in a smaller mould, in the laconic, drastically pruned short story, which, with a unique combination of simplicity and precision, nails its theme into our consciousness so that every blow tells. Such a masterpiece, more than any other, is The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the unforgettable story of an old Cuban fisherman's duel with a huge swordfish in the Atlantic. Within the frame of a sporting tale, a moving perspective of man's destiny is opened up; the story is a tribute [...]

The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest HemingwayStephanie Whetstone2014-03-01T12:00:53-05:00

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) by Thornton Wilder, Graduate Class of 1926

Stephanie Whetstone2014-02-01T12:00:00-05:00

Critical Assessment "Thornton Wilder's Bridge of San Luis Rey is as close to perfect a moral fable as we are ever likely to get in American literature. Written near the end of the Roaring Twenties by a man barely out of his own twenties, it nonetheless feels, in its exquisite universality and ease of timeless application, ancient, classical, almost biblical. When we read the novel today, seventy-five years after its first publication, we nod in admiration, and we wonder at its uncanny ability to describe ourselves to ourselves in terms that are both essential to our species and particular to our [...]

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) by Thornton Wilder, Graduate Class of 1926Stephanie Whetstone2014-02-01T12:00:00-05:00

The House on Mango Street (1984) by Sandra Cisneros

Stephanie Whetstone2014-01-01T12:00:32-05:00

Critical Assessment "I opened the book and started to read. Suddenly, Cisneros' narrator, Esperanza, jumped out from somewhere between the pages, grabbed me tight, shook me hard, and wouldn't let go. I read the whole book in two hours and had to read it again. And then again. Even when I finally put the book back on my shelf, I just couldn't get that voice out of my head. . . . "Cisneros' writing is poetry, and her characters speak a kind of poetic dialogue that I haven't heard since Shakespeare moved out of the hood. In speaking of poetry, Georgia Heard [...]

The House on Mango Street (1984) by Sandra CisnerosStephanie Whetstone2014-01-01T12:00:32-05:00

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