Book of the Month – Page 9 – Princeton Writes

Night at the Fiestas (2015) by Kirstin Valdez Quade

Stephanie Whetstone2017-03-01T10:00:34-05:00

Critical Assessment "The collection reminds us, again and again, that each of us has only one life, and forces us to confront the biggest questions: Shouldn’t that one life matter, shouldn’t that life be worth remembering, shouldn’t it be worth examining, contemplating, pursuing in understanding, even though all varieties of understanding are so difficult, so time-bound, so provisional? "This is a variety of beauty too rare in contemporary literature, a synthesis of material and practice and time and courage and love that must have cost its writer dearly; it’s not easy to be so vulnerable so consistently. Quade attempts, page by [...]

Night at the Fiestas (2015) by Kirstin Valdez QuadeStephanie Whetstone2017-03-01T10:00:34-05:00

We Need New Names (2013) by NoViolet Bulawayo

Stephanie Whetstone2017-02-01T09:00:26-05:00

Critical Assessment "Using her gift for pictorial language, Ms. Bulawayo gives us snapshots of Zimbabwe that have the indelible color and intensity of a folk art painting: ‘men huddled like sheep and playing draughts under the lone jacaranda,’ the blooming purple flowers almost make them ‘look beautiful in the shade without their shirts on,’ sitting there, ‘crouched forward like tigers’; the women doing their best to look pretty, wearing ‘a bangle made from rusty, twisted wire,’ a ‘flower tucked behind an ear,’ ‘earrings made from colorful seeds,’ ‘bright patches of cloth sewn onto a skirt.’ "There is desperation here, however. As [...]

We Need New Names (2013) by NoViolet BulawayoStephanie Whetstone2017-02-01T09:00:26-05:00

Upstream (2016) by Mary Oliver

Stephanie Whetstone2017-01-01T19:21:27-05:00

Critical Assessment "Now 81, Oliver has published Upstream, a book of essays that provides deep insights and delightful anecdotes as she examines her role as a writer, reader and a spiritual seeker who constantly practices what she describes as the redemptive art of true effort. "The book opens with 'Upstream,' a lyrical piece where Oliver recalls wading upstream in rippling water as a child while her parents remained downstream. As she moved further and further away, some steps easy, others requiring great effort, she realized that she enjoyed being lost because she could feel her heart opening and opening again. That [...]

Upstream (2016) by Mary OliverStephanie Whetstone2017-01-01T19:21:27-05:00

The History of Love (2005) by Nicole Krauss

Stephanie Whetstone2016-12-01T09:00:40-05:00

Critical Assessment "Krauss' novel abounds with myriad literary documents -- journal entries, letters, lists, translations, excerpts from an autobiography -- penned by her characters, and done so in cleverly distinctive styles that spark each personality to life. Their role in Krauss' tricky, intriguing plot suggests that all writing, no matter how private or obscure, is potentially filled with transformative power and sometimes in ways neither author nor reader could hope to imagine. . . . "Krauss keeps the reader guessing -- not about whether the two alternating stories are linked, but how. We are in Borges country here, sometimes literally: The [...]

The History of Love (2005) by Nicole KraussStephanie Whetstone2016-12-01T09:00:40-05:00

The Underground Railroad (2016) by Colson Whitehead

Stephanie Whetstone2016-11-01T10:23:49-04:00

Critical Assessment "In his dynamic new novel, Colson Whitehead takes the Underground Railroad—the loosely interlocking network of black and white activists who helped slaves escape to freedom in the decades before the Civil War—and turns it from a metaphor into an actual train that ferries fugitives northward. "The result is a potent, almost hallucinatory novel that leaves the reader with a devastating understanding of the terrible human costs of slavery. It possesses the chilling, matter-of-fact power of the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, with echoes of Toni Morrison’s 'Beloved,' Victor Hugo’s 'Les Misérables' and Ralph Ellison’s [...]

The Underground Railroad (2016) by Colson WhiteheadStephanie Whetstone2016-11-01T10:23:49-04:00

Dear Life (2012) by Alice Munro

Stephanie Whetstone2016-10-01T12:17:22-04:00

Critical Assessment “That Alice Munro, now 81, is one of the great short story writers not just of our time but of any time ought to go without saying by now. This new volume — her 14th, not counting a collection of selected stories that came out in 1996 — is further proof of her mastery, and also a reminder that unlike a lot of accomplished short story writers — unlike William Trevor, say, her only living rival — Munro did not hit a characteristic note early on and then stick with it. Over the years her work has deepened and [...]

Dear Life (2012) by Alice MunroStephanie Whetstone2016-10-01T12:17:22-04:00

Season of the Rainbirds (1993) by Nadeem Aslam

Stephanie Whetstone2016-09-01T12:00:56-04:00

Critical Assessment "The early chapters describing life in an unnamed Pakistani village lead one to expect something praiseworthy and exceedingly dull. But this first novel by the young writer Nadeem Aslam grows startlingly better. "The sleepy little place turns out to have intrigue underway – murders, conspiracies and suspected adulteries, all sifted and judged by choruses of scandalised townsfolk lounging in shops and hanging about doorways. Aslam gives a forceful picture of a tightly meshed community in which the very notion of privacy seems an invitation to sin and the least consequential deed ripples out to encompass everyone. . . . [...]

Season of the Rainbirds (1993) by Nadeem AslamStephanie Whetstone2016-09-01T12:00:56-04:00

Tinkers (2009) by Paul Harding

Stephanie Whetstone2016-08-01T12:00:34-04:00

Critical Assessment "The occasional overwriting, the looping narrative, and the almost defiant lack of plot made this a hard book to sell to publishers. An array of editors at major houses rejected the novel, no doubt afraid it would never sell. It apparently sat for several years in the writer's desk. Then an obscure house, the Bellevue Literary Press, published it to such little fanfare that the New York Times (like most papers) ignored it completely. Then, miracle of miracles, it won the Pulitzer. "It remains to be seen where Paul Harding, surely a gifted writer, will go from here. But [...]

Tinkers (2009) by Paul HardingStephanie Whetstone2016-08-01T12:00:34-04:00

My Brilliant Friend (2012) by Elena Ferrante

Stephanie Whetstone2016-07-01T12:07:10-04:00

Critical Assessment "Ferrante has said that she likes to write narratives 'where the writing is clear, honest, and where the facts—the facts of ordinary life—are extraordinarily gripping when read.' Her prose has indeed a bare lucidity, and is often aphoristic and continent, in Ann Goldstein’s elegant, burnished English. But what is thrilling about her earlier novels is that, in sympathetically following her characters’ extremities, Ferrante’s own writing has no limits, is willing to take every thought forward to its most radical conclusion and backward to its most radical birthing. This is most obvious in the fearless way in which her female [...]

My Brilliant Friend (2012) by Elena FerranteStephanie Whetstone2016-07-01T12:07:10-04:00

A Walk in the Woods (1998) by Bill Bryson

Stephanie Whetstone2016-06-01T12:00:22-04:00

Critical Assessment “There's an awkward and telling moment, early in Bill Bryson's new book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, in which he casts about for the exact reasons he's subjecting himself to a five-month slog through the underbrush. There's the fitness rationale: Bryson is a mildly overweight, middle-aged writer who's tired of looking, as he puts it, like 'a cupcake.' There's the he-man rationale: when faced with impending danger, Bryson would like to feel more like a flinty Cormac McCarthy protagonist than someone who is 'jumpier than Don Knotts with pistol drawn.'' Finally, there's the ecological rationale: the Appalachian wilderness is [...]

A Walk in the Woods (1998) by Bill BrysonStephanie Whetstone2016-06-01T12:00:22-04:00

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