My Brilliant Friend (2012) by Elena Ferrante

2016-07-01T12:07:10-04:00

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 Ferrante2016-07-01T12:07:10-04:00

Gilead (2004) by Marilynne Robinson

2015-05-01T12:00:40-04:00

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 Robinson2015-05-01T12:00:40-04:00
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