Lord Manleigh

• Rated 4 stars

“Joan Didion is simply a brilliant writer. This collection of essays -- a sequel of sorts to her famous "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" -- once again tackles the seismic American cultural shift of the late 1960s and 1970s in spare, elegant, almost oracular prose that manages to create an unforgettable sense of nameless Dread - the characteristic Didion Effect. Something awful is happening out there, and she's not sure where it comes from or what it is, but she's going to tell you what's she's seen and heard, and you can play it as it lays. A wonderful book.”

Lord Manleigh wrote this review 8 hours ago. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“A heart-warming tale of Christmas cheer it is not. Read it during the hols -- it's the perfect antidote to an overdose of sugar.”

Lord Manleigh wrote this review 6 days ago. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 3 stars

“A series of homely sketches of English village life, full of gentle comedy and pathos, that would have been ideally suited to its original format – serial publication in Charles Dickens’ magazine “Household Words” in 1851. What Gaskell lacks in narrative drive, she makes up for in affection. ”

Lord Manleigh wrote this review 9 days ago. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Very, very enjoyable. I long to read the rest of the series -- "Amazing Disgrace" and, particularly, the intriguingly titled "Rancid Pansies." James Hamilton-Paterson writes his satiric romp in the great, acidic English tradition but with shockingly indigestible recipes thrown in for a truly unique bouquet. It's Evelyn Waugh paired with "Posh Nosh" and washed down with a litte hot Saki. Bon appetit! ”

Lord Manleigh wrote this review Thursday, November 12 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“The best poems (and weakest) in this volume are strongly reminiscent of the great James Merrill, and the unintentional effect of this collection was to make me yearn to leave the rest of the Corn untasted and turn to a far more satisfying meal chez JM. ”

Lord Manleigh wrote this review Sunday, November 1 2009. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 3 stars

“An amusing hodge-podge.”

Lord Manleigh wrote this review Thursday, October 15 2009. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 3 stars

“To get too specific about the story would spoil things, since much of the book's power lies in Ishiguro's masterful use of the "slow reveal." The oddest and most striking thing about this book is how life and death in this novel become metaphors for . . . life and death. It's creepy, haunting, and painful. ”

Lord Manleigh wrote this review Friday, October 9 2009. ( reply | permalink )

4 of 4 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 4 stars

“It’s alternately shrill, messy, off-putting, riveting, wise, bitter, and you should read it.

While its predecessor I Married a Communist focuses on the carnage of the McCarthy era, this final installment in Roth’s “American Trilogy” engages with the modern version of the American witch hunt, the nasty brew you get when you stir in the methodical intellectual oppression that is “political correctness”, the insatiable human lust for gossip and the pleasures gleaned from that brand of Puritanical sanctimony that is a permanent strand of the American national DNA -- a brew that reached full boil with the Clinton impeachment, and which acts as the backdrop for The Human Stain.

The only quibble I had with the book was that the action in the background struck me as so much more interesting than what was happening downstage center. There is so much of interest going on, there are so many vivid, unforgettable characters, there are so many provocative directions Roth could have taken, that I simply wished he’d taken a left turn at the post office instead of the right. The central story-line – the doomed relationship between Coleman and Faunia that forms the spine of the novel – struck me as far less compelling than the background story of Coleman’s ruin at the hands of an insecure feminist minister of political correctness, or the background story of the crucial secret at the heart of Coleman’s identity, or the background story of Faunia’s nut-case Vietnam Vet ex-husband. The novel overflows with enough story-lines and ideas for at least three other novels – I felt as if Roth simply took on too much for one book to do it all full justice.

Don’t let this stop you from reading it. If I hadn’t read American Pastoral first, I would probably be over the moon about The Human Stain. The man is, without question, one of the great American writers, and the book is chock-full of those moments so familiar to Roth’s readers when you simply shake your head with joy and wonder at the man’s talent – his breathless, relentless audacity and brilliance.
”

Lord Manleigh wrote this review Wednesday, September 30 2009. ( reply | permalink )

2 of 2 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 3 stars

““Her love was like a warm, comfortable garment, bedsocks, perhaps, or even woolen combinations; certainly something without glamour or romance.” Thus Pym writes about her spinster heroine’s unrequited passion of thirty years for her village vicar. The same might be said of the novel itself. This hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement, and yet it is. ”

Lord Manleigh wrote this review Thursday, September 24 2009. ( reply | permalink )

2 of 2 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 5 stars

“A wonderful overview. Included are his perversely provocative essays "The Critic As Artist" (in which he proves "that it is more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it, and that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world...that all Art is immoral and all thought dangerous; that criticism is more creative than creation, and that the highest criticism is that which reveals in the work of Art what the artist had not put there; that it is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is the proper judge of it; and that the true critic is unfair, insincere and not rational."), "The Decay of Lying" and "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" (in which he maintains that under Socialism, everyone will be finally free to be artists and art critics). Also included are "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (even more seductive and poisonous than I remembered) and the amusing dark comedy "Lord Arthur Saville's Crime", as well as the glittering plays "Lady Windermere's Fan" and "The Importance of Being Earnest", and some of his pathos-filled post-prison poetry, including "Ballad of Reading Gaol".”

Lord Manleigh wrote this review Sunday, September 13 2009. ( reply | permalink )