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2012 books retrospective
Dec. 24th, 2012 12:00 pm
In the past year I published 14 book reviews on New York Journal of Books and synopses of those reviews with additional remarks here on examiner.com. I also wrote a review of a friend's novel that NYJB's ethics rules preclude me from publishing there and which I have been submitting to other literary publications for several months (which makes me appreciate having a regular venue for my reviews as a NYJB reviewer); I could have published it here, but the book in question,The Prophet of Tenth Street by Tsipi Keller, deserves to be reviewed in a less newsy, more literary and intellectually weighty publication, so for now I will continue sending it out.
Some of the books I read and reviewed this year were quite good, others were mixed, and not one was a complete waste of time. Here then in chronological order by date of publication are the fourteen books I read and reviewed for NYJB in 2012:
In Ben Marcus' dystopian fantasy The Flame Alphabet a language epidemic erupts among Jewish families; children's speech makes their parents deathly ill. Soon it spreads to the rest of the population, which in turn results in a level of anti-Semitism few Jewish-American readers have ever experienced. In my January 17, 2012 examiner.com article about the novel I wrote, "The ominous nature of the fictional events lends the narrative a sense of gravitas that Mr. Marcus' prose style is well equiped to express. While the book has all the necessary elements to make it a cult classic, a book this well written deserves the widest possible audience." Mr. Marcus' prose in this book is the handsomest of all the books I reviewed this year.
Stay Awake, Dan Chaon's book of short stories about traumatized midwesterners, andAssisted Living, Nikanor Teratologen's novel about a racist murderer/cannibal, child abuser, and avid reader in northern Sweden were published on the same day, February 7, 2012. I wrote separate reviews of the two books on NYJB but covered both books in one article here on examiner.com. In that article I cautioned my readers not to judge the characters inStay Awake who, as I wrote in my NYJB review, "lack the intellectual skills to thrive in our post-industrial/information age/digital economy, a handicap that increases the likelihood that they will find themselves in the path of life’s calamities and renders them less resilient and resourceful when disaster strikes." In my NYJB review of Assisted Living I wrote of the novel that "because it is so over the top and its horrors so exaggerated, readers who appreciate warped, gallows humor may find parts of it funny despite the pervasive evil."
In my NYJB review of I Hadn't Understood by Diego De Silva and in my March 5, 2012brief examiner.com article about the novel I compared Mr. De Silva's sense of humor to those of Woody Allen and Philip Roth. Readers who share that sense of humor might enjoy this story about a middle aged slacker lawyer in Naples, Italy.
In 2012 I only reviewed one book of poetry, Left-Handed: Poems by Jonathan Galassi, which describes the end of the author's decades long marriage and how a relationship with a younger man helped him acknowledge and accept his homosexuality. In my March 20, 2012 examiner.com article I quoted my NYJB review of the book in which I recommended it "to all poetry lovers and to all readers who find they must radically change their lives in order to live more authentically."
Istanbul Was a Fairytale by Jewish-Turkish writer Mario Levi is the longest, most difficult, challenging, at times frustrating but also the most rewarding book I read in 2012. In my NYJB review of the novel I recommend it "to readers who enjoy dense prose and have the uninterrupted leisure and focus its multipage paragraphs demand." Mr. Levi is a student of French literature and emulates such French writers as Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Marcel Proust. In my NYJB review I describe Istanbul Was a Fairytale as "an engaging, rewarding, and sometimes lyrical search for lost time." In that review I did not have space for a plot synopsis of this multi-generational family saga, but I did provide one in my May 29, 2012 examiner.com article about the novel.
My July 3, 2012 examiner.com article describes two novels about characters in career and life transitions. In Joe Meno's Office Girl the characters are fine-arts majors in their early to mid-twenties transitioning from college to establishing themselves as working artists. In this interim period they find themselves taking dull, dead-end jobs to make ends meet. In my New York Journal of Books review of the novel I compare it to Lena Dunham's HBO seriesGirls in that the characters are legally adults but are still growing up, and how their poor choices exacerbate their already modest and insecure circumstances. Gray Adams, Barbara Browning's male protagonist in I'm Trying to Reach You is a middle-aged dancer turned academic who is obsessed by the consecutive deaths in a period of months of great performing artists and by a series of home made YouTube videos featuring dance performances by Ms. Browning. In my NYJB review I recommend the novel "to anyone . . . who wants to experience a multimedia novel blurring genres and means of communication as well as the boundary between the author and her fictional narrative.”
In August I published NYJB reviews of three fiction books by the late Jewish-Serbian writerDanilo Kiš and four examiner.com articles about the books on the same day. The Attic andPsalm 44 are novellas Mr. Kiš wrote when he was 25 in 1960 and employ writing styles not found in his later work. The Attic is a lyrical and fanciful account of bohemian life in Belgrade in the 1950s. Psalm 44 takes place in Auschwitz and its characters are women prisoners. Mr. Kiš wrote it hastily to submit it to a contest and unfortunately it has a few glaring historical inaccuracies. The Lute and the Scars is a collection of short stories and one essay he wrote in the last decade of his life in the 1980s that show his mature writing style.
The Canvas is a psychological mystery by contemporary Jewish-German author Benjamin Stein (no relation to the American comedic actor, game show host, and conservative pundit). It has a unique structure: half way through the book the first of its two narratives ends, and to continue reading readers must turn the book upside down and start again at the other end. The book has two front covers, and readers can start with either one. In my examiner.com article about the book I complained that the publisher chose Yom Kippur as the publication date of this Jewish themed novel. In my New York Journal of books review I guardedly recommend The Canvas to Jewishly knowledgable fans of the psychological mystery genre.
Jamie Attenberg's novel The Middlesteins has gotten a lot of buzz in Jewish book circles since its publication in October. Its plot unfolds in Chicago's northern suburbs where a morbidly obese family matriarch's health is failing in the months leading up to her twin grandchildren's bnei mitzvah. I gave it a mixed review. In my NYJB review of the book I wrote, "the quality of its prose … is at best serviceable and at worst pedestrian…" In my examiner.com article I quoted that review: "stylistically The Middlesteins falls between two stools. Sophisticated readers who might otherwise appreciate its 'nonlinear structure, multiple perspectives, and occasional page-and-a-half long paragraphs' will find the quality of the writing disappointing, while its ambitious narrative form may intimidate unsophisticated readers who might nonetheless 'enjoy its recognizable characters described in a familiar, colloquial idiom.'"
Israeli writer Dror Burstein's novel Kin, which was published last month, portrays the inner life of an elderly widower and adoptive father who decides to find his adult son's biological parents and reunite him with them. In my New York Journal of Books review of Kin I describe it as "sad and beautiful" and "a nonlinear impressionistic series of vignettes, flashbacks, inner monologues and apocalyptic dystopian fantasies/dream sequences." Making sense of these varied elements is the reader's job; Mr. Burstein doesn't spoon feed, but this book is certainly worth the effort. My examiner.com article also compares and contrasts adoption practices in Israel and the United States. It might be helpful to readers searching for Kin in the Brooklyn Public Library catalog to know that that library spells the author's name Deror Burshṭain.
Merry Christmas to my Christian readers, and happy Chinese food and movie day to my Jewish ones! May 2013 bring as rewarding reads as 2012 did!
