A series of charming, if a bit dotty, letters form “Henrietta Sees it Through,” by Joyce Dennys. Or, no: the letters are not dotty, it’s the Devonshire villagers who are dotty, the letters simply capture their whims and minor adventures and misadventures. This is the 1986 sequel to 1985’s “Henrietta’s War,” also a collection of letters to Henrietta’s “Childhood’s friend.” I’m having the Devil’s own time finding information on Joyce Dennys, except that hers was a military family, she was born in...
February 25, 2011
"Standing at the Crossroads" by Charles Davis
Africa in fiction/ African genocide/ African library/ Charles DavisA surprisingly powerful and deceptively deep novel, “Standing at the Crossroads” packs into a bare 150 pages a thrilling adventure and a timeless morality play. This is a very serious fiction but it has a number of surprisingly tasty treats: a) several laugh-out-loud moments after jokes or insults; b) an ongoing appreciation (first-person, in an internal dialogue) of some of the greatest novelists in history – Melville, Stevenson, Cervantes, Trollope, Austen, Dickens – in a way that bears on the...
February 22, 2011
"Solo" by Rana Dasgupta
Bulgaria fiction/ Rana Dasgupta/ Soviet bloc Georgia fictionRana Dasgupta has divided “Solo” into halves: the “First Movement: Life” and “Second Movement: Daydreams.” The “Life” part recounts the mundane days of Ulrich, a man who has lived almost the entire 20th Century, and even some years into the 21st. The “Daydreams” section … one could argue that this part of the book, vivid as it is, is all in Ulrich’s mind. The first section feels lengthy, and I leaned toward despair of finding any point to it. Ulrich, from Sofia, fails while a boy to pursue his...
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