THE CORRECTIONS, by Jonathan Franzen

The Corrections, published in 2001, is the second novel by Jonathan Franzen  I've read (the first being Freedom), and I was interested enough in his style to take another dip. The book does start jerkily (as the NY Times reviewer mentions) but I wasn't tempted to put it down. The guy can obviously write with great power and wonderful turn of phrase. The story of the dysfunctional Lambert family is saved from banality by the truly interesting characters and their complex interplay. The book is long, intense, and the narrative complexly structured, but it is well worth the effort.

For a review of the book from NY Times, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/books/review/09GATESTW.html?pagewanted=all

THE ZERO, by Jess Walter

The Zero is the second post-911 novel set in NYC I've read recently, the other being the blackly humorous A Disorder Peculiar to the Country. Both books highlight the paranoia and absurdity of the immediate post-catastrophe period in NYC. The strange narrative style of The Zero cleverly mirrors this surreal cultural climate by means of a telling the story of the protagonist, Edger Remy, through a series of disconnected vignette-like episodes mirroring his own strange psychology. Remy seems to have some sort of disassociative disorder that results in blackouts from which he recovers in spurts - these recovered moments propel the narrative, but in an unpredictable and disorienting way. It's a very interesting style and a compelling novel.


For a review of the book from the NY Times, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/11/books/11masl.html?_r=0

NUMBER 9 DREAM, by David Mitchell

Number 9 Dream, published in 2001, is David Mitchell's second novel. It's an entertaining and, well, imperfect work which gives fans like me a window into his development as a writer. I was introduced to Mitchell from his wonderful post-modern work Cloud Atlas. Number 9 is a much more conventional narrative, a wander through the life of a flawed protagonist as he embarks on a quest to find his long-absent father. It does have a convincing narrator and a disturbing portrayal of yakusa horrors that does manage to avoid total stereotyping. There were 2 interpolated story sets, one of which that works better than the other. At times is seems like a riff on a Murakami-type narration but does have its own dry humor and flavor. All-in-all it was an enjoyable read.

For a review of the book from The Guardian, click here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/mar/10/fiction.davidmitchell

ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES by Rivka Galchen

Atmospheric Disturbances is a strange and entertaining first novel by Rivka Galchen, published in 2008. The quirky narrator is a 51-year-old psychiatrist named Leo Leibenstein. Leo wakes up one morning convinced that his young, attractive Argentine wife, Rema, has been "replaced" by a simulacrum. The bizarre premise gets even weirder as he searches for outside sources of the "disappearance", refusing to take credit for his "Rema-psychosis". He centers on a quasi-scientific organization called the Royal Meteorological Academy and in particular, a staff member there named Tzvi Gal-Chen. He "uses" "clues" he finds in Gal-Chen's technical writing to help him as he sets out on a journey to find the "real" Rema. The story is strange and frequently very funny as it examines the interplay between reality and perception, the real and simulacrum.

For a review of the book by the NY Times, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/books/review/Schillinger-t.html?ref=books&_r=0

AWAY, by Amy Bloom

Away is an interesting immigrant story set in the 1920s, about a Ukrainian Jewish woman, Lillian Leyb, who emigrates to NYC to escape the latest pogrom and by sheer determination situates herself as a mistress to some well-connected theatre people. The first half of the book explores her adaptation process and strange success. The story shifts significantly when a relative arriving in NY tells her that her daughter, whom she assumed was dead, had in fact been rescued by a villager and taken to Siberia. Lillian decides to break off the mistress role and travel across the US to Alaska to then make her way to Siberia. The journey, fraught with difficulty, pushes the plot forward, to an interesting ending. The book is quite successfully told, with lots of atmosphere and even pathos.

For a review of the book from NY Times, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/books/review/Thomas-t.html?_r=0

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler

We Are Completely Beside Ourselves is a surprising and moving growing-up narrative with a twist. Karen Fowler's novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2014. Although it is rather straightforward in the retrospective telling of the childhood of the protagonist, Rosemary Cooke who is now a university student, the unusual aspect of the story (can't mention it if I want to avoid spoiling the plot) adds interest. It is movingly told and has a tragic aspect as well. Worth the read.

For a review of the book from The Telegraph, click here:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11160844/We-Are-All-Completely-Beside-Ourselves-Karen-Joy-Fowler-Man-Booker-2014.html

2666 by Roberto Bolano

I discovered the Chilean writer Roberto Bolano recently, courtesy of my South American colleague, who introduced him to me. A longtime fan of the previous generation of Latin American writers (Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig, etc.), I jumped at the chance to familiarize myself with the latest superstar of L.Am. fiction. Bolano is certainly not writing classic magical realism, but the gritty and at the same time transcendent prose he writes is another kind of realism of great power. 2666 is an exhausting 900-page journey in which the reader is frequently lost or at least drawn down baffling but beautiful or horrible alleys. The journey doesn't have an obvious ending but is ripe with potential endings. The book was discovered and published posthumously in 2008 and consists of five parts, which could stand alone very well as shorter books and are tenuously related. At the center of the book is the mysterious German writer Benno von Archimboldi, who is tracked by his academic fans (maybe) to the squalor of "Santa Teresa",  thinly-disguised border town of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Central to this location is a series of unsolved rape/murders of hundreds of women. The book is intense and horrifying but contains moments of tremendous beauty. I highly recommend reading the review of the book by Jonathan Lethem below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/books/review/Lethem-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0