davidfcooper's posterous

Book review: I Hadn't Understood

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Will Europa Editions' newly published English translation of Italian writer Diego De Silva's comic novel I Hadn't Understood appeal to Jewish New Yorkers? In my New York Journal of Books review I compare Mr. De Silva's sense of humor to those of Woody Allen and Philip Roth. Read the review and then the book and decide for yourself.
via examiner.com

NY Jewish books: The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

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A language epidemic erupts among Jewish families; children's speech makes their parents deathly ill. Soon it spreads to the rest of the population. This dark fantasy is the premise of Jewish New Yorker Ben Marcus's new novel, The Flame Alphabet published today by Knopf (read more on examiner.com ; also read my New York Journal of Books review:http://goo.gl/GrQGA ).

2 book reviews: "The Break" and "Underground Time" -- New York Journal of Books

Thanks to a change in the publication date of one of the books I have two reviews published on the same day. Both are novels in translation, one from Italian and the other from French. 

“The Break is reminiscent of Italian neo-realist cinema of the late 1940s and is enthusiastically recommended to all readers. Kudos to Howard Curtis for a wonderful translation.” This paperback is printed on high quality paper with a handsome wrap-around cover.

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“Because Underground Time’s prose largely lacks the delicious density of the best literary fiction in translation, it appears to target a middlebrow readership. But readers with highbrow tastes may want to make an exception to their usual literary fare on account of its social criticism.”

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Read these and my other book reviews on New York Journal of Books.

A Meaning for Wife | New York Journal of Books

“Your wife is killed by a cashew (anaphylactic shock), but there isn't time to grieve because your toddler son is always at your heels—wanting to be fed, to be played with, or to sleep next to you all night long. A change of pace seems necessary, so you decide to visit your parents in order to attend your twenty-year high school reunion. What begins as a weekend getaway quickly becomes a theater for dealing with the past—a past that you will have to re-imagine in order to have any hope of a future for you and your son.”--Mark Yakish, A Meaning for Wife

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“Toward the end of the novel there is a gutsy shift in narrative tone that lends the ending a sense of closure. In recent years, women writers such as Joan Didion and Meghan O’Rourke have published nonfiction memoir accounts of grief. In his debut novel Mr. Yakich provides the male perspective. Recommended to anyone who has experienced loss.”

Read the rest of my review in New York Journal of Books

New York Journal of Books: "The Hall of the Singing Caryatids" by Victor Pelevin

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“At barely more than 100 small (four and a half by seven inch) pages in Andrew Bromfield’s excellent English translation The Hall of the Singing Caryatidssucceeds both as a novella of ideas and as a science fiction work of fantasy, and is recommended to all readers enamored of thought provoking fiction.”

Read the entire review on New Yorik Journal of Books.

New York Journal of Books: "The Hall of the Singing Caryatids" by Victor Pelevin

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“At barely more than 100 small (four and a half by seven inch) pages in Andrew Bromfield’s excellent English translation The Hall of the Singing Caryatidssucceeds both as a novella of ideas and as a science fiction work of fantasy, and is recommended to all readers enamored of thought provoking fiction.”

Read the entire review on New Yorik Journal of Books.

In "Scenes from Village Life" Amos Oz returns to short form fiction

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In an interview on last night's Charlie Rose show Israeli writer Amos Oz discussed his latest book, Scenes from Village Life. In my New York Journal of Books review of the book I write...
Continue reading on Examiner.com In "Scenes from Village Life" Amos Oz returns to short form fiction - New York NY | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/ny-in-new-york/in-scenes-from-village-life-amos-oz-returns-to-short-form-fiction#ixzz1c6X9ntsO

Susan Daitch's novel Paper Conspiracies revisits Dreyfus Affair

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New York Jewish fiction writer Susan Daitch's third novel Paper Conspiracies, which was published last week by City Lights Books, takes an indirect approach to late Nineteenth Century France's Dreyfus Affair by way of peripheral minor actors in the scandal and via cinema pioneer Georges Mèliés' contemporaneous dramtized documentary film L'affaire Dreyfus . The novel's six sections alternate between 1990s New York and Paris in the 1890s, 1930s, and 1968.

In my New York Journal of Books review of the novel I enthusiastically recommend the book "to fans of highbrow, erudite historical fiction. Readers who enjoy the novels of Umberto Eco, for example, will probably also enjoy those of Ms. Daitch.” I also draw an analogy between late Nineteenth Century French anti-Semitism and Twentyfirst Century American Islamophobia. 

 

via examiner.com

Anna Solomon's debut novel "The Little Bride"

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In my New York Journal of Books review I describe the book as  “. . . a plot-driven novel conveyed in crisp, descriptive, and thought-provoking prose via an engagingly intelligent third-person narrator. . . . an auspicious debut” and recommend it to both adult and precocious young adult readers.  via examiner.com