by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 14, 2008 | novels, reviews, shapes |
For anyone who enjoyed Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s second novel, which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, you will love her new novel, Home. For she has just crossed town, so to speak, and turned around to tell us the story from a different porch. On...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 8, 2008 | Dani Shapiro, memoir, novels, truth |
Playing with Fire was Dani Shapiro’s first novel. It was published in 1989. It begins, “There are many versions to this story…” And indeed, nine years later, the author published another version–“the true story,” the...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 20, 2008 | novels, reviews, stories |
In a 1921 New York Times article entitled, “What is a Novel, Anyhow?”, Henry Kitchell Webster, writes “A novel is defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as a fictitious prose narrative of sufficient length to fill one or more volumes. Well, do you...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 24, 2008 | first novels, reviews |
In July, I read Arlington Park and discovered a writer new to me–Rachel Cusk. She was born in Canada in 1967, grew up in Los Angeles, and now lives in England. Arlington Park is her most recent novel. Although I thought it was slightly brusque in its movement...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 10, 2008 | first novels |
The short list for the Booker Prize was announced yesterday. Six novels were chosen from the long list of thirteen. Of the six, two are first novels! Only one was written by a woman. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet read any of these. The short list is as...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 8, 2008 | novels, shapes |
On Monday, February 26, 1951, John Steinbeck wrote, “I don’t understand why some days are wide open and others are closed off, some days smile and others have thin slitted eyes and others still are days which worry. And it does not seem to be me but the...
