Vintage, 9780099535379 (Aus, UK, US) Reviewed by Alice Grundy The cover of Adam Ross’ first novel, Mr Peanut, is swathed in praise from no lesser lights than Stephen King and Michiko Kakutani. The title page features a reproduction of Escher’s ‘Mobius’ flagging the role of the double in the plot. All the signs point towards [...]
Tag Archives: American fiction
Cult carny lit: Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love
December 27, 2010 – 3:48 pm
Vintage, 1989 9780375713347 (2002 edn) (Also Aus, US, UK) Miss Olympia is an emotional, hunchbacked albino dwarf, and the complex narrator of this wonderful novel. In the present, Oly secretly watches over the remaining members of her carnival-of-freaks family: her daughter, Miranda, and her mother, Crystal Lil. Why her observance and care is secretive is revealed through [...]
‘If only a nippleless bra could make it all work’: Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story
October 29, 2010 – 8:41 pm
Granta, September 2010, through Allen & Unwin in Australia (Aus, US, UK) 9781847081032 Super. Here’s a too-easily-imaginable near-future world where everyone is attached to a device, books are obsolete, people walk around half-naked and rate each other’s bits, the American empire is failing, and it’s hard to make a true and lasting connection. Sad. The [...]
Guest review: Chris Flynn on Justin Cronin’s The Passage
September 7, 2010 – 5:30 pm
The Passage Justin Cronin (Aus, US) Orion 9780752897851 Reviewed by Chris Flynn It’s funny how movies influence books so much these days. The fact that The Passage was optioned by Sir Ridley Scott for $1.75 million within a week of Cronin settling on a $3.75 million publishing deal for his vampire apocalypse trilogy is unsurprising [...]
Like, embrace the pain: the Bret Easton Ellis interview (part 2)
August 20, 2010 – 6:30 pm
It’s very telling, you know? Find part 1, right here, folks. Kathy: My two very favourite novels of all time are Lunar Park, and Pet Sematary by Stephen King, which kind of makes perfect sense… Bret: Yes, it does. Kathy: I’m really interested in the idea that Lunar Park may be becoming a film. I’m [...]
Guest review: Lyndon Riggall on Stephen King’s Under the Dome
February 11, 2010 – 7:33 am
9780340992579 Hodder 2009 (Aus, US) I sometimes wonder when Stephen King will stop. Having published more than 150 books, it’s hard not to wonder when the ideas will dry up. What’s next Stephen, a killer broom monster? A giant ribbon that wraps itself around its victims and strangles them of life? A giant dome that [...]
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Kilts and wine breath: a conversation with my sister about meeting Diana Gabaldon
Some years ago when I was a bookstore girl, I became intrigued by this massive brick of a book called Cross Stitch (Outlander in the US), which many middle-aged women would get flustered over: ‘You haven’t read it?’ they’d ask. I read it, and it was great fun – particularly the raunchy historical Scottish sex, and the [...]