Fiction Archive |
Freedom - Barack Obama went to Martha’s Vineyard and there obtained, a week before its release, a copy of Jonathan Franzen’s novel. That same week, my family was heading to the Bahamas,
From the Memoirs Of A Non-Enemy Combatant - Guest Butler Ron Fried produces TV, writes really crisp novels (like Christmas in Paris, 2002), knows everything about Balzac and can bench-press an Escalade. Well, three of those. It takes an
Funny Fiction - A doctoral student was asked to name some humorous novels. She'd been grinding at graduate school for so long that she drew a blank. She turned
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera - “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Col. Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo
George Orwell: The Orwell Reader - SUPPORTING BUTLER: Since the start of 2023, Amazon seems to have gone on a quiet campaign to rid itself of small sites that, collectively, generate revenue worth noticing — and
Georgia: A novel of Georgia O’Keeffe - When it comes to culture, Americans are like baby birds --- we like our nutrition pre-chewed. So if I wanted to learn about Hadley Richardson, perhaps Ernest Hemingway’s greatest love,
Ghost Wall: A Novel - Walls? They’re in the news, I hear. So a novel called “Ghost Wall,” by a writer who gets 5-star reviews, has a certain interest. And it’s 144 pages --- you
Gilded Mountain - “Gilded Mountain” is told in the first person, and Sylvie Pelletier is a heroine and a half. It takes her 464 pages to tell her story because the frame of
Gone Girl - I’m less than fond of mystery/thrillers, and yet I stayed up until 4 AM to finish Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl.” And if I told you too much about it, you’d
Graham Greene: The End of the Affair - Graham Greene was one of the masters of 20th century fiction, and “The End of the Affair” is one of his best novels. Almost everyone I know who has read
Graham Greene: The Quiet American - They made a movie of Graham Greene's novel, The End of the Affair, starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore. It was set in London during World War II, and
Gretl Claggett on So Much Pretty: ‘Why are we women so…nice about violence?’ - I was sufficiently disturbed by So Much Pretty to call the author before I wrote about it. Days after I published my review/interview, I still felt incomplete. Then it came
Grief - In 1978, Andrew Holleran published his first novel, Dancer from the Dance. It was a breakthrough book, the first novel to get inside the male gay fascination with
Guy de Maupassant: Alien Hearts - “No iron can strike the heart with as much force as a period in exactly the right place.” Isaac Babel wrote that. The sentence appears in a short story called “Guy
Guy de Maupassant: Bel-Ami - George --- the kind of handsome guy from the country who, for lack of a better thing to do, joins the Army --- finshes his military service without a prospect in the world. He
Half-Blood Blues - Guest Butler Pam Purves is a strategic marketing and communications consultant whose practice includes national and international clients in the public policy, health care, business and financial services sectors. In
Hannibal Rising - In “The Silence of the Lambs,” Hannibal Lecter tells Clarice Starling, “Nothing happened to me. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences.” We have every reason to
Harper Lee: “Go Set a Watchman” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” - Atticus Finch killed a mockingbird. “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters?” he asks in “Go Set a Watchman.” “Do you want them
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - When I met Eric Stirpe, he was 10 years old and I was....considerably older. But I listened with great interest as Eric talked about a book he'd just read: "Harry
Honore de Balzac - As has often been the case, Saul Bellow wised me up. “You can't know life or human relations, you don't understand society, if you haven't read Balzac,”
