David Cooper's Blog - Posts Tagged "literature"
David Grossman conveys parental bereavement in Falling Out of Time
“As moving as are each of these expressions of grief the cumulative effect of Falling Out of Time‘s nearly 200 pages is even more powerful. It certainly conveys bereaved parents’ pain to readers who have not suffered that loss and may help some mourning parents work through their grief, though others may feel it reopens emotional wounds.” -- from my New York Journal of Books review of David Grossman's new multi-genre book.
Also see my examiner article.
David Grossman
Books: poet C.K. Williams turns to prose in All at Once
“It is probably not fair to compare C. K. Williams’ prose in All at Once with his award winning verse poetry books, but it does offer poetry averse readers an opportunity to engage with a perceptive and empathic wordsmith whose work they otherwise would not encounter.” —From my NYJB book review. Also see my examiner article.
Israeli books: Gail Hareven's Lies, First Person is a visceral novel of ideas
"There are books that make us feel intensely and others that make us think deeply; one that does both is Gail Hareven’s opalescent and psychologically complex eleventh novel Lies, First Person (in the original Hebrew Hashkarim Ha’aharonim Shel Hagoof which literally translates as The Body’s Last Lies), which is only the second (The Confessions of Noa Weber) of her 13 books for adults to be published in English in Dalya Bilu’s fine translation." - From my New York Journal of Booksreview
" Lies, First Person , Gail Hareven ’s second novel to be translated into English (the eleventh of her thirteen adult books published in Hebrew), which is published today by Open Letter Books , is both an emotionally compelling narrative and a novel of ideas. Its characters find different ways of coping with the emotional aftermath of an unreported and unpunished crime, and the novel invites its readers to consider such questions as the nature of evil and the justification of vengeance and retribution." - From my examiner.com article
Jewish books: Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers is a high tech epic
What happens when a down on his luck luddite novelist is hired to ghostwrite a memoir by a math whiz tech mogul who shares his (and the author of this novel’s) name? …At close to 600 pages of dense prose Book of Numbers is not light reading. I close my NYJB review by recommending it to “readers as ambitious as it is.” — from Jewish books: Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers is a high tech epic Also see my New York Journal of Books review. Overall, a challenging but fun and rewarding read!
Ronit Matalon's autobiographic novel The Sound of Our Steps
"A fictional and more literary tale of an Egyptian Jewish family’s diminished circumstances after immigrating to Israel is
The Sound of Our Steps
by
Ronit Matalon
, a novel published today in
Dalya Bilu
’s English translation by Metropolitan Books. In
my New York Journal of Books review
I praise it as a 'beautifully written and skillfully translated book that rewards rereading.'” -- from
my examiner article, Israeli Books: Ronit Matalon's autobiographic novel The Sound of Our Steps
