Alex Falconer > Recent Status Updates

A tragedy being craftily revealed

What the hell is going on? Tangents flying all over the place, incoherent

All stories are in the third person, which perhaps shows that Goldsworthy is most comfortable as an analyst and observer

Easy-to-read stories in which pride is often punctured. Witty repartee between characters is entertaining but shallow. Every second story has a lawyer or a silk dress, sometimes both. And the silk always 'pours' on or off a body, and people always 'sweep' in or out of a room.

Plot and style are well-balanced in first third of the book but getting style-heavy and turgid in second third.

Roth's prose is looking bloated to me now; his efforts to convey the intense drive and bewildered outrage of his protagonist, Coleman Silk, don't move me much. After loving American Pastoral and enjoying I Married a Communist, familiarity is starting to breed contempt

Opens with reportage of an event that most outside of Iraq have probably forgotten - Saddam's amnesty to all prisoners in late 2002. The explosion of repressed hope, anger, and devastation that this triggered is very movingly reported by Shadid. Good prologue, I'm in

My first Morrison and it has revealed to me a whole new country in the world of stories. Excellent dialogue and vivid unique characters

Abandoned it out of frustration and annoyance. It'll probably be a while before I start a DeLillo again. Wonder if he wrote anything else that's as good as Libra. Hope so

All of the characters are quirky but none are endearing. The children's quips are too clever and assured. It's as light as an episode of Seinfeld, yet weighed down with the ballast of philosophical musings

Nonsensical monologues, nonsensical conversations. Is this the point? Will try to persevere