Tag: novels

Books: The Calamity Club, A Novel by Kathryn Stockett, 2026

It is a very hard read – too long and too “all-over-the-place.” I doubt many readers who begin it can endure to the end (at least without skipping pages.) Stockett wanted to touch on so many subjects of “woke” nature that it became a book about everything. The story of an orphan trapped in an unjust orphanage system, a single female struggling with financial hardship, a gay husband and his family wishing to “cure” him, a goodhearted wealthy alcoholic, a single mother sent to jail by a racist society, etc. etc.

All of this is told from an overtly feminist perspective, despite being set in 1930s Mississippi. The novel finally descends into implausibility when its three central female characters establish and successfully run a brothel in Oxford, Mississippi, as a way of surviving the economic devastation of the Great Depression. As a plot device—and as a statement of feminist empowerment, it sounds ludicrous.

There is not one original idea in this book – everything is predictable because it is premised on an ideological matrix – the plight of women and gays in the 20th century American South. Nothing to discover here, nothing we did not already know. The characters are sentimentalized and well-designed to fit the scheme of historical critique intended by Stockett.

Books: More Than Enough, A Novel by Anna Quindlen, 2026

Anna Quindlen is an achiever in fiction writing. She knows the rules and she is so industrious, so detail oriented, so sensitive to women issues, mood swings, and life’s surprises that you can’t really complain about the quality of her writing. And — still you can! This book attempts to cover absolutely everything—and does so formulaically. It feels as though Quindlen gathered a checklist of every modern female concern, striving to address each one without ever achieving depth or finding an original angle. While she occasionally captures a sharp detail or mirrors a familiar feeling perfectly, the overall narrative ultimately leaves an aftertaste of banality and dissatisfaction.

This clutter is the inevitable result of cramming a dizzying array of subplots into a single novel:

  • Mother-daughter friction
  • Deep father-daughter affection
  • Cross-marital betrayal
  • Late-in-life discovery of a biological father
  • Dealing with a parent’s dementia
  • A sister’s tight bond with her gay brother
  • Watching a fabulous best friend die of cancer
  • Chronic parental self-doubt
  • The quiet grief of a childless family
  • Desperation to conceive
  • A child coping with maternal loss

While Quindlen meticulously anchors these subtopics to her protagonist, the execution feels synthetic. In the end, it feels like she was busy checking boxes rather than writing about life itself.

Books: Contrapposto, A Novel by Dave Eggers, 2026

Contrapposto is another strong novel by Dave Eggers, whose The Circle demonstrated his talent for satirizing the cultural tendencies of the internet age: the erosion of privacy, the oppressive culture of technology companies, and the growing influence of social networks on everyday life.

In Contrapposto (the title refers to the classical artistic pose most famously exemplified by Michelangelo’s David), Eggers turns his attention to the contemporary art world. His target is the dominance of postmodern conceptual art, where technical skill and beauty have increasingly been displaced by interpretation, theory, and narrative.

The novel’s finest pages are those depicting the destructive role of university art education. Eggers’s satirical portrait of Cricket’s art class, where the work of the only genuinely gifted student is mercilessly criticized for being representational, is both hilarious and convincing. Equally entertaining are the scenes set in the gallery during Cricket’s internship and Eggers’s portrayal of the “business” of conceptual art through Kyle, a wildly successful artist who hires technically skilled painters to execute his ideas while he serves merely as the project’s facilitator. In this world, “interpretation” becomes the art per se, while beauty in the classical sense of the word and art’s ability to reveal the mystery of reality have become irrelevant. Some of the university scenes are reminiscent of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, particularly its critique of the contemporary teaching practices in the arts and humanities.

The novel follows Cricket, a talented painter, a someone “who can draw” from childhood to old age. Through him Eggers tries to explore what becomes of an artist unwilling to SELL? At best, he works for figures like Kyle, paints copies of classical masterpieces, or teaches others how to draw. Eggers suggests that there is dignity and contentment in such a life. Recreating beauty and passing on artistic skill are meaningful alternatives to commercial success.

Cricket’s trajectory is contrasted with that of Olympia, the love of his life. Armed with multiple degrees in art, she moves from gallery work and curating to advising wealthy collectors on art investments. Together, Cricket and Olympia embody two opposing ways of living within the art world: one devoted to artistic creation, the other to the institutions and markets that surround it.

The novel raises important questions about the place and purpose of art in contemporary society. Pitching it primarily as a story of friendship between Cricket and Olympia does it a disservice. The sex scenes that accompany their love story are quite campy and rather belong to a conventional romance novel. Yet, as representatives of two competing visions of art and artistic life, Cricket and Olympia are interesting and convincing. Their parallel trajectories, marked by a sympathetic dose of madness, disillusionment, and decline, ring true and contribute to the profound sadness that permeates the novel’s closing pages.

Books: Rivals, A Novel by Jilly Cooper, 1988

The ultimate politically incorrect book!

I came across Jilly Cooper when exploring subgenres of the romance novel. What a prolific writer she is – and how popular she was in the 1980s! Her specialty is the “bonkbuster”: a novel that involves sex, glamour, wealth, power, and plenty of rivalry – business or sexual or both…Her women are “bitches” and her men are “macho”. Cooper herself once complained that her American film adaptations are “demachoing” her characters.

Cooper gets thumbs up for her satirical or quite cynical representation of the upper middle class and all the stupidity and arrogance underlying wealth. Another favorite topic of hers is talent – talented characters can get away with anything. This is exemplified in characters like Declan, Rebecca, Lizzie -a journalist, a producer, and a writer, respectivly. And the author’s ultimate favorite is a character like Rupert Campbell-Black – a sparkling combination of physical beauty, wit, and cynicism (but eventually revealing the macho’s romantic underbelly). One can’t help giving Cooper credit for being able to handle multiple characters tangled in complex relationships, intrigue, drama, failure and triumph to result eventually in a pop-culture’s trashy page-turner. Her concept of human psychology is quite superficial and her achiever characters’ motivation is mainly what passes for success – wealth, power, social recognition, and above all – “winning”!

Apart from some witty lines, the book is quite forgettable but undeniably hits some buttons that the audience always responds to – what would it be if they become suddenly very rich, handsome, sexually irresistible, smart and popular?!

Dream on, ladies…

Books: Taiwan Travelogue, A Novel by Yang Shuang-zi, 2024

The novel won the International Booker Prize for 2026. I would love to have someone explain to me what is the literary value (yes, the literary one, not the political one) of this travelogue. And a travelogue it is! Its main contribution is the detailed description of Taiwan’s railway schedules and delicious Taiwanese cuisine.

The novel uses two, now tired, literary tricks.

The first is the familiar framing device involving the discovery and rediscovery of a supposedly real but actually fictional manuscript. Here, it takes the form of a “new translation” of a nonexistent travel memoir written by a Japanese author visiting Taiwan and becoming attracted to her Taiwanese translator.

The second device is the use of food as the primary attraction of the narrative. Several recent Asian bestsellers follow the same formula — for example, Butter by Asako Yuzuki or The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai. In Taiwan Travelogue, the protagonist is essentially a glutton who discovers the country through its street food.

To be fair, the food motif works better than the rest. It serves to fill the pages of this short book with mouthwatering descriptions of Taiwanese dishes and ingredients. But this becomes a flavorful substitute for depth in a novel that ultimately has little to say. The author’s deepest insights amount to observations such as: “Real travel means living in a foreign country.”

The judges of the International Booker Prize have, of course, strained to identify some commentary on colonialism — for example, the suggestion that enjoying a country’s cuisine because it is “exotic” rather than genuinely “delicious” reflects a colonial mindset. Other boxes are checked off as well: women pressured into marriage, same-sex attraction, and condescending attitudes toward educated or career-oriented women.

Yet all of these themes are treated in an extremely lightweight manner, while critics call this approach – “ironic” or “multilayered.”

Books: Before I Forget, A Novel by Tory Henwood Hoen, 2025

It is no accident that this book is a bestseller. Essentially, it is a self-help book presented in fictional form—and the fiction is of high quality without being great literature. The novel gently guides the reader through personal failure, coping with death and loss, and dealing with guilt, all in a mellow, compassionate way. A touch of humour and a dose of the occult are woven in, which the reader may take seriously or not.

Henwood’s satirical strength shines when the wellness industry enters the picture. The pages devoted to the main character’s conversations with her boss—the owner of an organic products (or rather, “experiences”) company—are hilarious.

Her most moving prose appears toward the end of the book, when Alzheimer’s and death become part of everyday reality and real pain must be faced in a gracious, unsentimental way. Finally, the author offers the reader one last lifeline with the suggestion that “no one ever leaves this world completely.” You may choose to believe this literally, or simply take it as a comforting metaphor of remembrance.

Books: What We Can Know, A Novel by Ian McEwan, 2025

The novel offers variations of all possible answers to the question “What can we know?” The answers, as expected, are pessimistic. In a world overwhelmed with data and a digital cloud heavy with “knowledge” about everyone and everything, it is still possible to manipulate memory and history as we struggle to “know”. “Most of life is oblivion,” one of McEwan’s characters argues. The truth about the past is unattainable, as it is controlled by the living and by what they have decided to pass on. We can’t know ourselves or what we are capable of. Memoirs are misleading as we put our “better selves” on the page. In a dystopian post-catastrophic world, an age metaphorically named by McEwan – the Inundation (think climate change of catastrophic proportions), humanities and history are losing the attention of the young. The generation of the future is obsessed with the present. Still, a nostalgic professor from the 22nd century searches for a lost poem recited at a birthday party in 2014. This search reflects the author’s hope that literature will still matter…

While the first part of the novel takes place in the future and centers on the search for the lost poem, the second is a soliloquy of the woman to whom the poem was dedicated. It is the more captivating and emotionally engaging part. Here, the novel becomes a satire of sorts of a poet-genius and his literary circle. The poet suffers from “status anxiety” and “limited forgiveness for humankind,” and McEwan so detests him that he turns him into a murderer. Or did he have to do this because he needed to introduce some thriller element to his otherwise quite essayistic narrative?

Stylistically, McEwan is at the height of his craft; his message is melancholic and ironic.

Books: Flesh, A Novel by David Szalay, 2025

Somewhat disappointing for a Booker-nominated novel! But aren’t they all recently?

Szalay tracks in a coldly observant style the life of a boy from behind the Iron Curtain who is sexually abused by a 40-something woman, the age of his mother. The boy becomes obsessed with the older woman, which leads to the accidental murder of her husband. From now on, things go downhill for the main character – although on the surface, his life trajectory is quite successful, financially, socially, and sexually. We follow Istvan, who leads a life as an “out of body” experience, unable to fully engage emotionally with his female partners. On the other hand, we see him capable of deep hatred – towards his stepson, and deep love – towards his own child. Istvan is not just an unsympathetic character. He develops into quite a monstrous person, and despite his overwhelming unhappiness, he never appeals to the compassion of the reader.

If Szalay’s intention was to show the effects of a totalitarian society and its sexually and socially frustrating system on a generation of people who got to experience the collapse of this system, the result is quite unsatisfactory. Istvan’s story could be anybody’s story. The author seems to have little, if any, knowledge of life behind the Iron Curtain.

If Szalay’s intention was to show the effects of childhood sexual trauma on the life of an innocent boy, this has already been done by Ian McEwan in “Lessons” (2022) in a most brilliant way.

Books: Long Island, A Novel by Colm Toibin, 2024

Colm Toibin returns to the heroine of “Brooklyn” – Eilis Lacey, the Irish immigrant, now married to Tony with two grown-up kids and somewhat stifled by the proximity and the routines of his large and closely knit Italian family. Then, quite unexpectedly, the haze of complacency, rather, inertia, is disrupted by the visit of a stranger and his shocking revelation. It is a classical device for opening a novel, and Tobin is a master of the craft of classical belle lettres. The narrative unfolds slowly with relentless drive towards tragedy. And I don’t mean “tragedy” in the Greek sense of the world; it is the Chekhovian type of tragedy of the mundane, where seemingly there is a space for choice that can turn one’s life around, but the characters gradually come to the realization that this choice is impossible.

After Eilis leaves her American home and returns to Ireland, as if to return to the past, the novel focuses on the love triangle – Eilis, Nancy, and Jim. Their fates are intertwined once again, as they attempt to actively manage their moves driven by subconscious complex desires; it becomes evident that fulfilling these desires is impossible. The story unfolds like a tragedy of timing, wrong timing rather, similar to Father Lawrence’s predicament in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” The messenger is “late!” If Nancy had announced her relationship with Jim earlier, if Eilis had given her answer sooner, if Jim were not that secretive, etc., etc. The strings and nets of coincidences so masterfully woven by Toibin become the meta-metaphor for the chaos of life, where decisions, big or small, are determined by so many factors, that the big picture is lost, the “why” is hard to answer, and the easiest choice is to return to the routine, to the choice of least resistance. And when you make this choice, it is pointing you in only one last direction – death. There will be no “turning a new page ” for any of the characters of “Long Island.”

One of the best novels I read recently – literature at its finest!

Books: The Lying Life of Adults. A Novel by Elena Ferrante, 2019

I have previously had mixed feelings about the writings of Elena Ferrante. My esteem of her rose after the film adaptation of “The Lost Daughter” by Maggie Gylenhaal, a truly original and thought-provoking film. My initial complaints about her fiction were related to the first part of the Neapolitan quartet – “My Brilliant Friend” which I found cliched and uninspiring, especially her very traditional class-struggles approach. In contrast – I was impressed by “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” which is an example of an in-depth look into the motherhood and womanhood themes of her previous books and a sort of more incisive continuation of “The Lost Daughter.” In the former, I enjoyed the string of character studies – contradictory and complex, the prose – dense and subtle, the non-judgemental representation of opposing kinds of “femininity,” the ambiguity of female strife for independence as a mix of libration and egotism. “We all narrate our lives as it suits us.” writes Ferrante. This is the powerful message of “Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave” – and it is the meta-revelation of the first-person narrative in that novel.

In “The Lying Life of Adults,” this principle is taken to a level of arbitrariness. An exceptionally smart girl, the author wants us to believe, is debunking the “narrative” of the adults that surround her as lies. Doing that she builds her own, supposedly innocent and honest, narrative. Not a new thing, by the way (i.e. What Maisie Knew) . The problem with the narrative of the coming-of-age girl, is that at some point the “disbelief” cannot be suspended. It becomes impossible to give credit to her unusual for her age intelligence, her interest in higher matters of politics and philosophy, the impression she creates for adults and peers, and her supposedly penetrating representations of the adults in her life. This time, Ferrante is invested too much in binary oppositions: ugly-beautiful, dreamy-cynical, rich-poor, entitled-self-made, so that instead of transforming into psychological “depth” the oppositions come across as confusing and arbitrary. In the main character’s narrative everything becomes possible and hence — not engaging.