Tag: Reviews

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.

Films: TV: Cape Fear, TV Series, 2026

Braking a major rule here – writing a review after watching only episode one of the newly released Cape Fear! But usually the first episode sets the stage for what is to be expected. And it is not good. Not good, at all. And “it is the script, stupid”!One can only feel sorry for the talented actors doing their best with such substandard material, especially given the strength of the previous adaptations.

I suppose, the major blame goes to creator Nick Antosca and a long list of staff writers.

The main flaws:

The main character Max Cady, just released from prison, is introduced in a very unintelligent way. At a major fundraising event, he takes the microphone from Ana Bowden—who seems oddly unbothered by the interruption—and proceeds to deliver a long, dull, and dumb speech. Writers, what were you thinking?

The threat that is supposed to surround the Bowden family couldn’t be more banal and silly as well – skunks drowned in their pool, front door alarm sounding, AND a real tiger appearance. To turn a tiger metaphor from the 1991 Cape Fear (Scorcese) into a zoo animal – how literal can you go!

The Bowden family itself is quite sleazy so why route for them? The ex-prisoner, the supposed embodiment of evil, lacks layers and layers of complexity so perfectly intertwining in Robert DeNiro’s interpretation of Cady in the 1991 version.

Not worth watching further.

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: The Names, A Novel by Florence Knapp, 2025

The novel is celebrated as a remarkable debut… How is the quality of a book relevant to whether it is a first or a last one? It is also praised for being “original” – precisely the quality that it lacks. One can easily detect how it was planned and designed (or rather concocted) to achieve the effect it has on part of the female reading public. One can hardly imagine a male having any interest in this book.

Its “scheme” is so transparent that it is offensive….It is a novel that could be AI-generated or could be a product of a young achiever who just completed her Creative Writing class with an A+. It demonstrates certain skills on a sentence level. As a whole, it is simplistic and schematic. Its premise is preposterous – the different names a woman can select for her son determine his fortune. The first choice is the name of the abusive father, Gordon, the second is Julian, preferred by the mother, and the third is Bear, picked by the child’s sister. Predictably, the wildest choice leads to the happiest life story, while the name “Gordon” dooms the bearer of this name.

Obviously, the book is about the choices a woman can make to set herself free from an abusive marriage. How many more books can the female audience digest and laud that tackle abusive marriages? What does the book add to the artistic interpretation or psychological analysis of the issue? I can’t see the point. But this is the damage that the book club culture and creative writing classes have brought upon literature. Anyone who can read and write thinks that “there is a book in me”. The book clubs brainwash the potential reader with mediocre standards where everyone can “relate” to plots and characters using their own experience. No one has ever taught them that books are not to be judged from “experience”.

In addition, the whole notion of “female writing” – who came up with this nonsense? But now it has become like a self-fulfilled bad prophecy! There is now a “female writing” called to life, and it is bad. Did Mary Shelley write like a woman? No and no!

The book clubs and their followers created trends where books like “Flow Like a River” and “Where the Crawdads Sing” became the standard of female writing. Books where woman is one with nature and nature is one with woman…The funny thing is that these writers are thought to be “feminist” while they are promoting and reinforcing the most patriarchal trope of womanhood – the “nurturer”, the “earth”, the “procreator”. And because these books are successful, they become the model for future creative writing students to perpetuate that trend. How very annoying!

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: Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Novel by Satoshi Yagisawa

What is the appeal of a Japanese novel of 150 pages that makes it an international bestseller? The novel is very unpretentious and uneventful with a very light plot and still a page-turner.

The narrative takes you through the ordinary lives of ordinary people with a low horizon of expectations from life – nothing beyond love, work, and family. A hike in the mountains is described so simply and effortlessly that it has the effect of a still-life painting. It focuses your gaze and sucks you into the reality of the everyday made to look mysterious and strange through the power of language. It makes the coolness of the night breeze or the fatigue and excitement of a mountain climb acquire a fresh deep meaning.

There is a lot of melodrama but it is so mellow and tender that creates a sub-genre of its own. Let us call it – the mellow-drama. The painful is combined with hope, death is not an end.

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.

Books: The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto, 2015

Have not had much luck with American novels recently so I decided to switch to Japanese literature…Really, everything that I started reading from Bestseller lists or Book Club lists was unimpressive as literature, “literal” or lacking in style (e.g. The Lions of Fifth Avenue”) or “checking boxes” propaganda type (e.g. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.) American fiction is becoming more of a “socialist realism” type of fiction, propaganda over belle lettres, politics over art….

So, here it goes – a Japanese novel. It was a strange experience. It is short, compared to American novels, obviously, Japanese publishers don’t have a recommended word count for a novel…It is definitely engaging – the existence of a secret is planted at the beginning of the novel and its disclosure represents its very end. It describes the relationship of two very fragile, very strange characters with a combination of naivete and depth that strikes me as a feature of modern Japanese literature. Here, for example, is a line, that I remembered: “You never know you are happy until later”…Simplicity and depth at the same time is very appealing. At times, the simplicity starts to dominate the narrative, unfortunately, and you are left with some very banal observations. On the other hand, Yoshimoto can definitely create haunting scenes – reminiscent of Gothic literature.