A Long Strange Trip, Man
A prologue to Dead Astronauts entitled “The Dream of the Blue Fox” describes its inciting incident, although I did not know that during my reading. In fact, the novel’s overall meaning, along with its inciting incident, are…
Jonathan Franzen is READING MY MIND!
That’s how I’ve felt while reading each of Franzen’s novels. He has such an amazing talent for empathy—getting to the very heart of what a man feels, worries about, cares about—that reading his new novel Crossroads seems therapeutic. It…
Digging Up and Polishing Old Tropes to Make Them New
A.W. Baldwin ingeniously deploys classic adventure tropes in Diamonds of Devil’s Tail, dusting them off and resurrecting them like the treasure-seekers in his tale. In it, an incredibly gymnastic cat burglar pulls off the jewel heist of…