"Only a novel!" et cetera as Jane Austen so aptly and still-accurately observed.
Lahiri may work for me because I am familiar with the physical, if not the social, landscapes her characters inhabit in America. You've probably heard of her but don't connect name with work---one of her books is The Namesake.
An air of writers' workshop strain hangs around too much of the recent fiction I have read (the Ferris especially, and to a certain extent the Berry). There's a kind of preaching-to-the-choir, or performance-for-in-crowd, feeling to so much of it, that neither engages nor impresses those not members of the elite. I think this is plaguing genre fiction as well. But, when did it not? The books that endure are the good ones.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-11 05:55 am (UTC)"Only a novel!" et cetera as Jane Austen so aptly and still-accurately observed.
Lahiri may work for me because I am familiar with the physical, if not the social, landscapes her characters inhabit in America. You've probably heard of her but don't connect name with work---one of her books is The Namesake.
An air of writers' workshop strain hangs around too much of the recent fiction I have read (the Ferris especially, and to a certain extent the Berry). There's a kind of preaching-to-the-choir, or performance-for-in-crowd, feeling to so much of it, that neither engages nor impresses those not members of the elite. I think this is plaguing genre fiction as well. But, when did it not? The books that endure are the good ones.