Sunday, March 09, 2014

We Love This Book

BOOK OF THE WEEK
WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES
by Karen Joy Fowler
There is very little that can be said about Karen Joy Fowler's new novel without saying too much. That there is a big ‘reveal’ within its first third is no spoiler. I hope that you are lucky enough to avoid all the spoilers and arrive at that revelatory moment as it was intended – a quiet statement of fact that tips the perspective enough to almost make you want to stop right there and start over. This is a story of family, psychology, memory, and belonging. It opens with its middle, and teases out the details of its beginning and end. It made me look up a few new words in my dictionary. It made me Google ‘fistulated cow’ (though I wouldn’t recommend that bit), but above all it made me burst with admiration for what Karen Joy Fowler has achieved here. This is bittersweet and astute, funny and glorious, and it asks big questions. I revelled in it.
BOOK REVIEWS
BARK
by Lorrie Moore
Bark, Lorrie Moore’s first short-story collection in 15 years, is filled with middle-aged, clever, surprised characters. It reads like a transitional work. The earlier Moore, who attracted a cult following for her humour and poignancy, is still here, but the focus is shifting to a sense of quiet desperation. Although the tone is never precisely pessimistic, there is little to smile at here, even ruefully. Perhaps the collection seems to say time will simply conquer, however clever we can be in the interim. Let’s hope we won’t have to wait another 15 years to see how Moore develops this awareness.
HUMMINGBIRDS
by Various
If you have ever experienced the exhilarating pleasure of seeing a brilliant, iridescent jewel quivering and darting amongst the flowers of a lush forest in South America, you may already be hooked. For everyone else, prepare to fall in love with – as Chris Packham puts it in his warm and personal foreword to this impressive book – the ‘work of nature’s genius’: the hummingbird. Spectacularly illustrated throughout, this book is as much a triumph of photographic excellence (given the challenge of capturing these ephemeral creatures) as it is a thorough catalogue of all known hummingbird species.

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