The Review of Contemporary Fiction articles from March 22 2009

The Review of Contemporary Fiction archives from March 22 2009

Horacio Castellanos Moya. Senselessness.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Horacio Castellanos Moya. Senselessness. Trans. Katherine Silver. New Directions, 2008. 142 pp. Paper: $15.95. In Horacio Castellanos Moya's biting English-language debut, a self-described "depraved atheist" agrees to work in an unnamed...

Roberto Bolano. 2666.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Roberto Bolano. 2666. Trans. Natasha Wimmer. FSG, 2008. 898 pp. Cloth: $30.00. Spanish writer Javier Cercas, a contemporary of Roberto Bolano, once described an overly adulatory critic: "[H]e more or less said there was an immense gulf in...

Georges Perec. Cantatrix Sopranica L.: Scientific Papers.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Georges Perec. Cantatrix Sopranica L.: Scientific Papers. Trans. Antony Melville, Ian Monk, and John Sturrock. Intro. Marcel Benabou. Atlas Press, 2008. 100 pp. Paper: 12.00 [pounds sterling]. The neurological cause for a soprano yelling at...

Rudolph Wurlitzer. The Drop Edge of Yonder.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Rudolph Wurlitzer. The Drop Edge of Yonder. Two Dollar Radio, 2008. 275 pp. Paper: $15.00. Rudolf Wurlitzer's The Drop Edge of Yonder is a metaphysical western, with the emphasis on metaphysics. The novel is thematically invested in...

Attila Bartis. Tranquility.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Attila Bartis. Tranquility. Trans. Imre Goldstein. Archipelago Books, 2008. 292 pp. Paper: $15.00. Andor Weer lives with his mother, Rebeka, a well-regarded stage actress who nearly twenty years before had been informed by the communist...

Martha Ronk. Glass Grapes and Other Stories.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Martha Ronk. Glass Grapes and Other Stories. BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008. 215 pp. Paper: $14.00. In its American literature series, BOA Editions, Ltd. is quietly reimagining fiction--or should I say fictions, for the pieces in Martha Ronk's...

Heimito von Doderer. Divertimenti and Variations.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Heimito von Doderer. Divertimenti and Variations. Trans. Vincent Kling. Counterpath Press, 2008. 246 pp. Paper: $17.95. There is something magisterial about these fictions, an old school gravitas that so many relentlessly hip contemporary...

Victor Pelevin. The Sacred Book of the Werewolf.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Victor Pelevin. The Sacred Book of the Werewolf. Trans. Andrew Bromfield. Viking, 2008. 335 pp. Cloth: $25.95. Victor Pelevin goes to extraordinary lengths in his new novel to disarm expectations, beginning with a purported FSB (the former...

Evan Dara. The Easy Chain.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Evan Dara. The Easy Chain. Aurora, 2008. 502 pp. Paper: $16.95. Evan Dara's The Easy Chain is quite clearly a mess of a novel, but it's the kind of mess Jackson Pollock would have been proud to make. Beneath the glut of unattributed...

Imre Kertesz. The Pathseeker.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Imre Kertesz. The Pathseeker. Trans. and afterword Tim Wilkinson. Melville House, 2008. 129 pp. Paper: $13.00. A man and his wife stop at an unnamed town, presumably in Europe, on their way to a seaside holiday. The man--he refers to...

Douglas A. Martin. Your Body Figured.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Douglas A. Martin. Your Body Figured. Nightboat Books, 2008. 160 pp. Paper: $14.95. Douglas A. Martin's ecstatic and devastating narrative verges on what Roland Barthes called the text of bliss. Unlike the text of pleasure, which is...

Massimo Bontempelli. The Faithful Lover.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Massimo Bontempelli. The Faithful Lover. Trans. Estelle Gilson. Host Publications, 2007. 210 pp. Cloth: $30.00; Paper: $15.00. Magical realism tends to be associated most closely with Latin American fiction, but according to translator...

Paul Griffiths. Let Me Tell You.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Paul Griffiths. Let Me Tell You. Reality Street, 2008. 139 pp. Paper: 9.00 [pounds sterling]. Renaissance Shakespeare meets postmodern Ouilpo in this intriguing metafictional novel. In fact, "meta"--meaning beyond or transcending-is an apt...

Adalbert Stifter. The Bachelors.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Adalbert Stifter. The Bachelors. Trans. David Bryer. Pushkin Press, 2008. 159 pp. Paper: 10.00 [pounds sterling]. The first original translation of Austrian author Adalbert Stifter to come from Pushkin Press, The Bachelors is a...

Jose Maria de Eca de Queiros. The City and the Mountains.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Jose Maria de Eca de Queiros. The City and the Mountains. Trans. and afterword Margaret Jull Costa. New Directions, 2008. 282 pp. Paper: $15.95. Jose Maria de Eca de Queiros (1845-1900) is revered as the greatest Portuguese novelist, a...

Axel Thormahlen. A Happy Man and Other Stories.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Axel Thormahlen. A Happy Man and Other Stories. Trans. Marianne Thormahlen. Intro. Judith Freeman. Les Figues Press, 2008. 101 pp. Paper: $15.00. This collection consists of nine stories in all, with English translation and German original...

Eugene Lim. Fog & Car.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Eugene Lim. Fog & Car. Ellipsis Press, 2008. 276 pp. Paper: $10.00. Fog & Car begins as a record of mundane behavior, cataloging the daily schedules and habits of two people now divorced and living in different states. Mr. Fog returns to...

Karel Michal. Everyday Spooks.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Karel Michal. Everyday Spooks. Trans. David Short. Karolinum Press, 2008. 225 pp. Cloth: $25.00. In Everyday Spooks, Karel Michal shares a forgotten world populated by murderous dwarves, cockabogies, ghosts, and the grotesque Doodledor....

Matthew Briggs. The End is the Beginning.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Matthew Briggs. The End is the Beginning. Final State Press, 2008. 160 pp. Paper: $14.95. American Book Award-winning novelist Matthew Briggs is back, and this time with a collection of short stories "about the end of the world, death,...

Tim Horvath. Circulation.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Tim Horvath. Circulation. sunnyoutside, 2008. 68 pp. Paper: $10.00. Tim Horvath uses his novella, Circulation, as an index of intriguing hypotheticals; through addressing a dying father, himself an aspiring writer, he writes around two...

Thomas J. Cousineau. Three-Part Inventions: The Novels of Thomas Bernhard.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Thomas J. Cousineau. Three-Part Inventions: The Novels of Thomas Bernhard. University of Delaware Press, 2008. 181 pp. Cloth: $48.50. Thomas Bernhard, Ernst Junger, and Arno Schmidt are the most compelling voices in contemporary...

Back in print and noteworthy.(Brief article)(List)
March 22, 2009... * Lydia Davis. Break It Down. FSG, 2008. 192 pp. Paper: $13.00. (F) * Peter Handke. Slow Homecoming. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Intro. Benjamin Kunkel. New York Review Books, 2009. 296 pp. Paper: $15.95. (F) --. Short Letter, Long Farewell....

Books received.
March 22, 2009... Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. The Thing Around Your Neck. Knopf, 2009. Cloth: $24.95. (F) Almino, Joao. The Five Seasons of Love. Trans. Elizabeth Jackson. Host Publications, 2008. Paper: $15.00. (F) Andrukhovych, Yuri. The Moscoviad....