Time for some short takes to clear the desk for the coming year. In Urs Widmer’s Der Geliebte der Mutter (My Mother’s Lover) the first-person narrator tells the story of his mother’s life, beginning with the death of her lover, many years after her own death. Erwin died as he lived best, leaning over a …
Category: Literature
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/27/wrapping-up-4/
Jun 27 2024
Total Suplex Of The Heart by Joanne Starer & Ornella Greco
About halfway through this slice-of-life graphic novel, I realized that what I was reading felt too deeply personal to be anything less than semi-autobiographical. So when I got to Joanne Starer’s afterword, discussing how this story was based on her own life, I was both unsurprised and deeply moved by the grace and honesty she …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/27/total-suplex-of-the-heart-by-joanne-starer-ornella-greco/
Apr 17 2024
Hit And Run by John Freeman
Hunh. So I don’t know very much about the author, but I get the distinct feeling that I would have appreciated this novella a lot more if I did. Hit And Run begins with the titular violent act, as witnessed by our narrator John Frederick and his friends Louise and Brian. John sticks around to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/04/17/hit-and-run-by-john-freeman/
May 19 2023
The Literary Tarot: Classics Edition by The Brink Literacy Project
Being a small-time collector of Tarot decks who is really and truly not trying to own tooooo many of them, I absolutely could not resist picking up this set. Firstly, it’s themed on classic literature, with each card pairing contributed by a famous (or famous enough) author. Secondly, it’s overseen by the Brink Literacy Project, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/05/19/the-literary-tarot-classics-edition-by-the-brink-literacy-project/
Jan 30 2022
From Page to Screen: The Tragedy of Macbeth
Terry Pratchett has neatly ruined Macbeth‘s opening for me — the eldritch screech of “When shall we three meet again?” answered by a nonplussed “Well, I can do next Tuesday” — but Kathryn Hunter’s contortions in her role as the witches and Joel Coen’s creepy direction do much to restore the story’s uncanny atmosphere. The Tragedy …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/01/30/from-page-to-screen-the-tragedy-of-macbeth/
Jan 06 2022
The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Diana Burgin & Katherine Tiernan O’Connor
with notes and an afterword by Ellendea Proffer, who is smart enough to put all her illuminating, excellent content at the end in order to avoid spoilers. That said, I rather wish there’d been a bit of footnoting to direct readers to this area, tho understand that this isn’t meant to be an annotated version. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/01/06/the-master-and-margarita-by-mikhail-bulgakov-translated-by-diana-burgin-katherine-tiernan-oconnor/
Nov 14 2021
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
I read Invisible Cities ages ago when I worked for a bookstore in Atlanta and was reading more consciously literary things. I picked it up again recently thanks to a Twitter thread. Jo Walton had been doing a series of 50 manipulated images of Venice. As she wrote, “In honour of Italo Calvino’s Le Citta …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/14/invisible-cities-by-italo-calvino/
Oct 14 2021
North by Brad Kessler
I read a lot of books where I praise the empathy displayed, but after reading Brad Kessler’s brilliant North, I realized that there’s another, rarer quality I appreciate even more in writing: the quality of compassion. It’s one thing to understand where another person’s pain is coming from, to find common ground no matter how …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/10/14/north-by-brad-kessler/
Sep 25 2021
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
What would young Mexicans in the 1970s who cared about literature more than anything else be like? Roberto Bolaño gives at least one version in The Savage Detectives. The book is anything but a careful study. Over the course of its 577 pages, Bolaño pulls out nearly all of the stops (the book he truly …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/25/the-savage-detectives-by-roberto-bolano/
Aug 19 2021
Songbirds by Christy Lefteri
Exceptionally moving novel that spotlights the harms of a practice that most people don’t even like to think about. I can seriously say that in all my years of reading, I’ve encountered maybe one entire other work of fiction that’s addressed this issue with honesty and compassion, Ovidia Yu’s terrific Meddling And Murder. That said, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/08/19/songbirds-by-christy-lefteri/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire