W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz (Vintage Canada, 2001)
A world masterpiece, in my view. Sebald was a German academic who spent most of his career in the United Kingdom, where he grew tired of the rigidities of scholarly writing and turned himself into one of the most innovative “creative” writers in the English language. Austerlitz contains strong narrative flow but is also part […]
John Banville, Ancient Light (Viking, 2012)
Banville is one of my favourite contemporary novelists. He is heir to the great Irish tradition of good storytelling and lush language. But to my mind he displays a discipline that precludes sentimentality. This story is beautiful, but shocking: a young boy falls in love with the mother of his best friend and causes a […]
John Irving, In One Person (Simon & Schuster, 2012)
A brilliant novel that explores the complexities of desire and sexual identity. The protagonist, William Abbott, grows from a naïve but unusual and courageous Vermont boy to a somewhat jaded New Yorker. His sexuality is fluid, but so is that of many people he encounters in a rich life. The author and the narrator are […]