Lavinia

Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin Lavinia is austere, meticulously researched, beautifully written, but for the most part curiously uninvolving. Perhaps my greatest complaint about it is that although Le Guin sets out to give a voice to a voiceless character from Vergil’s Aenead, the king’s daughter whom Aeneas wins in order to found the Roman [...]

Her Fearful Symmetry

Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger I mostly loved this, even though it sagged a bit in the middle. Some people seem to hate it because it’s not The Time Traveller’s Wife. Well, it’s not. But it is a graceful, odd, faintly sad novel, populated by characters who are more subtle and have more complex motives [...]

The Road

The Times of London recently named Cormac McCarthy’s The Road the book of the decade. I was telling my students this evening that it was the one novel I would recommend to everyone I know. So it seems appropriate to reprint my review (originally posted on my Other Blog on April 10, 2007) This book [...]

The Time Traveller’s Wife

Those of you who have read and loved the book of The Time Traveller’s Wife can be reassured that the movie is not a travesty. It is a respectful adaptation, trimming the book to its main storyline. The two leads are lovely, and I was also impressed with the children who played Claire as a [...]

The Scholars Weigh in on Beowulf (the movie)

(crossposted to Gladly Learne) I haven’t seen it yet, and am not sure I want to. I’d rather like to go with my 280 students and sit in the back and be silly and throw things, but I think we’re all mired in writing papers and marking papers and just Getting Through the next few [...]

Love, let us be true to one another

Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach (or Philip Larkin meets Virginia Woolf) Note: it’s really impossible to write anything with insight about this book without at least implied spoilers, so if you don’t want even a hint of the outcome, do not read any further. I can’t decide whether this is a Postmodern novel about the [...]