has a knack for causing a stir. His book The Corrections is one of our favourites and had a lot of people talking for a lot of years after its release. That conversation hadn't died down almost ten years later when his next novel, Freedom, arrived. So talk of and his work has been pretty much steady for more than a decade now.
A quieter but integral part of the conversation stems from work as an essay writer. His collection, How to be Alone, was released between Corrections and Freedom and now we have a new collection to talk about.
In Farther Away approaches the themes, both human and literary, that have long preoccupied him. He recounts his violent encounter with bird poachers in Cyprus, examines his mixed feelings about the suicide of his friend and rival David Foster Wallace, and offers a moving and witty take on the ways that technology has changed how people express their love. These essays present a unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature and with some of the most important issues of our day.
Categories: New Releases, Literature, Book of the DayI "discovered" after he won the Booker Prize in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. The voice of Ned Kelly in that novel was mesmerizing, holding the reader in its spell as he weaved together the stories of his nefarious doings.
has a number of award-winning titles to his credit, including Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs, but he's faded a little from the top tier of authors over the last few years. The books are still worth reading but for whatever reason the awards judges and critics haven't been as generous.
That seems to have changed with new book, The Chemistry of Tears, which is receiving very strong reviews already including Maclean's and The Winnipeg Free Press.
If you haven't already discovered for yourself I recommend giving him a try and could start with any of his novels.
Categories: New Releases, Literature, Book of the DayWe've been anxiously awaiting this new book by . Bring up the Bodies is the sequel to the very popular and McNally Robinson favourite Wolf Hall which won the Booker Prize in 2009.
In Bring Up the Bodies, resumes the story of Thomas Cromwell about whom Walter Cromwell in the year 1500 says, "My boy Thomas, give him a dirty look and he'll gouge your eye out. Trip him, and he'll cut off your leg. But if you don't cut across him, he's a very gentleman. And he'll stand anybody a drink." In particular explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. This new novel is a speaking picture, an audacious vision of Tudor England that sheds its light on the modern world. We all can't wait to read it.
Categories: New Releases, Literature, Book of the Day
William Boyd is perhaps best described as a wry historian of 20th century life and an ironic commentator on the ways that life is represented, not only in literature, but in visual art, film and photography. While his geographical settings vary from the conflict-stricken west African coast of Brazzaville Beach (1990) to the romantic vistas of the Philippine islands in The Blue Afternoon (1993), his focus is on the English personality and how it adapts, or fails to adapt, to the demands of a foreign landscape. His novels include A Good Man in Africa (1981), winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; Any Human Heart (2002), winner of the Prix Jean Monnet; Restless (2006), winner of the Costa Novel of the Year; and Ordinary Thunderstorms (2010).
His new novel, Waiting for Sunrise (Paperback, $22.99), is an incandescent thriller that explores the line between consciousness and reality as a young English actor becomes ensnared in a bewildering scandal with an enigmatic woman in early 20th century Vienna. "Sly, clever, frequently hilarious, always involving...the literary event of the year." - John O'Connell, The Times
Author photo by Eamonn McCabe
Categories: New Releases, Literature, Author of the Monthis one of my favourite authors. He achieves that combination of literary quality and plot-driven story that , in a Time Magazine story about , described as "[T]he highbrow and the lowbrow, once kept chastely separate ... now hooking up, [and] you can almost see the future of literature coming." My favourite novel is Any Human Heart, the fictional biography of Logan Mountstuart who inhabits the arts, books and spy circles of the early twentieth century and who meets many of the big names associated with those worlds. also wrote the screenplay for the TV adaptation of Any Human Heart, which I also recommend.
His new novel, Waiting for Sunrise, is set in Vienna in 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy for a troubling ailment, becomes caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman. When she presses rape charges, however, he is mystified. Only a carefully plotted escape with the help of two mysterious British diplomats saves him from trial.
The frenzied getaway sets off a chain of events that dismantles Rief's life as he knows it. He returns to London hoping to banish from memory his traumatic ordeals abroad, but soon the men who helped coordinate his escape recruit him to carry out the murder of a complete stranger. His lover from Vienna shows up nonchalantly at a party, ready to resume their liaison, and before he knows where his new life has taken him, Rief soon finds himself on the trail of a traitor a man whose bizarre connection to his own family proves a cruel twist of fate.
Watch in May, when will be featured as our Author of the Month.
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