“Agamemnon’s Daughter” by Ismail Kadare
Under the weight of three tales of tyranny, the words of Albanian writer and Man Booker International winner Ismail Kadare bloom on the pages of his new novella and stories, his dexterous plots and confident narratives unassailable.
Read my review in the San Francisco Chronicle, 11/06
“Kept” by Y. Euny Hong
Hong has crafted a delightfully erudite and justifiably literary novel, in tune with a narrator as witty as one can be without being intimidating. It is as smart and clever as it is deliciously entertaining.
Read my review in the Chicago Tribune 11/06
“Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” by Haruki Murakami
This new and undeniably strong collection feaures stories that are varied, personal, and plentiful with seductive spaces the reader can surreptitiously inhabit. As the narrator in the title story says of his friend, so this book simply says of Murakami: “The guy really [knows] how to tell a story.”
Read my review in the Honolulu Advertiser, 9/06
“Voyage of the Turtle” by Carl Safina
More than a call to action, Safina’s book is an engaging, literary documentary of his study of the Leatherback’s fate, meeting “with those who still worship it, those tracking it with satellites, and those whose valuation of sea turtles merely reflects their own lust and cravings.”
Read my review in the Miami Herald, 6/06
and in the Honolulu Advertiser, 6/06
“Intuition” by Allegra Goodman
With its crisp Austen-like title and isolated setting of a scientific research laboratory, Goodman’s novel shrewdly invokes both a longstanding sense of realism and the largess of our future choices.
Read my review in the San Francisco Chronicle, 3/06
and in the Honolulu Advertiser, 3/06
“Behold the Many” by Lois Ann Yamanaka
Yamanaka’s success in creating a world and characters that cannot fail to enchant, and her facility with language, outweigh any challenges with completion.
Read my review in the San Francisco Chronicle, 2/06
and in the Honolulu Advertiser, 2/06
Literary Lotus 