Word: novelistic
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...Remembering Babylon by David Malouf. A celebrated Australian novelist reimagines his country's pioneer past with a haunting tale of a white man raised by Aborigines. It is the mid-19th century, and the struggling Queensland settlers are homesick for Britain and afraid of the natives. Malouf works the themes of culture clash and racial fears into a seamless narrative that amounts to a national contraepic...
...Like Water for Chocolate Home cooking is the sorcery of the oppressed. In this sprawling banquet of a romantic Mexican melodrama, forbidden love finds the recipe for fulfillment -- even if it takes a lifetime and beyond. Screenwriter-novelist Laura Esquivel and her husband, director Alfonso Arau, capture a savory passion that comes straight from the hearth...
...strategist or self-promoter, Hollinghurst plays a fierce game of armchair politics. He delights in pointing out that “The Line of Beauty,” set in London from 1983 to 1987, contains nothing but praise and awe of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, though the novelist (and, most would argue, the novel) rage against the “ghastliness” of the era and its leadership. Never explicitly advancing a political or moral agenda in his fiction, Hollinghurst nonetheless has plenty to say about real-life politics then...
...rooted in the intractable narcissism and brutal selfishness of its protagonists. One laughs during “Squid” not out of delight, but in recognition of human stupidity at its apogee. The worst offender in this respect is household head Bernard Berkman (Jeff Daniels): he is a novelist whose literary reputation is diminishing in inverse proportion to his sense of entitlement and self-worth. For example, when asked by his teenaged son whether or not to bother reading “The Metamorphosis” he replies: “Kafka was one of my predecessors...
...gloves in an impulsive parody of bygone gentlemanly honor. Though primarily comic, this moment reflects the film’s general atmosphere of nostalgia incarnated in Spritz’s father, Robert. Verbinski makes a quiet critique of contemporary culture through the perspective of Robert, a fading Pulitzer-winning novelist. The world he sees as petty, cheap, throwaway, is reflected in Dave Spritz’s chipper weather reports, the fast food thrown at him, and the no-place settings he occupies (malls, hospitals, fancy hotels). When Robert appraises his son’s professional success, saying...