Word: novelized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Practically everyone thinks he has a novel within him, if only there were time to get it down on paper. Mercifully, most would-be authors never get beyond the stage of boring friends, acquaintances and airplane seatmates. Of those who do write, rather than just talking about it, few possess the tale teller's gift, the capacity to invent or recall events in a way that makes them seem significant to outsiders. Fewer still have the discipline to master a new craft. But four worthy current novels, all thrillers or mysteries, display just such painstaking effort by men better known...
Perhaps the most laborious writing effort was undertaken by the accountant, J.R. Sprechman, whose first novel, Caribe, (Dutton; 280 pages; $17.95) took him decades. The result is anything but weary. The narrative has the sheen of quicksilver, and it manages to blend brutal scenes of New York City drug wars, hints of the supernatural reminiscent of a South American fable and political intrigue worthy of John le Carre. The scene is a haunted, Haiti-like island, and the four main characters are a blunt Manhattan policeman, a slippery arms dealer, a volatile Caribbean dictator whose paranoia is justified...
...Martin's Press; 292 pages; $15.95) is about British moral rot of another sort, the ambition and reaction that caused a relative handful of mostly privileged young people to join fascist movements and endorse Hitler and the Nazis. Because such infiltration no longer threatens Britain's independence, the novel lacks The Endless Game's aura of larger significance. But it offers two ingeniously interwoven plots--twin attempts to discredit a father and son, 35 years apart. To understand what is happening to him, the son must solve a puzzle that baffled his father, who died in combat before his heir...
...computer information and service networks and discovering an ever enlarging cornucopia at their fingertips. Today anybody with a computer, a modem and a deep line of credit can buy an airline ticket to Cleveland, rent a Hertz car at the airport, book a room at the Sheraton, buy a novel from Waldenbooks, check the closing prices on Wall Street and purchase 100 shares of IBM--without ever getting up from the computer...
...exploration, Forster's sketch of love and anguish sparked on the Tuscan hills and resolved in the English countryside. In the new screen version by the Ismail Merchant-James Ivory team (Heat and Dust, The Bostonians), we are treated to a respectful and intimate adaptation of Forster's touching novel...