Word: novels
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Silence, Silence. There was no other way I could end this novel. With every question resolved and yet still looming, with every horror extinguished and yet still ringing, the narrator in Stewart O'Nan's A Prayer for the Dying is left only to accept his own futile insanity. Carried on a probing journey of terror and tenderness, the reader is confronted directly with his own mortality, his own anxieties, his own powerlessness...
...horror novel, It's sick," explained O'Nan candidly at a book signing last Tuesday...
...first striking aspect of O'Nan's novel is his language. I read the first paragraph four times, allowing ample time for the luscious, vivid imagery to soak through my bones. But the intensity of the novel is apparent from the beginning: the heat and weight of the lazy summer mood push the edges and demand release. From the beginning, the reader feels the hidden furnace of madness churning and knows instinctively that, if all is so plodding and weary to start, something dramatic must be brewing...
...happen to stumble across Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley and even Queen Victoria, with whom you share a few drinks and swap stories and. This may sound like the plot for Bill and Ted's Excellent Wild West Adventure, but it is actually the basic premise of Thomas Berger's novel The Return of Little Big Man, which manages to pull off the often difficult task of effortlessly and effectively mingling fiction with history. The Return of Little Big Man is the continuation of the thoroughly entertaining story of Jack Crabb, also known as Little Big Man, an orphan raised...
...salesman, posing as a nice guy who had many incredible experiences. But the more I read, the more I was convinced of his absolute sincerity because of how human and tangible a character he really is. I thought I was listening to a storyteller speak rather than reading a novel, and sank comfortably and completely into his compelling story; the novel proves to be a fast-paced and admirably-crafted read, simple as a bedtime story but as educational as the best of history books...