Word: novels
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Joey Becker is very secretive. Considering some of the traumas she has endured, this is quite understandable. She is perhaps the most demure sensual beast ever to have graced the modern novel with her penchant for provocation. As the heroine of Sue Miller's newest novel, While I Was Gone, Jo faces a grave dilemma: how to reconcile her domesticated life as a 52-year-old mother, wife and veterinarian with her sensual fantasies and hippie past. She is fascinated by naked flesh, particularly that of her daughters, her husband and her bar-waitress friends. Unlike her loving husband Daniel...
...lover. Unfortunately, she remains underdeveloped along with the rest of the characters and only comes across as stale and unreal. Then there is the 15-year-old girl trying to cure a strange psychological malady with sea bathing. Though she becomes involved with an older man in the novel's only love scene, the description fails to be either erotic or touching...
Despite the intriguing characters, Baricco never manages to develop a plot or instill any warmth in the story. In attempting to sound poetic, the bizarre rhythm of the novel is instead cold and-self-consciously intellectual. The characters are presented in such an obscure way that they never seem real to the reader, and the entire story passes in a dream-like blur of images and events...
Elmore Leonard, king of the crime novel and author of Get Shorty and Out of Sight, has taken a break from his fast-paced, book-a-year writing schedule to do a little touring. But he's not following the typical writer's schedule of interviews, coffee-shop readings and book-signing sessions. No, Leonard's really on tour this winter, traveling and performing with a band from Greenfield, Mass., called the Stone Coyotes. Boston's Lansdowne Street Music Hall hosted the bizarre book-reading/band performance on Friday, February 19. Two days earlier Leonard and his back-up graced...
...This seemingly unusual arrangement is is quite typical for Leonard, who has always focused on extensive live research. In his latest novel Be Cool, sequel to Get Shorty, the infamous Chili Palmer gives up the movies in favor of a music industry career. Leonard needed lyrics and inspiration for his fictional band, so research this time meant schmoozing with singers. He and his assistant met with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Aerosmith, among others, but Leonard finally found his ideal band by accident. Hanging out at a lounge in L.A., Leonard experienced a Stone Coyotes performance and knew right...