Word: novels
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...things that writer Bret Easton Ellis is comfortable with are not the things that most people are comfortable with: hard drugs, greed, outré sexuality, pop music, homicide, the name “Christie”—the 1980s. His novels have returned to these subjects again and again, beginning in “Less Than Zero,” continuing through his seminal work, “American Psycho,” and into a follow-up collection of short stories, “The Informers”—lately made into a somewhat uncomfortable...
...walk on the wild side, turn around, and walk back.In “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (“Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story”) and loosely based on Michael Chabon’s debut 1988 novel of the same name, this mythic summer is distilled into 80 minutes of saccharine images and angsty declamations. Coming of age in Thurber’s colorful, melodramatic Pittsburgh is more of an unattainable ideal than an actual transformation of moral fiber. While they do their best to push the boundaries...
...perspective gets handed back and forth every chapter, which becomes monotonous over time and feels artificial as the story itself gets more dynamic. Still, the alternation lets Wray probe Will’s psyche from a number of different angles without having to stop and reflect, Victorian novel-style. Lateef, on the other hand, is a stock character; the spiritually exhausted public servant, who experiences a mid-career crisis of confidence and develops an inappropriate affection for Violet Heller. Somehow it seems like this is supposed to illustrate the novel’s metaphysical import. It just doesn?...
Lots of things about the novel do work. Wray deposits moments of exposition at key points in his apparent madcap narrative, showing the careful planning and loving consideration of a first-rate writing talent. His prose flies along with the unstoppable force of a subway train, but he can still make me pause and wring my heart out over poor Lowboy...
...pandemic of 1918 to 1919 killed about 50 million people. The most recent pandemic was the Hong Kong flu that killed about 1 million people from 1968 to 1969. "We are very, very concerned," WHO spokesman Thomas Abraham said, according the AP. "We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human." WHO convened an emergency meeting on Friday and activated money and personnel to dealing with the outbreak. "It's all hands on deck at the moment." Abraham said. (Read a story about the fear of bird...