Word: novels
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...Blood’s a Rover” comes as the final episode in a trilogy that recounts the tumultuous times of the American Sixties, though it can be read as a stand-alone novel. Its predecessors “American Tabloid” and “The Cold Six Thousand,” set throughout the early and mid-60s, are retellings of such events as the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., with rotating chapters containing each of three narrator’s points of view. Ellroy continued this three-narrator formula in this...
...slowly that the value of surprise is squandered. None of the three protagonists are ever completely invested in the novel’s seeming climax, rendering much of the book’s attention to plot somewhat irrelevant. One passage exemplifies Crutchfield’s divided attentions throughout the novel. “Memo: work on your mother’s file. Query the Racine PD. Memo: your case file is updated. Your case is dead-stalled. Memo: get your ass to the rockin’ D.R. and voodoo-vamped Haiti.” The split focus and meandering pace...
...orients the readers in the plot and leaves them with a true sense of the anger, both righteous and profane, that highlighted the period. Ellroy’s distinctive style—the brief, spare syntax reminiscent of hardboiled detective fiction—sets a dark tone for the novel and lends itself to this retelling of history. Yet, while the history is interesting, the unfolding of the mystery of the robbery and Joan Klein dictates the pace of the novel, and there Ellroy falls short...
Looking back over the events of the nine years of the novel in the epilogue, a narrator notes that he’s “paid a dear and savage price to live history.” The message is clear: the history of America is brutal, violent, and full of pain. Indeed Ellroy succeeds at bringing that point across through the macabre events of “Blood’s a Rover.” Yet, it seems clear that he could have used less words to create a sense of suspense and anticipation for its climax...
...significant that this is Ishiguro’s first collection of short stories. He is known for novels that chronicle the internal lives of their protagonists, allowing the narrators to reveal themselves to the audience. He notably employed this technique in “Remains of the Day,” which won him the Man Booker Prize in 1989. In that novel, the main character conceals as much of his psyche as he reveals, leading to a gradual but profound understanding of his life. Ishiguro depicts the characters that form “Nocturnes” in a similar...