Word: skow
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...John Skow...
...Coraghessan Boyle is an overpraised novelist with an unpleasant habit of sneering at his own cardboard characters," writes criticJohn Skow. Some writers can carry this off; Boyle definitely can't. His new novel (Viking; 355 pages; $23.95) has possibilities in its discussion of the shuddering distaste of California's Anglos for the Mexican illegals who perform the state's stoop labor. But the author mistrusts his skill and the reader's acuteness. "This is weak, obvious stuff," says Skow, "worth a raised eyebrow and a shrug...
...much to like in Ursula Hegi's forcefully written novel (Simon & Schuster; 235 pages; $22) of child abuse and parental desertion. The author's strengths -- an unfailing immediacy of language and real, vivid scenes that command attention -- are all on display. But the book's structure, saysTIME's John Skow, "might have been designed by a committee to illustrate how bitter, unresolved childhood memories can be coped with." What we're left with is a plot straight out of a bad soap opera, and even a writer as gifted as Hegi can't dress it up as anything else...
Kathryn Harrison's new novel (Random House; 317 pages; $23) about the Spanish Inquisition is, according to TIME critic John Skow, "very good, and a complete surprise." The story follows the separate torments of two women caught in their society's lunacy. Francisca, a young woman in love with a priest, is found out and routinely and grotesquely tortured; Maria, the new bride of the Spanish king, is tortured in a different way by the couple's inability to produce an heir. Skow notes that although the parallel tales of the two women are a bit awkward, the novel...
...then? Well, Chabon decided to write about a novelist who can't get his next novel written. "Wonder Boys" (Villard; 368 pages; $23) is not just the title of Chabon's book, but of the novel that character Grady Tripp can't bring himself to finish. TIME critic John Skow pans Wonder Boys as a "series of funny scenes about not writing a novel that somehow don't hang together as a novel...