Okay, you picky PBR-swillers all roundly dismissed Chabon's new book (despite the outrageous pomposity of a 12-page sentence delivered from a parrot's POV), so perhaps what you need is a tale of aliens and cannibals and hitchhikers. Also, it's Scottish! The NY-Times says of Michael Faber's Under the Skin:
"Faber has found a playful way to ask fundamental questions. What is empathy? What is power? Can they coexist?"
and
'Under the Skin is a remarkable novel, a strange, sometimes crude meditation on mercy, pain and iniquity."
Crude and strange, eh? These do seem like important elements for PBR Book Club, given many of our choices.
Let's give it a shot. If you don't dig it, yell at Abby!
And guess what: it'll soon be a film starring Scarlett Johannson. Details here .
Sounds good--I'm on this one! Any idea when and where the meeting will be yet?
ReplyDeleteI actually gave a half of thumb's up for Telegraph Avenue since I was half done with it and enjoying it so far. There were jaw-dropping moments of "he totally nailed that" and I laughed out loud here and there, with plenty of smiles in between. Some really solid stretches of writing well worth immersing one's self in.
ReplyDeleteBut there were also passages that remind me of the way that I tended to manage events when I wrote fiction - which is usually a red flag of less-than-stellar writing when I notice that! Just a feeling of having to overly massage things to get the next set of ducks in a row (notice how I avoided the words "forced" or "contrived"?) ...
-Stevie D
Erin, I'll try and post the date here as soon as we settle on one. We tend to meet on either Mondays or Tuesdays and I'd guess the first week of December for this one.
ReplyDeleteSteve, I tend to agree (I'm even okay with "forced"). And there are some passages near the end which work too hard to have to spell out themes that should have been apparent readily enough. But worth the read for me. Affectionate thumbs-down. I liked Archy and Nat and Strutter and the kids and the parrot and Moby the whale lawyer! (less crazy about his female characters).
Hey Erin. The meeting is (abruptly) tonight! 8:00 at Taproom. I've only had time to read a bit of it myself, but presumably everyone else has already devoured this alien cannibal tale! Join if you can.
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