Dave Ross

All posts tagged with fiction

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Time's Arrow (Martin Amis)

Doctor Friendly has just died, but he moves “out of blackest sleep” to find himself surrounded by doctors and on the deathbed of a man in whose body he is imprisoned. After weeks of improving in the hospital, he is sent home to his affable, melting-pot, primary-colors existence in suburban America. As Friendly breaks up with his lovers in a prelude to seducing them and mangles his patients before he sends them home, his life races backward toward the one...

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The Sportswriter (Richard Ford)

As a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people—men, mostly—who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. But at thirty-eight, he suffers from incurable dreaminess, occasional pounding of the heart, and the not-too-distant losses of a career, a son, and a marriage. In the course of the Easter week in which Ford’s moving novel transpires, Bascombe will end up losing the remnants of his familiar life, though with his spirits soaring. The Sportswriter...

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In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (Delmore Schwartz)

Readers as diverse as TS Eliot and Lou Reed appreciated Delmore Schwartz’s story In Dreams Begin Responsibilities . Schwartz made his parents’ disastrous marriage the subject of his most famous short story, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”. The Partisan Review published the story in its first issue (1937). Schwartz’s first book is titled the same and was published in 1938 when Schwartz was only 25 years old. New York intellectual circles hailed the book, making the author a well-known figure in...

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Killing Commendatore (Haruki Murakami)

Killing Commendatore is a complex and introspective novel that combines elements of magical realism, metaphysics, and psychological exploration. Murakami creates a captivating and thought-provoking narrative that explores the depths of the human experience. As the narrative progresses, the protagonist undergoes a profound personal transformation. He faces his fears, confronts his past, and embarks on a journey of self-discovery and redemption. Throughout the novel, the protagonist is haunted by the disappearance of a young girl named Mariye. Mariye has a connection...

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Cathedral (Raymond Carver)

Cathedral is Raymond Carver’s third collection of stories and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It includes the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the different world of another. These twelve stories mark a turning point in Carver’s work and overflow with the danger, excitement, and mystery. His eye is so clear, that it almost breaks your heart." Carver’s editor, Gordon Lish, was a great influence on how the stories turned out.

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Waiting for the Barbarians (J.M. Coetzee)

Waiting for the Barbarians is a novel by the South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee. First published in 1980, it was chosen by Penguin for its series Great Books of the 20th Century and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction. American composer Philip Glass has also written an opera of the same name based on the book which premiered in September 2005 at Theater Erfurt, Germany. The theme of colonial imposition...

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The Invention of Morel (Adolfo Bioy Casares)

La invención de Morel (1940) — translated as The Invention of Morel or Morel’s Invention — is a novel by Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares. It was Bioy Casares’ breakthrough effort, for which he won the 1941 First Municipal Prize for Literature of the City of Buenos Aires. He considered it the true beginning of his literary career, despite being his seventh book. The first edition cover artist was Norah Borges (see below), sister of Bioy Casares’ lifelong friend, Jorge...

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A Man Called Ove (Fredrik Backman)

Fredrik Backman wrote A Man Called Ove in 2012. It tells the story of Ove, a grumpy and solitary old man who finds unexpected connections and purpose in life. Ove is a curmudgeonly and principled individual who adheres strictly to rules and routines. He is grieving the loss of his wife and feels out of place in the modern world. Ove’s life takes an unexpected turn when new neighbors, including a young family, move in next door. Through a series...

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The Plains by Gerald Murnane (Gerald Murnane)

In The Plains, Australian novelist Gerald Murnane explores how the landowning families of the plains have preserved a rich and distinctive culture. Obsessed with their habitat and history, they hire artisans, writers, and historians to record in minute detail every aspect of their lives, and the nature of their land. A young filmmaker arrives on the plains, hoping to make his contribution to the elaboration of this history. In a private library, he begins to take notes for a film...

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Love is Blind (William Boyd)

William Boyd’s Love is Blind follows the life of Brodie Moncur, a young Scottish piano tuner with a remarkable talent for his craft. The novel explores themes of love, passion, and the complexities of human relationships.Brodie Moncur, working for an Edinburgh piano company, is sent to Paris to oversee the expansion of the company’s business. There, he meets Lika Blum, a talented Russian pianist with whom he falls deeply in love. However, Lika is already involved with a famous composer...

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The Nose (Nikolai Gogol)

Gogol wrote “The Nose” in 1836. The satirical story is set in St. Petersburg, Russia. It follows the bizarre misadventures of Major Kovalyov and his missing nose. It is a surreal and humorous tale that explores themes of identity, social hierarchy, and absurdity. The story begins with Major Kovalyov waking up one morning to find that his nose has disappeared from his face. Shocked and bewildered, he searches frantically for his missing appendage but fails to find it. To his...

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Running Dog (Don DeLillo)

DeLillo’s Running Dog, originally published in 1978, follows Moll Robbins, a New York City journalist trailing the activities of an influential senator. In the process, she is dragged into the black market world of erotica and shady, infatuated men, where a cat-and-mouse chase for an erotic film rumored to “star” Adolph Hitler leads to trickery, maneuvering, and bloodshed. With streamlined prose and a thriller’s narrative pace, Running Dog is a bright star in the modern master’s early career.

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The Skating Rink (Roberto Bolaño)

With a murder at its heart, Roberto Bolano’s The Skating Rink is, among other things, a crime novel. Murder seems to have exerted a fascination for the endlessly talented Bolano, who in his last interview, according to The Observer, “declared, in all apparent seriousness, that what he would most like to have been was a homicide detective.” Set in the seaside town of Z, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink is told in short, suspenseful chapters by three male narrators,...

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Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders)

Lincoln in the Bardo is a 2017 experimental novel by American writer George Saunders. It is Saunders’ first full-length novel. It was on The New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller for the week of March 5, 2017. The novel takes place during and after the death of Abraham Lincoln’s son William “Willie” Wallace Lincoln and deals with the president’s grief at his loss. The bulk of the novel takes place throughout a single evening. It is set in the bardo...

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Molloy (Samuel Beckett)

Molloy is the first of three novels initially written in Paris between 1947 and 1950; this trio, which includes Malone Dies and The Unnamable, is collectively referred to as ‘The Trilogy’ or ‘the Beckett Trilogy.’ Beckett deliberately wrote all three books in French and then, aside from some collaborative work on Molloy with Patrick Bowles, served entirely as his own English-language translator; he did the same for most of his plays. As Paul Auster explains, “Beckett’s renderings of his own...

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The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)

The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel by French author Alexandre Dumas (père) completed in 1844. It is one of the author’s more popular works, along with The Three Musketeers . Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet. Another important work by Dumas, written before his work with Maquet, was the short novel Georges . Georges is of interest to scholars because...

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Underworld (Don DeLillo)

The prologue of Underworld is a fictionalized account of The Shot Heard 'Round the World, a home run by Bobby Thomson in 1951. The HR won the National League pennant for the New York Giants against their cross-town rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. In DeLillo’s account, the game-winning ball is caught by a young black fan named Cotter Martin. Meanwhile, J Edgar Hoover is also in the stands that day. During the game, he is informed of the game of the...

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The Time Machine (H.G. Wells)

The Time Machine is a classic science fiction novel by H.G. Wells and published in 1895. It tells the story of an unnamed Time Traveller who invents a machine capable of traveling through time. The novel explores themes of social class, evolution, and the possible future of humanity. The Time Traveller gathers a group of acquaintances at his home and demonstrates his invention. He then embarks on a journey into the future, specifically the year 802,701 A.D. There, he encounters...

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The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin)

Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness became immensely popular and established Le Guin’s status as a major author of science fiction. The novel is part of the Hainish Cycle external link , a series of novels and short stories by Le Guin set in the eponymous fictional universe, which she introduced in 1964 with ‘The Dowry of the Angyar’. The Left Hand of Darkness is part of Le Guin’s Hainish novels. City of Illusions precedes it and The...

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Indignation (Philip Roth)

Set in America in 1951, during the Korean War, Indignation is narrated by Marcus Messner, a Jewish college student from Newark, NJ. Messner describes his sophomore year at Winesburg College in Ohio ( a reference to the fictional Winesburg, Ohio). Marcus transfers to Winesburg from Robert Treat College in Newark to escape his father, a kosher butcher. He wants to escape him because he is consumed with fear about the dangers of adult life. The world, and the uncertainty that...

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Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)

Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule...

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Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Gabriel Garcia Márquez)

Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Spanish: Memoria de mis putas tristes) is a novella by Gabriel García Márquez. The book was originally published in Spanish in 2004, with an English translation by Edith Grossman published in October 2005. The proper translation of the title would be ‘memory of my sad whores.’ ‘Melancholy’ is a word whose meaning is far more intricate than Spanish triste. And Spanish triste translates best to the English adjective sad. The protagonist, who remains unnamed throughout...

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Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino)

Italo Calvino published Invisible Cities in 1972, but it feels as if it had always existed. “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories...

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Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)

Cannery Row is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, published in 1945. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California. The street is one lined with sardine canneries known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there, including Lee Chong, the local grocer. Doc, a marine biologist. And Mack, the leader of a group of derelicts. The actual location Steinbeck was writing about in Monterey, was later renamed “Cannery Row” in honor of the...

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Rhinoceros (Eugene Ionesco)

Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. Throughout three acts, the inhabitants of a provincial French town turn into rhinoceroses. Ultimately the only human who does not succumb to this mass metamorphosis is the central character, Bérenger. Bérenger is a flustered everyman figure. Inhabitants initially criticize Bérenger for his drinking, tardiness, and slovenly lifestyle. Later they call him paranoid for an obsession with rhinos. Some critics read Rhinoceros as a response and criticism to the sudden upsurge...

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The Rings of Saturn (W.G. Sebald)

W.G. Sebald frames the narrative of The Rings of Saturn as a walking tour taken by an unnamed narrator through the county of Suffolk in England. As the narrator explores the region, he encounters many people, places, and stories. These serve as starting points for thoughts on broader themes such as history, memory, and mortality. Sebald weaves together topics and historical events, ranging from the decline of the herring industry to the hell of World War II and the Holocaust....

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Night of Wenceslas (Lionel Davidson)

The Night of Wenceslas is the debut novel of British thriller and crime writer Lionel Davidson. This Bildungsroman describes the reluctant adventures of Nicolas Whistler, a dissolute young man of mixed English and Czech parentage who finds himself caught up against his will in Cold War espionage. The novel won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger Award in 1960 and the Author’s Club First Novel Award. It was filmed in 1964 under the title Hot Enough for June. (wikipedia)

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The Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac)

The Dharma Bums follows the character of Ray Smith, a thinly veiled representation of Kerouac himself, as he embarks on a series of adventures and encounters with various individuals. The narrative is set against the backdrop of the Beat Generation’s counter-cultural lifestyle and the exploration of Eastern philosophy. The novel begins with Ray’s friendship with Japhy Ryder, a character based on the poet and essayist Gary Snyder. Japhy becomes a mentor to Ray, introducing him to Zen Buddhism, mountaineering, and...

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The Quiet American (Graham Greene)

In Graham Greene’s The Quiet American it’s 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But it’s not just a political tangle that’s kept him tethered to the country. There’s also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor colonialism is what’s...

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Miss Lonelyhearts (Nathanael West)

Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West is set in New York during the Great Depression, a time of economic hardship and social upheaval. Miss Lonelyheart’s real name is never revealed. He receives countless letters from individuals seeking guidance and solace in their troubled lives. However, he finds himself unable to offer genuine help or find meaning in the face of the overwhelming suffering he encounters. As Miss Lonelyhearts becomes increasingly burdened by the weight of his readers’ despair, he descends into...

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