A Book with No Author by Brent Robison
Dactyl Review
by Dactyl Review
2w ago
Like an ancient Buddhist master, Brent Robison is fond of mind benders, and his restless spirit never tires of questioning reality. In his new novel, A Book with No Author (Recital Publishing, 223 pages), Robison’s wicked inquisitiveness is on display out of the gate. In a preface disclaiming Robison’s authorship of the book, he writes ..read more
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There’s Something I Want You to Do, by Charles Baxter
Dactyl Review
by U.R. Bowie
2w ago
The Short-Story Novel There is probably a better term for this, but I don’t know what it is. I refer to a book of short stories, so put together as to feature similar themes and recurrent appearances of the same characters: Charles Baxter, There’s Something I Want You To Do, Penguin Random House, 2015, Vintage ..read more
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Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
Dactyl Review
by VN Alexander
3M ago
Machines Like Me (Nan A. Talese, 352 pages) by Ian McEwan is set in the possible world of the 1980s if Alan Turing had not died in 1954, Kennedy had not been shot in Dallas, and Britain had not won the war in the Falklands. In the story, Open Source information has allowed technological progress ..read more
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Young Pushkin, by Yury Tynyanov
Dactyl Review
by U.R. Bowie
7M ago
Yury Tynyanov, Young Pushkin: A Novel (translated by Anna Kurkina Rush and Christopher Rush (New York: Overlook/Rookery) 2008, 515 pp. [the Russian original: Юрий Тынянов, Пушкин (М: Издательство «Правда»), 1981] Introduction This is a historical novel, treating the life of Russia’s greatest poet from the year of his birth, 1799, to shortly after he graduated ..read more
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Drift by Craig Rodgers
Dactyl Review
by Charles Holdefer
7M ago
Sometimes a novel’s originality is less a matter of affirmation than an act of refusal. Refusal to go along with received ideas of how to tell a story or create verisimilitude or even how words signify. Saying no opens up new space, or at least points towards what has been neglected by complacence. Craig Rodgers ..read more
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Forgotten Night by Rebecca Goodman
Dactyl Review
by Dactyl Review
1y ago
In Rebecca Goodman’s novel Forgotten Night (Spuyten Duyvil, 296 pages) the unnamed narrator–we will call her N hereafter–is searching desperately but determinedly for a Madame Brissac. The reader is immediately enlisted in the search and will never leave N’s side, not even after putting the novel down. The night of the title may be forgotten ..read more
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MacLeish Sq. by Dennis Must
Dactyl Review
by Dactyl Review
1y ago
Edward Said, writing about Beethoven’s late style, defined late style as that time wherein the artist freed from the expected cultural and historical restraints of form and content unleashes a newness that both confounds and instructs. Dennis Must has achieved that hour of newness in MacLeish Sq (Red Hen Press, 209 pages). With its visual ..read more
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Commentary on Analysis by George Saunders of Story by Anton Chekhov
Dactyl Review
by U.R. Bowie
1y ago
  “In the Cart” (Yarmolinsy Translation) From the book by George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain Note: I taught Russian literature in a university for thirty years. Naturally, I was intrigued when the short-story writer George Saunders published a book detailing how he teaches Russian stories in his creative writing classes ..read more
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2021 Dactyl Foundation Award goes to Petri Harbouri
Dactyl Review
by VN Alexander
1y ago
In his review of Petri Harbouri’s novel, The Brothers Carburi, U. R. Bowie, writes: What do I like best about this book? I like a lot of things about it, but I like best the way the author loves words. Here is a description of what [Giovanni Battista Carburi], or any good physician, should be ..read more
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The Berserkers by Vic Peterson
Dactyl Review
by Dactyl Review
2y ago
New Book Announcement A beautiful woman is found stabbed and frozen in the ice of Lake Much, dressed only in the costume wings and tight corset of a Norse Valkyrie. Grammaticus Kolbitter, police precinct records clerk by day and keyboardist in a Viking heavy-metal band, The Berserkers, by night, is pulled into the investigation. What ..read more
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