Sherbert Illuminated

  “What a power was in the human soul! she thought. That woman sitting there writing under the rock resoled everything into simplicity; made these angers, irritations fall off like old rags; she brought together this and that and then this, and so made out of that miserable silliness and spite (she and Charles squabbling, sparring, had been silly and spiteful) something —this scene on the beach for example, this moment of friendship and liking—which survived, after all these years complete, so that she dipped into it to re-fashion her memory of him, and there it stayed in the mind affecting one almost like a work of art” (160) New rule: no more modernism until college. After reading Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse , I can conclude that a) I love her writing and b) I will love it even more once I have developed that literary maturity which grows quietly beneath wisdom teeth, disappointment and a tolerance for alcohol. If I end up going to a place like Bryn Mawr, where the

“This book is…a case study in how change happens in human society, the turbulent way in which wrong or ineffectual ideas are overthrown by better ones” (xv) In my short career as a reviewer I have realized that nonfiction books are constrained by far more literary conventions than novels. Most nonfiction authors, unless they’re named Erik Larson, are obligated to reflect the truths presented by their research. They are encouraged to be more logical than thrifty in their prose. Depending on where writers fall on the spectrum of popular vs. academic nonfiction, they may be granted the privilege of embroidering “I” “we” or “you” into their work like a lady’s maid zhuzhing up a ballgown (or, depending on your perspective, a scarlet letter; writing popular nonfiction means surrendering the right to mock one’s critics in the work itself). Once an author has chosen their spot on that axis, the best they can do is to write a darn good book where they are, and leave it among the bulrushes in th

When I review collections, I am sometimes left confuzzled by the conflicting quality of the works presented. For example, Richard Crane’s Russian Plays introduced me to a new favorite (his adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov ) and a disaster ( Vanity , his take on Eugene Onegin ). The Aleph and Other Stories left me torn between Jorge Luis Borges’ frequent misogyny and his occasional brilliance. However, I am happy to report that Historical Plays , a collection of works by the British-Indian playwright Tanika Gupta, is quite consistent: all the works are good! I would gladly pay $40 to see any of them — National Theatre Live, please take notice —and while no play is truly sublime, I can recommend all of them . Since each play is set in a different historical period, I’ll review each of them in the order they are printed. The Waiting Room AKASH: You are a selfish woman…always ashamed of me. Always nagging and scolding. So much and bemoaning your terrible fate. Landed with a thirdra

“She was told it would be like desertion. This is not desertion. I will stay here. She was warned of the uncleared mines, lack of water and food. She came upstairs to the burned man, the English patient, and told him she would stay as well” (41-42) One of my writing teachers used to warn the class that some books are only good when the reader is a certain age. I didn’t believe her until I read Michael Ondaatje’s 1993 novel The English Patient . I didn’t fail to connect with this book because of the NSFW content, which is fairly mild for a book set in Italy between V-E and V-J Day, but because I’m just not at an age where I find people who are too sad to have sex compelling. Or for that matter, people who fall into torrid affairs for no reason. The four main characters of this novel have been specifically engineered to inspire the next generation of tepid literary fiction: there’s Hana, a troubled nurse moved by grief and obsession to care for the titular English patient, a burned explo

  A mong the mythical premises that transcend language and culture sits the humble middle-grade girl group series. Manifested in cultural icons like  The Babysitters Club  series, its recipe is fairly simple: four to seven prepubescent pals of various temperaments, a beloved pet, a token male and a handful of useless adults shoved together in a solution that’s equal parts wish fulfillment and generic. Throw in a few mysteries and interpersonal conflicts, and the best authors can hook readers for twenty books or more! Whether the works themselves are good or bad is immaterial. What really matters is the enthusiasm—and, eventually, the nostalgia—of that sweet, sweet target audience. As it happens, the Insel-Internat (Island Boarding School) series by Christian Bieniek appeals to my own sentiments, and Ran an den Schatz! (Treasure Hunt!) was thus a thoroughly-enjoyable read. This book conforms to almost all the tropes of the middle-grade girl group model, down to the fantastic setting (

“This book is for all of the people who have ever felt ‘different’ from society’s standards, who have ever questioned who they are, who have ever felt like they needed to be someone they weren’t out of fear, and for the people who have the strength to live out in the open like the big queer role models they are” (iii) Finally, a book assigned in the Rainbow Room (my online GSA) that I actually like! The Gay Agenda by Ashley Molesso and Chess Needham is a cute little book with fun art and nice words, and a wonderful break from heavier books like Lakewood by Megan Giddings and Semiotics: the Basics by Daniel Chandler. Despite being marketed as an “agenda,” this book is more of a history than a manifesto. It features everything from Sappho to the 50th Anniversary of Stonewall, including Magnus Hirschfeld (king of my heart!) and a timeline of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Each page is supplemented with commentary and funky neon illustrations from Molesso and Neeham, who run a stationary shop i

Before I begin my review, I’d like to thank Ms. Saunders for generously giving me this book. I wish I had taken better care of it. Without you I would never have encountered it, and it really expanded my horizons! I’m not normally a fan of horror in fiction. Lakewood by Megan Giddings is the first horror/thriller novel I can recall reading. I don’t know how closely the book hews to the tropes of its genre or whether it’s a ‘proper’ thriller at all. It disappeared a few hours after I finished reading it, so I can’t exactly comb through it and pick out the most atmospheric quotes. Then again, disappearing books are pretty spooky. The reviews I watched in advance for this book claimed it was terrifying. It was horror because it was real , because the US government really had exploited people for years in horrible projects like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and Project Stargate. For the first half of the book, I was frozen in terror as Giddings patiently revealed the main character: Le

“We learn from semiotics that we live in a world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organized...To decline the study of signs is to leave to others the control of the world of meaning which we inhabit” (11) About a week ago, I was labeling books in my school library when Ms. Mueller, one of my wonderful English teachers, pushed this book into my hands. “You need this,” she announced. “This is what you’ve been looking for.” She was right. I need Semiotics: The Basics , Daniel Chandler’s 220-page guide to that most obscure of theories. I needed it in my freshman year of high school, when I went overboard trying to a denotative definition of “hero,” I need it now and I will need it when I go to college. I need to highlight important terms (syntagms? bricolage?) and reread challenging passages. I need to incorporate its lessons into my feeble attempts at fiction. A lot of other people might need it too. “There is no