Author Archives: Melissa Beck

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About Melissa Beck

My reading choices are rather eclectic. I enjoy reading a wide range of books especially classics, literature in translation, history, philosophy, travel writing and poetry. I especially like to support small, literary presses.
April 11, 2015 · 11:14 am

April Is Poetry Month: What are you reading?

 

Essential PoemsI received a collection of poems from Open Road Integrated Media which was put together especially for NetGalley users.  I enjoyed the collection because it allowed me to sample so many works from different poets. My favorites from the collection are the poems written by Erica Jong and May Sarton.

Erica’s Jong’s poems are short, yet vivid reflections on love and loss of love.  There are only three of her poems included in this collection but the sample is enough to understand that Jong adeptly employs the rhetorical question to make the reader think about his or her own experiences with lost love: “Who loved you so relentlessly?” Her use of the chiasmus (ABBA patterns) is equally thought-provoking: “I want to hate you and I cannot. But I cannot love you either.”  One of my favorite poetic devices in Latin poetry, especially Catullus, is the polyptoton, the use of the same word in different forms.  I found in Erica Jong’s poetry some of most intriguing uses of polyptoton I have encountered in English poetry: “Betrayal does that–betrays the betrayer” and “It is our old love I love, as one loves certain images from childhood-.”  For more information on Erica Jong and her full collection of poems as well as her novels, visit Feed Your Need to Read.

Poetry Preview:

I have acquired quite a few collections of poetry which I will be reviewing throughout the month of April.  This is a little Proust Poemsteaser of what is to come.  One of the collections that I am most excited about is The Collected Poems of Proust, published as a dual language edition with the original French of each poem facing the English translation.  These poems show us a very different side of the novelist and were written throughout his life, from the age of seventeen to his death at the age of fifty.

The next collection I will be reviewing are a series of poems written by Edith Wharton that are include in the Dover Reader.  This collection of her writings includes her most famous novels, Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence, but it also contains four of her poems which I am excited to read.

Poems about CatsI also have also acquired a book called “Poems about Cats.”  Now don’t laugh, but my love of our furry friends was not the only thing that drove me to request this tome from the publisher.  This collection includes poems about felines from famous poets such as Shakespeare, Wadsworth, and Blake.  Who knew that so many famous poets were also admirers of our feline friends!  The book also includes whimsical drawings on each page by the famous illustrator Yasmine Surovec.

Finally, I will review the City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology: 60th Anniversary Edition.  Poetry from some of City Lights Poetsthe most famous American and international poets are gathered together in this one special volume; Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Julio Cortázar, and Frank O’Hara all have poems featured in the collection.

I will mention that I am also translating the poems of Catullus and selections from Vergil’s Aeneid this semester with my students.  I would be remiss if I didn’t give a nod to my favorite Latin poets.  I will, however, spare everyone from my reviews of these poets for fear that my commentary would be much too lengthy to keep anyone’s attention.

This is my poetry review list for April.  I would love to hear what everyone else is reading for poetry month!  Let me know in the comments.

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April 10, 2015 · 9:20 am

Review: The Last Word by Hanif Kureishi

I received an advanced review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

My Review:
Last WordMamoon Azam is an Indian born British writer who is now in his seventies and living a quiet and unassuming life in the bucolic English countryside.  Although he has produced many thought-provoking and award-winning books in his career, it has been several years since he has been relevant in the publishing world.  Mamoon, his wife Liana and a major publishing house decide that a biography of the writer would be just the thing to make Mamoon important again as well as rich.

Harry Johnson, a struggling writer himself, is hired by the publisher to write a scintillating, scandalous and lascivious biography of Mamoon.   The first half of the book is a hilarious satire not only of authors, but of everyone involved in the publishing industry.  The old novelist is portrayed as an acrimonious,  self-absorbed recluse who has not written anything worthwhile in years.  Harry, Mamoon’s biographer, is a bottom-feeder in the publishing industry because he is trying to make a living by writing about another man’s career.  Rob, the editor at the publishing company, is greedy for a tell-all biography which will unveil shocking and unseemly secrets about Mamoon’s life.

At a party given him by his overly emotional and needy wife, Mamoon is awkwardly asked to deliver an impromptu speech for his friends, family and fans.  His remarks about writers and their role in the world of publishing is a sad, yet accurate commentary on what this industry has become: “These days a writer without bodyguards can hardly be considered serious. A bad review is the least of our problems.  Every idiot believing any insanity has to be humored: it is their human right.  The right to speech is always stolen, always provisional.  I fear the game is almost up for truth.  People don’t want it; it doesn’t help them get rich.”

The most interesting character in the novel is Harry himself who has a heavy load of emotional baggage over his paranoid, sex-crazed, suicidal mother.  Harry has a fiancé but he cannot seem to stay faithful to her.  His own life is a mess and in a state of crisis while he is chasing a reluctant, and at times recalcitrant, Mammon around his home trying to pry details out of the novelist about his life.  Harry’s personal affairs are presented as a ridiculous farce and, much like the author whose life he is trying to capture, he has a tumultuous history of relationships with women.

Overall, THE LAST WORD is an entertaining and starkly vivid satire about what the state of the publishing world has become in the 21st century.  Mamoon knows that he has an important life and career which ought to be documented, but at the same time he is running away from that very corrupt and profit-focused industry that is in charge of illustrating his life.

About The Author:
Hanif KureishiHanif Kureishi is the author of novels (including The Buddha of Suburbia, The Black Album and Intimacy), story collections (Love in a Blue Time, Midnight All Day, The Body), plays (including Outskirts, Borderline and Sleep With Me), and screenplays (including My Beautiful Laundrette, My Son the Fanatic and Venus). Among his other publications are the collection of essays Dreaming and Scheming, The Word and the Bomb and the memoir My Ear at His Heart.

Kureishi was born in London to a Pakistani father and an English mother. His father, Rafiushan, was from a wealthy Madras family, most of whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of India in 1947. He came to Britain to study law but soon abandoned his studies. After meeting and marrying Kureishi’s mother Audrey, Rafiushan settled in Bromley, where Kureishi was born, and worked at the Pakistan Embassy.

Kureishi attended Bromley Technical High School where David Bowie had also been a pupil and after taking his A levels at a local sixth form college, he spent a year studying philosophy at Lancaster University before dropping out. Later he attended King’s College London and took a degree in philosophy. In 1985 he wrote My Beautiful Laundrette, a screenplay about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in 1980’s London for a film directed by Stephen Frears. It won the New York Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay.

 

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April 6, 2015 · 8:58 am

Review: A Slant of Light by Jeffrey Lent

I received an advanced review copy of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley.

My Review:

A Slant of LightOne of my favorite places to visit is The Finger Lakes region in New York so I was thrilled to find an historical fiction novel that is set in this beautiful place.  Malcolm Hopeton moves from New Hampshire with his elderly grandfather and buys a plot of land to farm near Seneca Lake.  Malcolm toils from dawn to dusk for years in order to yield a fertile bounty and he is very successful.  He hires a young boy named Amos Wheeler as farm help which will prove to be one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

Malcolm also meets Bethany and they have a brief and whirlwind romance and settle down to a blissful, married life.  When Malcolm decides to go and fight in The Civil War, and chooses to stay away for all four years of the war, his farm, his wife and all that he holds dear are taken away from him.  He commits a horrific act of violence against Amos and Bethany for which he stands trial.  As the story unfolds we learn that Malcolm is an honorable man who is driven to his breaking point.

The narrative also focuses on the character of Augustus, who I found to be the most interesting character in the novel.  Augustus is also a hardworking farmer that has suffered tragedy very early on in his life.  His pregnant wife, Narcissa, dies in childbirth and he vows to be alone for the rest of his days.  He quickly realizes that he needs someone to help take care of his house and feed him, so he hires Becca Davis and they get along very well.  But Augustus is so focused on staying faithful to his dead wife that he refuses to see what a great match he and Becca would make.

One theme that is carried throughout the novel is the abuse of women.  Bethany is treated poorly by her father and is beaten mercilessly when he perceives that she has committed a sin.  She finds solace and love with Malcolm, who turns around and abandons her to go off to war.  When Malcolm is gone she is emotionally and physically abused by Amos Wheeler.  Bethany’s life comes to a tragic end at the hands of her husband who, brought to his breaking point, kills Wheeler and in the ensuing struggle accidentally kills her as well.

Becca is treated well by Augustus but it becomes clear that she feels more for him than an employee feels for an employer.  When Augusts takes in Becca’s teenage brother the three of them live together as a pseudo-family and Becca seems especially content with her living situation.  But at two kept points in the novel Becca tries to have a serious conversation with Augustus and she is frustrated that she is still treated by him like nothing more than the hired help.

The bucolic language of the book captures the beauty and peacefulness of this region and the serene landscape stands in sharp contrast to the turmoil of the characters’ struggles.  A SLANT OF LIGHT is an intense read that comes to an abrupt and incomplete ending.  I was happy to read on Jeffrey Lent’s website that this book is the first in a two book deal with Bloomsbury.  I look forward to the next installment.

Visit the author’s website for more information about his other novels: http://www.jeffreylent.com/

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April 2, 2015 · 8:42 am

Review: Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss

I received an advanced review copy of this book from Melville House through Edelweiss.

My Review:
Cat Out of HellHave you ever wondered what your pet’s voice would sound like if it could talk?  Oh come on, I can’t be the only one!  Well, Roger, the talking cat in CAT OUT OF HELL, has a voice that sounds like Vincent Price.  He is also intelligent, well-read, well-traveled and immortal.

Roger has had a very interesting life and he begins to tell this story to a man named Wiggy.  Wiggy, whose sister Jo has mysteriously disappeared, has inherited Roger from his sister and discovers within a few days that Roger, a tabby cat, can actually talk.  And when he does talk he has a lot of things to say.

Roger is not the only talking cat in the story.  Roger’s long-time best friend, Captain, who is an enormous black cat, can also communicate with humans but, unlike Roger, Captain is evil and sinister.  What else would one expect from a gigantic talking, black cat!

The other main, human, character in the book is Alec whose wife has unexpectedly died.  Together Alec and Wiggy discover that Captain is part of an evil group of cats who are ruled by a Cat Master and have caused more than a few human deaths.  Can Alec, Wiggy and Roger team up and defeat Captain and the evil Cat Master before this satanic and sinister duo can do any more damage?

If you are thinking that the premise of this book is ridiculous, you are correct.  But the writing is so clever and funny that I thoroughly enjoyed every page.  CAT OUT OF HELL is a quick read that will give you lots of good belly laughs.  It will also make you wonder what your pets are really up to when you are not around.

About The Author:
Lynne TrussLynne Truss is a writer and journalist who started out as a literary editor with a blue pencil and then got sidetracked. The author of three novels and numerous radio comedy dramas, she spent six years as the television critic of The Times of London, followed by four (rather peculiar) years as a sports columnist for the same newspaper. She won Columnist of the Year for her work for Women’s Journal. Lynne Truss also hosted Cutting a Dash, a popular BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation. She now reviews books for the Sunday Times of London and is a familiar voice on BBC Radio 4. She lives in Brighton, England.

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April 1, 2015 · 10:02 am

Cover Reveal: Give Me Your Answer True by Suanne Laqueur

I don’t usually do cover reveals on my blog, but Suanne Laqueur sent me a video that unveils the new cover for the follow-up to her award winning novel The Man I Love,  Her new novel Give My Your Answer True will be available this June and you can preorder it on Amazon

Book Description/Synopsis:
Following her award-winning debut novel The Man I Love, author Suanne Laqueur now gives Daisy Bianco a chance to tell her story.

It’s been three years since an egregious error of judgment cost Daisy the love of her life. Erik was a conduit to her soul but now he’s chosen a path of total disconnection, refusing to speak to her. Alone and shattered, she attempts to take responsibility for her actions while building her career as a professional dancer in New York City. But Erik’s unforgiving estrangement proves too much for her strength. Plagued by flashbacks to the shootings at Lancaster, she falls into a dangerous spiral of self-harm, cutting into her own skin as a means to atone. Only the timely appearance of an old friend, John “Opie” Quillis, saves her from self-destruction and gives her a chance to love again.

Laqueur skillfully weaves flashbacks to the years at Lancaster with Daisy’s present life. Supported by John’s patient affection, she works to separate her evolution as an adult from the unresolved guilt and grief of her youth. As her professional accomplishments lift her out of depression, Daisy learns to hold onto her accountability without letting it become her identity. Years pass and she builds a beautiful life filled with dance and friends. Lovers come and eventually go, leaving her on her own with the old thought: Come back to me.

In this parallel narrative, Laqueur peels open the beloved characters from The Man I Love to reveal new and complex layers of vulnerability. The scars from the shooting are deep and pervasive within this circle of friends. Like Daisy, they evolved without being resolved. Because when questions from the past go unheeded, you alone must find and give your answers true.

Watch the cover reveal and teaser video here:

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