American literature, American fiction, American novel, contemporary fiction, Classic fiction
Mysteries intrigue us and unsolved mysteries inspire us. As obsessed as we are with that age-old question, whodunit, we prefer not knowing, especially when the mystery is as shocking and gruesome as the murder of Elizabeth Short. In January 1947, Short was found in a vacant lot. Her killer had disfigured her face and...
Considering how long Dominick Dunne had been writing and the respect he had gained at it, I expected a better novel. I found the prose clunky, the dialogue stilted, and the plot uninteresting and loosely developed. I’m more forgiving about these issues with Too Much Money than normal, because it was Dunne’s final book....
There is a philosophy in this novel, but I fear I’m not smart enough to grasp it. So I come back to it every few years, read it again, and puzzle over what it is that I’m reading. What I find in its pages is a emotional pot simmering on the stove. It looks...
Jay McInerney writes about characters on on the verge of insanity. They grip what little sanity they have left by a frayed rope that no doubt will soon break. In Story of My Life that character is Alison Poole, a twenty-year-old debutante living in New York, and who hangs out with other twenty-year-old debutantes,...
The last word in this novel is braiding, and in this word choice, Michael Dorris hints at how he saw the process of writing it, and how he expected the reading experience would be. The structure is three novellas combined into one novel. Each novella is told in the first person point of view...
