Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
It’s hard to believe that this year I find myself wishing for rain. We often sit on the sofa and watch the sky darken outside the window, waiting for thunderstorms, sighing when the clouds pass over and the earth under them has gotten no relief. The air remains humid but at the same time dusty and expectant. This is a review of Dostoevsky’s Demons.
Though the novel is complete in terms of narrative, it’s not exactly finished per se. There’s a note in front of my edition that explains that the decision was made to publish the work because reading as much of Camus’ as possible helps readers and scholars understand who Camus was as a writer and his process. This is a review of A Happy Death.
In some modernist novels that I’ve read, I’ve noticed a particular trade-off that sometimes happens between form and narrative. I was pleased to see that Arno Schmidt is a writer that can perform the delicate balancing act without leaving the narrative behind to do so. This is a review of Nobodaddy’s Children.
A Story About A Real Man is about a man that actually existed — hence the title. Alexei Maresyev was a Soviet pilot that fought in the second world war and suffered a double amputation. This is a review of Boris Polevoy’s novel.
This book got mixed reviews when it was published, one going so far as to call it ‘obscene’. What was obscene about it was the discussion of themes and aspects of Victorian life that Victorians were in no way comfortable discussing — including the struggles of the lower classes and their exclusion from even the dream of higher education, the lack of class mobility, sex, sexism, animal cruelty, the destructive power of gossip, bad marriages, and horrible people. This is a review of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.
I actually found this book in a used bookstore’s bargain bin and as such I wasn’t expecting much. But I was surprised both by the quality of the writing and the insight of this novel, especially considering when it was written. This is a review of Sarah Broom Macnaughtan’s A Lame Dog’s Diary.
Due to how many adaptations it has had and how prominent it is in the canon of classic literature, I thought it would be a staple of used bookstores or the bigger new bookstores. Well, it isn’t. This is a review of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris or The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
I actually have only been reading Russian literature for a short amount of time and how I started reading it is a bit of story in and of itself. This is a review of Dostoevsky’s The Landlady.
I do most of my work and most of my writing in front of the television and I always have. These days I still watch a lot of classic television, including The Carol Burnett Show. This is a review of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
We’ve settled into late spring, early summer without any of the in-between gradual changes. This is the kind of year that I think of as distinctly Canadian. This a review of Timothy Findley’s The Wars.
