Fat City
While Tully’s and Munger’s lives intersect time and again and one or the other often tries to connect, they never quite manage to.
Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
Books written by American authors. Usually written in English.
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While Tully’s and Munger’s lives intersect time and again and one or the other often tries to connect, they never quite manage to.
The three books are substantial, but not overbearing at 300–375 pages each. Each of them is based on a criminal case and uses that case as roman à clef to explore a snapshot of different aspects of society at the turn of the last century through the lens of real events barely veiled.
Rattlebone follows Irene Wilson, a young Black girl growing up in a Black neighbourhood in Kansas City during the 1950s. It’s not often I come across a narrative that is very distinctly and unmistakably character-driven, but this one definitely is.
What I admired most about Anderson’s writing was his ability to take a subject that seems so simple — like two children playing the dozens and going fishing — and turn it on its head. He layers meaning on top of meaning on top of meaning until every narrative is rich and strays far from just the subject at hand into a complex tapestry of politics, tension, and the injustices of the world at large.
A modern reader will perhaps be struck by the religious bent of her speeches and arguments that hinge on some outdated ideas, but it’s important to realize that Truth was an essential starting point for the fight for equality for women and for suffrage. She was the beginning of the evolution of what that fight became and how it continued.
The Harlem Renaissance is a literary moment that is vital to study but it can be hard to determine where to start. The movement is lush and complex with many different facets that aren’t limited to literature alone.
This novel was an examination of identity as Gart struggles to determine who she is and whether she is at risk of losing whatever grasp she has on herself in the face of Lowndes’ domineering presence.
While I tend to avoid male writers writing female characters, in this case, Eugenides makes it work by accepting his limitations. He is writing from a perspective of knowing women, but never truly knowing them or being able to empathize fully with the unknown things that women experience and go through.
The body of a young woman named Starr Faithfull was found dead on a Long Island beach on the morning of June 8th, 1931. Speculations concerning how and why she met her end inflamed the imagination of the general public and Faithfull became a tabloid sensation posthumously.
I have mixed feelings when it comes to collections like this that include newer work, mostly because I find that usually there is not enough work included to be able to follow a writer’s evolution across time.