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So I say again: writing a book of short stories, fitting them together Tetris-like, and calling it a novel DOES NOT MAKE YOUR BOOK A NOVEL. Also telling your publisher to put "a novel" on the cover after the title DOES NOT MAKE YOUR BOOK A NOVEL. If you write a collection of short stories, IT IS OK TO CALL IT A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES. Because you are Nicole Krauss, especially, because you will probably STILL BE NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. ***(EDIT: But YOU WON'T WIN, thankfully!
As I sit down to assess the past year with Rosh Hashanah fast approaching, I decided to read a Jewish author who I have never read before. Recently in one of the groups I am in here on Goodreads- the Reading for Pleasure book group- I took a turn holding the quill for the group's Pepys Project, a diary detailing literary births, deaths, and happenings for each day. The last day of my turn was August 18, the birthday of author Nicole Krauss. With her new book Forest Dark due to hit shelves soon,
It is no doubtfully a beautiful book. And it has something that I’ve never seen before: sentence by sentence of this novel are thoroughly poetically contemplated and moving. It is one big explosion of wonder, how did Krauss do it? I was overwhelmed with her writing style. But her four short stories are a bit confusing although they intertwine all the time. I don't know what really happened to all of them in this book. As one reviewer wrote, I as well wanted to draw a picture of how they are conn...
i'm embarrassed to say i actually sat down and drew out a diagram trying to sort out how all the characters were connected! then, in a fit of desperation, i logged on and google-d it, trying to find a post that would decipher it for me! so maybe i'm a simpleton, but it seems as though this type of book should not be so laborious. someone tell me, please, and put me out of my misery - the judge that nadia is addressing, is it his son, the melancholy soldier/would-be writer that she hit with her c...
After reading The History of Love, I promised myself to read something else by Nicole Krauss when I had the chance. I found Great House at a local thrift store for $1, and it was one of the best dollars I ever spent. There are several narratives to follow and they are tied together by a desk, a desk that was part of the stolen property of Jews displaced by the Third Reich. Each of the narratives is a story in itself, a glimpse into the lives of people who struggle with their humanity and how the...
How to Extract EmpathyKrauss is a mistress of extracted empathy. She can drag it out of you even when you fight it, particularly empathy for writers: for Nadia, a writer prevented by success from writing what she ought; for Dov, an Israeli, prevented by apparent paternal sadism from becoming a writer at all; for Lotte, an Holocaust-traumatised emigre writer, who reportedly goes skinny dipping every day on Hampstead Heath; for Isabel, a failed Oxford student (presumably a writer, if only of essay...
This is the worst book I've read in years! The narratives are incredibly disjointed and confusing. None of the characters is interesting enough to warrant the energy required of the reader to piece together their stories in a meaningful way. The writing itself is trite and one gets the feeling that one has read similar stories by better writers. By far the worst flaw of the book is the lack of propulsion. I'm amazed that I read the entire book as there was nothing driving the book forward. Witho...
If you are looking for a light and simple story where there's a plot developed in the classic structure, this is not your book.This is a tough novel, it requires guessing and work on your part, it's like a puzzle that somehow the reader has to put together. And for me, what makes it a great reading, is that you are not conscious of getting close to solving that puzzle, but when you turn the last page everything makes sense in a strange and singular way, like remembering your own memories, throug...
There are books that are the right ones at the right time. This one was a book at a certain time, maybe not just right, but with rough hewn edges that generally fit, squint the eyes a little, hold a thumb sideways, good enough. Life has thrown me from a moving vehicle and since I wasn't wearing my seat belt, the resulting scrape has left all these exposed nerve endings to be once again scraped by this book.It wasn't the best read to have on the commute, the jerking of the bus and other people ca...
I loved this story, I identified with so many of the characters. How a person can fold into themselves so much and not realize they are blocking out the rest of the world. How you can live with someone until death do you part and not really know them. How one decision changes someone's world. How we are all entitled to our secrets, to tell our secrets or to hold them till the grave. How the person holding the answer, to a question they never knew they had, has a choice, do they open the folded p...
This was a collection of short stories revealed in alternating halves.All the stories were long winded and barely had a connection with each other.This was not good.
