notanotherbookreview

ARIANE  a Russian Girl  by Claude Anet  (New York Review of Books ) is set in 1920s provincial Russia, though its teen heroine's attitude toward men is pure pop diva. Yet in this time and place, men might rule women from birth to death, but Ariane's life was her own. Her aunt may be an influence, a rare educated woman and a physician, who's chosen to pursue a happy single life.. Then past 40, Ariane is shocked to see her proud aunt humilated, ruined by "romantic love." Weaponizing her beauty and intelligence,  Ariane becomes popular among men of her class, young and old with money and titles, who assume she is marriageable. Yet, the only expectations she entertains are to pursue her education at the university in Moscow.  When her final exams are "brilliant," and she's accepted by the elite Moscow university, Ariane's thrilled, though her father to pay.  He demands she arrive at his home and prepare to marry his friend. Legally, at 17, Ariane...

  THE COAT CHECK GIRL by Laura Buchwald (10/22, Roan & Weatherford) is an absorbing metaphysical mystery set in 1999 New York City, with Y2K fears of computer collapse. At the "Bistrot," long a downtown destination,  the "countdown" underscored the staff's insecurity about the restaurant's future. Despite the rich mahogany and red leather booths, business was down, despite regulars of many years, tourists, and occasional  celebrities, like John F/ Kennedy Jr. and his lovely wife. Such visits were decreasing, thought Josie, as she surveyed the empty room. It was early yet and she thought with compassions of Sylvie, a regular, who seemed to be teetering on senility, mixing up the present and yesteryear.  Jose's welcome was warm and professional. She was quick to see to customers' needs. And she was cheerful, despite her own anxiety. At 29, Josie mourned her lost dreams for a fuller life. She was not the only one. Many of the older staff, identified...

                                                                   "Bagatelles" a minimalist novel, one of five short prose  sequences, was published in Peter Cherches' 2013 collection " Lift Your Right Arm , was first published with other microfictions in Cherches' uniquely inspired 1986 collection,  Condensed book.  What we now think of as  "Flash Fiction" in Cherches' explorations conjure the humorous uncanny experiences of being alive, a person in a body on this planet--with the concision of a 30-second advertising spot.  In EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO ME  ( September 12, Pelekinesis Books) Cherches' work explores the surreality of everyday situations that are and aren't what you think. Suppose, out of the corner of your eye, you glimpse something you can'...

  THE BRONZE BOY by Nancy Hamada, directed by Todd Faulkner. Cast included August Kiss Fegley, Nicole Greevy and Todd Faulkner. The production was showcased in "East of Edinburgh" at 59 E.59th Street, one of 6 plays selected for Edinburgh's Fringe Festival. The 59th Street venue offered an opportunity to stage shows prior to the festival. It's an unusual opportunity in the United States. Unlike Britain, there is no National Theater to provide festival opportunities for new plays, let alone venues to showcase them.  THE BRONZE BOY is a surprisingly funny, nuanced and serious play about America's love-hate relationship with guns, explored in a road trip. This meandering journey on our highways is a visit to our hidden gun culture. We see headlines in America, telegraphed shots of life and death madness, but rarely stories of our subterranean inheritance. Our relationship to guns is largely ignored in news culture, which emphasizes senselessness over the hidden ...

                                                                  IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE won the Noble Prize for Sinclair Lewis in 1930s for his postwar dystopia, where the fascist threat isn't external but home-grown.   The book is free at libraries or guttenberg.com.  Local bookstores probably have on "classics" shelves.  Amazon may be cheap and convenient, though never free. (Below is adapted from Wikipedia): Plot : In It Can't Happen Here   by American author Sinclair Lewis  an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, quickly rises to power to become the country's first outright dictator.  Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor, early on sees Windrip's fascist  policies for what they are and becomes his most ardent critic.  Se...

Days at The Morisaki Bookshop,  Satoshi Yagisawa first introduced Tokyo's Jimbocho district, an improbable world of shops specializing in used books. Art books, playscripts, philosophy texts, maps, literature (classic and contemporary) and books bound in the traditional Japanese way are sold in  ancient wood buildings. Inside stores, books are tightly packed from floor-to-ceiling. Outside, carts  in front of the store contain bargains! Like The Strand in NYC, tourists, as well as young people who may not be readers, look at surprising titles and for a couple dollars, or a hundred yen, may give it a try. Browsing books may be a quicker transaction, bur post pandemic, the tactile appeal, mysterious dedication promise adventures for a pittance, no delivery needed.   In  More Days at The Morisaki Bookshop, .Takako, who first came to her Uncle's shop three years before, is now a reader. She glances at the carts of mostly modern novels, and greets her Uncle Sato...

WANNABEAT by David Polonoff (Trouser Press Books, June 13).   WANNABEAT 's hero in late 1970's San Francisco, Philip Polarov, is on the "make" for women, money, and the elusive zeitgeist of inspiration--the authentic Beatnik poets of countercultural fame. He spots the occasional luminary at City Lights' bookstore (the historic poet's mecca founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti) and among the burnt-out denizens of North Beach cafes. Yet Philip is not a Beat groupie. He feels the true flame of  purpose and the sting of  Jacques Derrida's Deconstruction Theory ( "the meaning of a work is unstable and could have multiple alternative meanings, so the meaning could easily be the center as it could be the margins..."  ).  Philip could be a player or not.  Desperately, he looks for an impetus to ignite his "stream of drivel" into the work of a  literary contender. Meantime his is the itinerant life of a wannabe artist, chasing down risky and/or ted...

  THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE by Ashley Griffin , directed by Rachel Klein produced by New York Rep at Royal Court Performing Arts Space, 145 West 46th St., 3rd floor. Through June 15th THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE   is a courageous play on target for these ultra commodified times, when sex, if not love, is yet another "market" to be navigated for strategic advantages--status, finance.  Eloise, played by Ashley Griffin, and Will, played by Danny Garner, are magnificent combatants except that this courtship is a work for hire.   Historically, in this "man's world," marriageable girls (Rapunzel anyone?) were locked up for their own good. "No man marries a cow, if he already has the milk" was the basic idea of  women's value. Whether rich or poor, around the globe, legacies were at stake. Yet Eloise's conundrum is emotionally like Rapunzel. Unable to leave her tower, she hires Will, a sex professional Though women are sometimes accused of being obsessed with...

  Plum Sykes, the bestselling author of  Bergdorf  Blondes, The Debutant Divorcee,  and  P a rty Girls and Die in Pearls ( my favorite ), skewers the rich and ridiculous in her new novel WIVES LIKE US (Harper Collins, 5/14/24). The heroines are substantial women, the socially ambitious denizens of the hilly British Cotswolds. They command their hereditary estates, amid quaint hamlets,with an eye on the London press.. For these literally entitled British women, being a successful wife means going to fantastic lengths in a quests for excellence. "Keeping up with the Jonses" is a dire competition, where one's brand, a uniquely individual identity, must out-class all competitors. This very social contest pits the heroines of   WIVES LIKE US against the less tasteful or virtuous, yet equally ingenious and perhaps unscrupulous wives of other estates. Of course such expectations, fantastic or not, carry the frisson of risk-- failure and self undoing....

                         Doesn't the Paint Say It All?    DORTHEA TANNING  (KASMIN GALLERY)  " Andre Breton, poet and critic, published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924.  Surrealism was to unite conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in 'an absolute reality, a surreality.'  " Brittanica   Dorthea Tanning, known as a surrealist artis, along with her husband, Max Ernest, would not describe her later paintings as surrealism.   But these paintings are akin to the "trance between two worlds" that Breton described as "the magic dictation: of automatic revelation."   Doesn't the Paint Say It All?  DORTHEA TANNING  (KASMIN GALLERY), a  new book about Tanning's later work, examines these singular paintings from  a pivotal one-woman show. ...

 Is magic fantasy, theory, science or lunacy? I was entranced by  M agician and Fool,  the first fantasy novel in Susan Wands' Arcana Oracle Series (Spark Press.) I recently   finished   High Priestess and Empress (April, 2024), the second novel and look forward to the third. Though not a regular reader of fantasy novels nor ones about magic, it's the history, characters and sheer imaginative leaps that I enjoy in this work.   The series, projected to cover the creation of the entire tarot deck, is a challenge. History is the bedrock for this series, enriching the fantasy with depth and plausibility. Then there's the characters, who would be fascinating in any time.  Pamela Coleman Smith (1878-1951) is the artist who created the famous Rider-Waite tarot deck, perhps the most used in the world. Her inspired designs are on display in the collection at NYC's Whitney Museum of Art, as are her colored prints of ocean waves with female spirits. Th...

TCG, Theatre Communications Group, published Tony Kushner's  PERESTROIKA , the second part of Angels of America in 1994 .  Would   book reviewers mention a book of this play, a huge cultural breakthrough?  As a book publicist and playwright, I was excited about this idea, as was the publisher, who created The "Plays are Literature Campaign." Packages of books with materals supporting this book as literature were sent. A couple weeks later, I began my follow-up. Was the exclusion of published playscripts arbitrary? "Everyone knows,  plays are only reviewed  in performance." But in England, play scripts in books are reviewed.  Some are reviewed both IN PERFORMANCE and when the book is published. Why? Playscripts are accepted, like poetry, as a form of  LITERATURE!  The   Plays are Literature Campaign  showed Angels in America was a  unique literary achievement published in two books.   Perestroika was a worthy exc...