Fiction Reviews

Flash review: The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton

03.22.2011 Fiction Reviews

The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was my first real Wharton (besides Ethan Frome and Bunner Sisters, two relatively short works). Gotta say I was impressed. It’s so nice to follow early Woolf (Night & Day) with a minor Wharton. They work in different, almost oppositional, ways. [...]

Tagged as: Edith Wharton, Fiction Reviews

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Flash Review: Night And Day by Virginia Woolf

03.10.2011 Fiction Reviews

Night And Day by Virginia Woolf My rating: 3 of 5 stars Sort of a snoozer as Woolf goes. I can’t say if anyone but Mrs. Hilbery got my attention. The book was just so labored and overthought and… I don’t know… Sort of useless in it’s accumulation of activities and thoughts. Just never seemed [...]

Tagged as: Fiction Reviews, Virginia Woolf

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Review: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

02.22.2011 Fiction Reviews

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen My rating: 5 of 5 stars Swooped in for the reread and longed and thinned (sighed) as to howandwhy the arrangement of figurines so pleases me. In order to form a more perfect union and secure the blessings of liberty. Times four I have read pride and prejudice and [...]

Tagged as: English Literature, Fiction Reviews, Jane Austen

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Review: The Trial by Franz Kafka

02.17.2011 Fiction Reviews

The Trial by Franz Kafka My rating: 5 of 5 stars I picked up this book a few years ago and put it down because I got too Kafka-ed by the mazery. I just couldn’t put it together, couldn’t understand why sentences were written the way that that were. Thank goodness I gave it a [...]

Tagged as: Fiction Reviews, Franz Kafka

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Review: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

01.19.2011 Fiction Reviews

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol My rating: 4 of 5 stars Having read Gogol’s Dead Souls after The Brother’s Karamazov, the final paragraphs of section one struck a particular chord. What a way to end a book! Well, it wasn’t the actual end, as Gogol spent the rest of his life writing and burning subsequent sections [...]

Tagged as: Fiction Reviews, Nikolai Gogol, Russian Literature

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Review: Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton

01.06.2011 Fiction Reviews

Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton My rating: 3 of 5 stars Another downer from Edith Wharton, but this one struck me as more interesting than Ethan Frome (probably an unpopular opinion, but…), it was less of a stretch into literary-ness and more character-based. The slow prose suited the slow spinsters. There was room to breath, [...]

Tagged as: Edith Wharton, English Literature, Fiction Reviews

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Review: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

01.03.2011 Fiction Reviews

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was thinking while reading this that reading this is so natural. I can’t believe I haven’t read it before. I’m reading like I’m re-reading: I know everything and then she points it out and there’s the lighthouse. There’s the situation about the [...]

Tagged as: English Literature, Fiction Reviews, Virginia Woolf

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Review: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

12.17.2010 Fiction Reviews

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton My rating: 3 of 5 stars A swift little book without being that nimble. But sort of endearing in parts. Wharton’s got a thing for people’s cousin’s, doesn’t she? I did enjoy the categorical *hush* that comes over characters when they talk about important things. View all my reviews

Tagged as: Edith Wharton, English Literature, Fiction Reviews

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Review: The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

12.01.2010 Fiction Reviews

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald My rating: 4 of 5 stars Never have I been much of a Fitzgerald fan. Never. Not when I read Gatspy in high school (especially not the way it’s taught- ugh!). Not when I read Paradise in grad school. And now, post-damned, I’m still not sure I really like [...]

Tagged as: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fiction Reviews, N. American Literature

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Review: Middlemarch by George Elliot

11.22.2010 Fiction Reviews

Middlemarch by George Eliot My rating: 4 of 5 stars Henry James said “Middlemarch is a treasure-house of details, but it is an indifferent whole.” And while I had a blast reading this and want to duke it out with him, I can’t exactly remark on the whole of it without, well, indifference. There’s no [...]

Tagged as: English Literature, Fiction Reviews, George Eliot

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