Picking up from where I left off with my praise for Dan Chiasson, here are four more of the best and most memorable book reviews I have read in the last year:
- Delia Falconer on J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime
- Liam Davison on Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil
- Alexander Linklater on David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide
- Geordie Williamson on David Musgrave’s Glissando
I don’t mean to suggest that they’re all excellent reviews in and of themselves; but, for reviews specifically targeted at a mainstream readership, each one does a fine job of contextualising the work under consideration, of proposing a way of reading it profitably without prizing verisimilitude above all other literary qualities, and of evaluating the book on its own terms with solid logical reasoning and in-text evidence to justify any evaluative conclusions.
Infinite Patience 