Tobias Carroll
By Tobias Carroll
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Books A Heartbreaking Work of Intellectual Fiction
Florence Gordon By Brian Morton Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 320 pages, $25 Those who spend enough time with the title character of Brian Morton’s novel “Florence Gordon” are both fixated on and frustrated by her. That applies to the characters in the novel — Florence’s family, friends and literary peers and acolytes — but may well…
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Books Growing Up in Jazz Age Chicago
On Bittersweet Place By Ronna Wineberg Relegation Books, 270 pages, $13.95 As Ronna Wineberg’s novel “On Bittersweet Place” opens, the Czernitski family is escaping Russia. Revolution is in the air, and the family fears religious persecution. In the prologue, set in 1922, Lena, the young narrator of the book, spells out the fears she associates…
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Books Talking With an Angel in Suburban Hell
An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell By Deborah Levy And Other Stories, 96 pages Whether writing with barely suppressed rage or achieving a brisk comic pace, the writing of Deborah Levy rarely lets the reader grow complacent. Her earliest novels, “Beautiful Mutants” and “Swallowing Geography,” channeled Thatcher-era fury through surrealistic modes and landscapes….
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Books Reason and Religion Converge in ‘The Mathematician’s Shiva’
The Mathematician’s Shiva By Stuart Rojstaczer Penguin Books, 384 pages, $16.00 Sasha Karnokovitch, narrator of the novel “The Mathematician’s Shiva,” isn’t the warmest of storytellers. Born in Russia at the height of the Cold War to two brilliant mathematicians, Sasha has eschewed the cold Wisconsin town where he came of age in favor of a…
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Books Anxieties of the Modern Old Age
Half the Kingdom By Lore Segal Melville House, 176 pages, $23.95 Since 2001, the already-abundant anxieties of living in New York City have been ratcheted up by an exponential factor. Abandoned bags have become potential tools of terror; mysterious smells could be toxic; the sounds of sirens or of helicopters overhead might signify an emergency…
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Books Dealing With the Side Effects of Fiction
Happy Mutant Baby Pills By Jerry Stahl Harper Perennial, 272 pages, $14.99 The narrator of Jerry Stahl’s new novel “Happy Mutant Baby Pills,” has a serious case of unrest. Lloyd earns his living writing pharmaceutical copy — specifically, disclaimers for the side effects of various drugs. He’s also got a fairly severe heroin habit, and…
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Books Rutu Modan’s Secrets and Revelations
The Property By Rutu Modan, translated by Jessica Cohen Drawn & Quarterly, 232 pages, $24.95 The past takes many forms in Rutu Modan’s graphic novel “The Property.” There is Regina, an elderly woman returning to Poland from Israel for the first time in over 60 years; overzealous re-enactors encountered by her granddaughter Mica on the…
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