Even the Dogs Jon McGregor Bloomsbury, London, 2010 This is the back cover blurb for Even the Dogs: “On a still and frozen day between Christmas and New Year, a man’s body is found lying in his ruined flat. Found, and then taken away, examined, investigated and cremated. As the state begins its detailed, dispassionate [...]
The Museum of Innocence Orhan Pamuk Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009 This beautiful novel by Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk uses the story of a rich Turkish man’s selfish love of a shop girl as a metaphor for the struggles of a Westernizing society that clings to its traditional view of women as chattel. In [...]
Some Hope Edward St. Aubyn Open City Press, New York, 2003 Although the original novellas that make up this book first came out in Britain in 1992 and 1994, this 2003 collection is the American debut of Edward St. Aubyn. The collection came out in the U.K. in 1998 under the title The Patrick Melrose [...]
The Red House Mark Haddon Jonathan Cape, London, 2012 This is the advance readers edition of Mark Haddon’s most recent novel. These proof copies are sent to reviewers and book stores prior to the release of the true first editions. For a number of reasons, there are many collectors of these uncorrected proofs. Uncorrected proofs [...]
Life Shrinkage + The New Guy James P. Reynolds Crack the Spine Literary Journal, U.S.A. April and August, 2012 Having so far written about 300 posts about other people’s writing, now I am going to showcase my own fiction. Last year, Crack the Spine, an on-line literary journal, published 2 of my short stories. Life [...]
The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch Chatto and Windus, U.K. 1978 This novel, to my mind, is Iris Murdoch’s masterpiece. The cover art is called The Great Wave off Kanagawa, a famous woodblock print done in 1831 by Japanese artist Hokusai. The Sea, The Sea, which won the 1978 Booker Prize, is the story of [...]
The Third Reich Roberto Bolano The Paris Review, Volumes 196 – 199, New York, 2011 These four volumes of the Paris Review constitute the true first English language printing of The Third Reich. Bolano wrote this novel in 1989, but never published it during his lifetime. It was found amongst his papers after his death [...]
On Chesil Beach — Limited Edition Ian McEwan Jonathan Cape, London, 2007 As I promised in an earlier post, here is one of the slipcased limited editions of McEwan’s excellent On Chesil Beach. This one is the cloth and paper bound edition limited to 1200 signed copies. There was also a full leather edition limited [...]
Diary of a Bad Year – Advance Readers Copy J.M. Coetzee Text, Australia, 2007 This brilliant book combines essays on a wide range of topics for a fictional publication entitled Strong Opinions, and diary entries about the relationship the aging essayist develops with his young typist. The essays run at the top of each page, while [...]
The Swimming Pool Library Alan Hollinghurst Chatto and Windus, London, 1988 This novel, with its many references to the early twentieth century gay English writer Ronald Firbank, won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award and was nominated for the Booker Prize. Edmund White called it ‘…surely the best book about gay life yet written by an [...]