Criticism Archives - Page 3 of 31 - Home For Fiction

Criticism

Review of The Glasgow Coma Scale

June 24, 2024

affect, art, book, literary fiction, literature, metatextuality, plot, restraint, review, social masses

Whenever I go to the library, trying to find something to read, I often end up frustrated. Call me picky if you want. Yet as I’m going through the blurbs (nowadays even they are buried beneath the asinine, useless “INSTANT BESTSELLER!” tags), what I see is more and more authors overly enamored with plot. I decided to write this review of The Glasgow Coma Scale by Neil D.A. Stewart before I’d read ten pages of it.

The reason?

Because it at least didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. The blurb didn’t promise some sort of epic saga spanning three continents and six decades, or some sort of in-between state between fantasy and reality.

As it turned out, it was actually a damn well-written book to boot. Truly, a masterclass on what quality literature should be.

review of Glasgow coma scale. photo of street graffiti. — Much of the book is about *juxtaposition*, the interplay between antithetical qualities. Yet at the same time, the title of the book is not only a reference to the location where the events take place – Glasgow, Scotland – but also the eponymous test assessing brain damage and response to stimuli. In a novel about giving up, this becomes a highly relevant metaphor

(more…)

Review of South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

June 10, 2024

Book Review, Criticism

criticism, Japan, literature, review

I have a love-hate relationship with Haruki Murakami’s fiction. Well, alright, it’s much closer to love than hate, but I’ve been critical of his fiction before. However, South of the Border, West of the Sun must be my favorite Murakami novel – and I’ve read plenty.

Whether we like or not something can boil down to personal preferences. Nonetheless, the reason why I liked South of the Border, West of the Sun so much can be very revealing in terms of writing – and reading – in a self-aware manner.

In a nutshell, I’d say in this novel Murakami succeeded in understanding the critical connection between depth and width more than in any other.

south of the border, west of the sun. image of nighttime Tokyo — There are various small details in the novel that seem insignificant, such as the use (or not) of umbrellas. But just as the protagonist cannot be certain about his observations, the reader can’t ignore the subtle symbolism lurking in these (only apparently minor) details

(more…)

Review of A Naked Woman in the Snow by Dariush Beritan

May 13, 2024

Book Review, Criticism

literature, review, short story

A Naked Woman in the Snow is a short-story collection by Dariush Beritan. Indeed, it’s a… short short-story collection, at about 80 pages and containing five stories. In other words, although (as you will see in this review) it’s not a collection for everyone, it also doesn’t require much of your time. That makes it a marvelous opportunity to try something you’re unfamiliar with.

Familiarity with the subject matter – or lack thereof – will be the key concept in this review, because at the same time it’s what assigns the collection much of its expressive power yet also what keeps it from being fully relatable. But this isn’t as much of a problem as you might think. Indeed, I’d even say it’s a literary device – it’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

review of a naked woman in the snow; image of wheatfield — A good portion of *A Naked Woman in the Snow* is set in settings far outside what I’d term “the Anglophone experience”

(more…)