gathering elephants translator dispatches

books:

24 reviews
Brian Antoni

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2008

HOT,STEAMY, SEXY
I couldn't put it doun. Can anything really be that hot. I think I have to take a shower! Can't wait to read his other books. His characters are so real. I feel as if they are friends of mine from the past.

Layer Cake

8 reviews
J. J. Connolly

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2004

Snatch meets Dutch
This novel comes across like a Guy Ritchie movie crossed with an book by Elmore Leonard. Very enjoyable and engaging. I'll have to check out the British movie when it hits Canada.

Serve the People!: A Novel

5 reviews
Yan Lianke

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2008

serve the people serves you nothng but pleasure
Serve the People is a great book. It is well written like a lot of Chinese literature. The words are smart, sparse and full of emotion. The story is one that is both political and a love story at the same time. Apparently, according to the book jacket, this book was banned in China because it made fun of Mao and was sexual. The writing reminds me of Ha Jin in that it gets to the point by using ...

Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire

5 reviews
Matt Taibbi

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2007

The doctor is in.
As a longtime fan of Hunter S. Thompson's political reporting and social commentary I was first exposed to Matt Taibbi when i learned that he had inherited the very same job that the good Dr. HST held at the Foriegn Affairs Desk at Rolling Stone magazine. Pretty bold move to take that one on because nobody (I thought) could inherit that mantle from HST and do it justice. Well, I was wrong. Matt ...

The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)

124 reviews
Anne Enright

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2007

The image on the veil
The narrator, Veronica, gathers the broken pieces of her life, her memory, and her family in this uncomfortably honest piece of writing. The reader must dance on shifting emotional sands as the narrator plays with remembered and imagined stories, allowing uncertainty full rein. Her sentences resemble splinters - shards of consonants, cultural detritus, and thrusts at truth that lodge under the ...

Walk the Blue Fields: Stories

2 reviews
Claire Keegan

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2008

adult Irish Stories
No Leprechauns here. Ms Keegan writes marvelous short stories that are beautifully written and deal with serious themes

Happy Family: A Novel

5 reviews
Wendy Lee

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2008

Gem!
If you've managed to find this book, your search will be richly rewarded. Wendy Lee has written a true gemstone of a novel: well-crafted, populated by authentic characters and rich multicultural settings, in a narrative arc that grips your interest from beginning to end. [full disclosure: I studied with Wendy Lee at NYU in 2004, and learned about this, her first book, through an e-mail ...

Flight: A Novel

55 reviews
Sherman Alexie

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2007

One of Alexie's Best
This book is a personal favorite of mine. Sherman Alexie never ceases to surprise, entertain, or inform me. This story is a fictional work that brings much needed attention to several issues including but not limited to race, class, child abuse, the astonishing rate of alcoholism in native Americans, the struggle many foster children face on a daily basis, the ability of people to be ...

White Ghost Girls

9 reviews
Alice Greenway

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2006

A chick book and so much more
Two American sisters Frankie 14 and Kate 13 live with their distant self-absorbed mother in Hong Kong in 1967. Their father is a photographer away covering the war in Vietnam. The girls are often left in the care of their Cantonese amah who is ill-equipped to deal with them. They get into all kinds of mischief. As Frankie becomes wilder and wilder Kate becomes the grown up sensible one who tries ...

Man Gone Down: A Novel

25 reviews
Michael Thomas

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2006

Painful but Worth It
I read this book very slowly, because sometimes it was just too painful. Michael Thomas takes you under the brown skin of a young man separated from his white wife and three children while trying to earn enough money for rent on an apartment and the private school tuition his wife expects. Its stream of conscious narration is very ambitious. Sometimes, he seems to channel Ellison's Invisible Man ...

100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed (Black Cat Series)

44 reviews
Melissa P.

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2004

An erotic journey into self discovery and exploration
Originally written and published under a pseudonym, 100 Strokes of the Brush..., was well received in Italy, and later throughout Europe as a revelation, an account of a young Italian teenage girl's first forays into sexual encounters, beginning with a boy she liked, and later involving herself (while still legally a minor) with older men, and then in organized orgies. Melissa P. never looks back ...

The Translator

6 reviews
Leila Aboulela

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2006

A matter of faith
This short novel by a Sudanese author living in Scotland is as simple as it is rich, beautiful, and emotionally true. Most other books that I have read about the Moslem immigrant experience* lament the dilution of an ancient culture by modern Western values. But here the influence is in the opposite direction, portraying the immigrant with the power to enrich the lives of those around her. Sammar ...

The Royal Nonesuch: Or, What Will I Do When I Grow Up?

2 reviews
Glasgow Phillips

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2007

couldn't put it down
What a book! He goes on some wild journey's, and although my life isn't quite as fanciful, I related to everything. He words things perfectly, and I was surprised to find myself laughing so much. I love the humility and honesty Glasgow phillip's uses when decribing himself. He doesn't glorify himself. He is very ahead of his time. Every thing he was doing 10 years ago is all the rage ...

Tiger, Tiger

1 review
Galaxy Craze

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2008

Loved it
I bought this book yesterday and finished it today---and I absolutely loved it. Terrific sentences, alluring story, fascinating settings. I could have really followed her characters forever.

The Yoga Teacher
Alexandra Gray

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2008

Dissatisfied with her job as a pharmaceutical rep and struggling with the decline of her long-term relationship, Grace, a well-heeled Londoner, uses yoga class to unwind, reflect, and momentarily transcend her earthly dilemmas. While pitching her company’s latest antidepressant to the disarming Dr. James, she is inspired by his plan to study Eastern medicine in Vietnam and decides to quit her job to become a yoga teacher. After studying ...

Midnight Cactus

9 reviews
Bella Pollen

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2006

A fascinating, gripping read you can't put down
This book just gets better and better as the story progresses. The characters are so well drawn, especially the gorgeous Duval, Alice herself who narrates the story and her two eccentric children, Jack and Emily. Set on the Mexican border where Alice takes her children in order to escape an unhappy marriage and have some time away from her hectic London life, trouble brews when Alice ...

The Impostor: A Novel
Damon Galgut

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2009

Dark Roots: Stories

1 review
Cate Kennedy

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2008

Psssst!!
Pssst! Want to know a secret? Then you'll want to read this book. Cate Kennedy has written 17 sinfully luscious secrets, disguised as short stories. Fourteen have been previously published and have, deservingly, won awards. In each story, she cunningly and carefully exposes the essence of our humanity in all its glorious, ridiculous imperfection. She gives us a peek into the minds, ...

A Confederacy of Dunces

959 reviews
John Kennedy Toole

Grove Press / Black Cat, 1981

Go Ignatius, GO!
Most folks it seems abhor reading with a near violent, reflexive revulsion. Almost as if the mere suggestion would cause a spontaneous eruption of projectile vomiting directed forthwith at the unfortunate proposer. People just hate to read. But this is a book that could inspire a change of heart in even the most hard-core anti-literate. It's a cliché you've heard a million times before (with a ...

City of God: A Novel

6 reviews
Paulo Lins

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2006

My Favorite Movie
City of God is among the best movies I've ever seen in my life. Even if you're not a huge fan of foreign films, this movie will still grip you. The narrator of the movie is Buscapé (Rocket), a boy who grows up in the City of God, Rio de Janiero's most notorious favela. Also growing up with him is Dadinho (Lil Dice), who looks up to the hoodlums of the favela and aspires to one day be the most ...

search for books
confederacy, dispatches, elephants, gathering, translator

Impressum / about us