sylvester seventies frontlines whereabouts

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Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett

19 reviews
Jennifer Gonnerman

Picador, 2005

Life on the Outside, Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett
An important book. Several years ago, I read a lengthy rave review about this book in "The New York Times" and bought it. It's about "breaking the cycle" of imprisonment and poverty in families. At a time when governments do little other than epitomize Benjamin Franklin's definition of insanity ("doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results") this book makes clear why we ...

Defying Hitler: A Memoir

24 reviews
Sebastian Haffner

Picador, 2003

A gripping account with deep human insights into a fascist takeover
This is a powerful story of the rise of the Nazi movement with scary parallels to modern day events. The question has often been asked how the Germans could allow this to happen and Haffner does an amazing job at describing how. Along with a controlled media, one method was to turn the volume of fear and intimidation one little almost imperceptible increment at the time. Most people just laughed ...

The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty

17 reviews
Sebastian Barry

Picador (UK), 1998

Where does Ireland get all these great authors?
The Irish have always been known as great storytellers, but now they're all turning into great writers as well, and it seems they're coming out of the woodwork. Sebastian Barry's The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty places the protagonist in the small village of Sligo where he is an innocent among angry partisans. When he chooses to alleviate his problems of employment by taking a job with the Royal ...

The Garden Angel: A Novel

16 reviews
Mindy Friddle

Picador, 2005

Superb debut novel
Just finished reading The Garden Angel.....and really dragged out those final pages, because I didn't want it to end! Wonderful debut novel with prose that flows, characters that made me feel like I knew them personally and Friddle displayed a terrific sense of place. I highly recommend this novel and honestly have to say it's been ages since I enjoyed a story as much as this one. ...

Blackburn: A Novel

16 reviews
Bradley Denton

Picador, 2007

Go Jimmy, kill, kill!
What to make of this book? I went into it knowing what the author was trying to do and thinking, "He'll never pull it off." Well, he does. It works because of the time spent building the character of Jimmy Blackburn, a kid growing up abused out in the sticks and trying to make sense of a cruel world. He is so decent he cannot abide the deliberate infliction of pain on helpless victims, be they ...

Under the Frog : A Novel

22 reviews
Tibor Fischer

Picador, 2001

Sorry for the cliche, but you'll laugh & you'll cry...
I don't remember how I came across this book in the first place, but by the second page I was laughing out loud, read the whole thing in one sitting and immediately went back to the beginning and started reading again. Why's it so good? First of all, it's packed with Fischer's unique sense of humor. Read the first couple sample pages; if you're not laughing, you probably won't enjoy the rest ...

The Pianist

98 reviews
Wladyslaw Szpilman

Picador, 1999

Read the book before you watch the film.
This will be a book you will never want to put down. The film was excellent, directed by Polanski it included chilling moments from his own personal experience in the Warsaw ghetto but equally there were things left out. Most prominent were concerning the German officer who pretty much saved Szpilmans life. If you watch the documentary of the Pianist at the end of the DVD Polanski talks ...

The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco

19 reviews
Joshua Gamson

Picador, 2006

Mighty, mighty real
Magic happens where reality and fantasy overlap. It's a space that dance music star Sylvester effortlessly occupied during the outrageous and flamboyant club scene of the mid-70s to early 80s, when those lines were happily blurred on a nightly basis. Gamson does an excellent job of showing Sylvester's `six-degrees of separation' influence - he worked with emerging stars like Bette Midler, ...

The Middle of the Night

13 reviews
Daniel Stolar

Picador, 2003

Stolar is Stellar!
The opening story ("Jack Landers is My Friend") in Dan Stolar's debut collection of fiction In the Middle of the Night is a sophisticated comedy of manners wherein a thirty-something married Jewish man searches for acceptance from a group of friends he's not even sure that he likes. The story is emotionally provocative and recalls such masters of the form as Cynthia Ozick, Alice Munro, and ...

Faith at War: A Journey on the Frontlines of Islam, from Baghdad to Timbuktu

14 reviews
Yaroslav Trofimov

Picador, 2006

Simple, personal and full of facts -- an up-close perspective of the Islamic world view
I have always fantasized about being a world traveling journalist living a life of adventure and bringing my unique point of view to my readers. Alas, that is not to be. However, I certainly have a deep appreciation for up-close and personal viewpoints of world events. That's why I absolutely loved this book and devoured the entire thing in one big orgy of uninterrupted reading. Subtitled ...

A Flag for Sunrise

13 reviews
Robert Stone

Picador, 1998

A Third World Apocalypse...
The incendiary hint of Revolution simmers on the surface of a South American country beset by poverty and the all-consuming appetite of corporate gluttony. The rolling green hills and sparkling beaches of Tecan are perfect for exploitation. The land is already littered with an assortment of "investors" jockeying for inside information. Revolution spells opportunity, out with the old regime, in ...

Golden Boy: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood

16 reviews
Martin Booth

Picador, 2006

Golden Throughout
I read this book because I love Hong Kong and its history. I was totally unprepared for Booth's parents and adored Joyce. How cannot you not like someone so lively, loving, accepting (except of Ken) and adventuresome? While the family (Ken, Joyce and Martin) are exploring Algiers, Joyce buys some dates from a market stall, and Ken pitches a fit because they are probably unsanitary. He asks, ...

Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers: A Novel

14 reviews
Lois-Ann Yamanaka

Picador, 2006

a reflection on paper
Hmmm,here is an awkward but charming story of an awkward but charming adolescent girl growing up as a Japanese-American in "Haole" culture. I quite enjoyed this book although its not for everyone; say, people who don't have patience to read continuous pidgen dialogue. However, Yamanaka is one of my favorite authors, and I must review her first work here as it is fantastic in my baised ...

The History of Luminous Motion

13 reviews
Scott Bradfield

Picador USA, 1996

Bright madness of childhood
The History of Luminous Motion is compact and clear as a diamond, as beautiful and strange as its title. Phillip is an eight-year-old psychotic genius, attempting through science, philosophy, action, abstraction and the glittering poetry of his narrative to make sense of the world he inhabits. No easy solutions here; there's no way of knowing what is "real" and what isn't, and the glib jargon of ...

Palm of the Hand Stories (Picador Books)

13 reviews
Yasunari Kawabata

Picador, 1990

No Generic Syrup
If you like Sudden Fiction as a genre but not the usual silliness which accompanies it, this is the perfect union of very short fiction, craftsmanship and seriousness. Not always serious in tone but in effort. For the most part they are tender stories of rememberance, loss and the betterments of life. They are brief and dream-worthy, almost as if they were prose acting as poetry: "Startled by a ...

Selected Stories (Picador Books)

13 reviews
Andre Dubus

Picador, 1990

Worth reading again and again . . .
I just finished reading Dubus's Selected Stories for the fourth time. I've also read his other books, and I'm glad to report that Dubus is one of the few writers whose work can be read again and again with increased pleasure, a rare enough thing. So many kinds of stories are packed into this volume -- short stories and novellas, deep character studies ("A Father's Story"), topical stories ...

The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933

13 reviews
Amos Elon

Picador, 2003

Magnificently Researched and Written
One immediately thinks of paralells with the last centuries of Jewish life in Spain. High levels of acculturation leading to complete assimilation. The "loophole" was a simple one - conversion. As such it was the admissions ticket to acceptance and opportunity yearned for by German Jews. For the Jews of Spain the ending was the inquisition and expulsion of 1492. For the Jews of Germany the result ...

The Invention of Clouds

15 reviews
Richard Hamblyn

Picador, 2001

Reading Atop Cloud Nine
Luke Howard was an amateur in the true sense of the word; Luke Howard named the clouds for the love of them. Richard Hamblyn does a fine job telling the story of Luke Howard's life, his naming of the clouds, and Howard's milieu in the book The Invention Of Clouds. Howard, a Quaker and a pharmacist, went from unknown working man to celebrity when he presented his paper "On The Modifications Of ...

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