Author Archives: John Sloan

McBride, James. Deacon King Kong. Riverhead (Penguin Random House) New York, 2020. F;7/20. This is a serious and at times strongly affecting story and hard look at crime and poverty in black-neighbourhood Brooklyn, in 1969. McBride is an accomplished guy … Continue reading →

Shriver, Lionel. The Mandibles. HarperCollins London 2016. F;6/20. Most fiction, at least what I read these days, is written from a left-of-centre point of view. In keeping with my mostly imaginary political stripe – centrist, or pragmatist – I have … Continue reading →

June 2020 Visiting this lovely little restaurant broke our three-month Covid-isolation–associated eating-out fast. Here on the Sunshine Coast we’ve been lucky to have very little of the virus around, and restaurants including this one are now opening with suitable contagion safety … Continue reading →

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Bradbury and Evans, London, 1853 (serialized 1852-1853). After I read War and Peace and Middlemarch it started to look like 19th century novels were going to be wonderful treats that I had missed. This one convinced … Continue reading →

Shteyngart, Gary. The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. Riverside, New York, 2002. F; 5/20. This author was one of a motley group selected by New Yorker (April 6 2020) editors to write whimsical reflections on COVID topics. I liked his arch acerbic … Continue reading →

Brinkley, Jamel. A Lucky Man. Graywolf, Minneapolis, 2018. F;4/20 This is a collection of thoroughly lovely stories by a new fiction writer who has published in a variety of journals and earned short-listings and awards for this his first book. … Continue reading →

Coles, Megan. Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club. Anansi, Toronto, 2019. F;3/20. I’ve just finished writing a review of August, a novel by a capable but self-appointed tough-guy male writer whose protagonist feels sorry for himself, and … Continue reading →

Wink, Callan. August. Random House, New York, 2020. F;4/20. I was impressed with this writer as you can see in my review of his short story collection strangely titled Dog Run Moon. I was looking forward to his taking on … Continue reading →

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Blackwood and sons, London, 1871. F; 4/20. I still have the Riverside paperback version of this I bought at the UBC bookstore in 1968 for an English novel course. But I never read it. I remember looking … Continue reading →

Lerner, Ben. The Topeka School. Farrar, Straus, Giraux, New York, 2019. F;3/20. Number three in Lerner’s novel trilogy, this one fills in time gaps in the life ofthe overtly autobiographical Adam Gordon. Similarly to the second book in the trilogy … Continue reading →