stephen_coulon's reviews
507 reviews

Call It Sleep by Henry Roth

adventurous emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The story sees a six year old Jewish boy and his mother arrive from Eastern Europe to New York City to meet up with dad who has already made an attempt at a fresh start in the new country. The book’s tone and thematics mainly explore the hostile and alien environment that New York City presents to a Jewish family arriving from rural Europe. The story is entirely told through the point of view of the book’s protagonist David, who is under ten years old, a sensitive and curious child who finds himself challenged by his own heritage, religion, ethnicity, and dispositions. He is further driven by the anxieties of a dynamic family life as his parents, unsuited for marriage to each other, reunite in New York to raise him. As an immigrant story it is enlightening and informative. As a family drama it is a touching tribute to the power of a loving mother. Its weakness lies in the pov. Perhaps in an attempt to capture an eight year-old’s stream of consciousness, the author paints the protagonist's inner-life as quite empty. This makes poor David seem more simple-minded than expected from such an openly curious boy. 

11/22/63 by Stephen King

adventurous emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Here, King addresses the details of time travel though thematically though tangentially, and largely leaves the hows and whys to speculation. His focus is twofold, characterization through conflict and nostalgia for the 1960s. Both of these leave me less than fully satisfied. King focuses on a single character here who narrates in first person, unlike most of his better works which host an ensemble of tightly developed characters. An 800+ page deep dive into a single character’s psyche is not King’s dextrous milieu. I love his archetype-fashioned characters as parts of his intricate plots, but both plot and character here are as straight and flat as the Texas landscape the story is set in. Likewise, I’m not a boomer, and I’m beyond tried of boomer nostalgia for the 1960s in books in film. Nevertheless it’s King, and King is a great storyteller. There’s lots to like about the way he explores the setting, and it feels very authentic (I grew up in central Texas), and the narrative’s love story is very touching in a sweet and sentimental way. 

I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories by William Gay

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A collection of short stories, all bleak southern grotesques, by Tennessee author William Gay.  Gay exhibits an exacting style at the sentence level that sharply outlines the symbolic effect his vulgarly organic southern settings have on characterization and themes. You can smell these stories: sweat, grime, gasoline, barnyards, and nursing homes. His thematics commiserate the grim realities of poverty, ignorance, and aging, especially for society’s helpless. A forbidding sense of fate hangs over every tale. The characters are interesting but certainly not likable; some are outright repugnant, but all elicit at least some empathy under Gay’s hand. The author isn’t a misanthrope, but a realist, a naturalist in Thomas Hardy’s tradition. The best story in the collection is The Paperhanger, first published in 1999. It’s a truly haunting modern southern gothic with an ending that will punch your gut. It’s worth checking out the collection for that story alone. 

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

challenging funny lighthearted reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

The world’s introduction to feminist heroine Lorelai Lee, a parvenu from Little Rock who turned society’s constraints on women to her mercenary advantage. It’s easy to fall in love with Lorelai’s charm and hilarious antics, but the real satire lies in Loos’s cataloging all the different species of clueless and creepy men in society. Most people are familiar with the film adaptation from 1953 starring Marilyn Monroe, but the novel is far more sardonic and progressive in approach. It’s not only aggressively feminist (though like all great satire, in subtext), but it’s also LGBT friendly, in coding at least. If you read carefully you may even find a couple of gay characters, an unusual encounter in a 1920s book. My 1963 Curtis Books edition includes the original illustrations from trendsetting moderne artist Ralph Barton, which are the absolute cutest. It’s easy to see why the greatest authors of the time, Wharton, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Santayana, Faulkner, Huxley, all loved and praised this book.  

The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

emotional funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A social-study sort of novel that explores a posh group of trans-Atlantic richies whose lives take remarkably different paths. Though the cast starts out in life in the same privileged milieu, their progressing character studies are diverse: there’s an early hippie who looks for enlightenment in the East, a calculating socialite who uses marriage as a safety net, and literature’s biggest snob perhaps, who embodies impossible but inspirational Wildean standards. Maugham’s characterizations are classical and complex, reflecting realities that elicit genuine empathy. His style is akin to having an honest conversation with a friendly aristocrat with his casually elevated diction. His greatest strength though is his tone, his pragmatic English honesty, with its ability to admire another’s virtues and ideals without feeling guilt for rejecting them. This openness to explore the variety of human experiences without passing judgment makes this a lovely book for socially curious souls.  

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith

informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

Here the author uses the exploration of cephalopod intelligence as a starting point to explicate theories of consciousness. There’s a lot going on this clearly-written tome. Much of it is a fascinating look into the minds of octopuses and cuttlefish, their unique intelligences and the history of their evolution. The author make fair attempts in imagining what is may be like to inhabit the minds of one of these creatures. His reports of their lifestyles taken from his direct observations during dives are captivating. That’s only the half of it though. Godfrey-Smith also uses these conjectures as a springboard into discussions of human intelligence, many of which are enlightening. Some chapters get a little weedy when he’d delving deep into studies on consciousness, but many of the tangents are themselves intriguing, such as his discourse on the evolution of animal life spans. There’s lots of great thought material here.       

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Cormac McCarthy’s merciless western that retreads the brutal misdeeds of the notorious Blanton Gang of the Mexican-American old west. This is maybe the most brutal book I’ve ever read, but also strangely beautiful in its violence. The imagery McCarthy captures in his individual scenes is inimitably cinematic; I feel like he’s a visual artist as much as a wordsmith. This book plays out in my head as a series of stark panoramic dioramas, each perfectly, symmetrically composed, every detail in its vivid and perfect place. There’s not a lot to connect to with the novel’s protagonist, who's a reader’s stand-in and relatively static, but the story’s villain Judge Holden has got to be one of the most well drawn pictures of evil in literary history. It occurs to me to compare him to Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. I feel like Chigurh is a lite beer version of Judge Holden’s stout. McCarthy writes a bit beyond his typical spare style in this one, at times some descriptions tend toward tinting purple even, but he never quite crosses the line into pulpy overindulgence. This one will stick with me in a sickening way, a ill burden I’ll be glad to carry along in my literary psyche. 

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Kamala Markandaya’s classic semi-autobiographical story of an Indian woman’s increasingly difficult life as a farmer’s wife in the mid twentieth century. It should be an affecting tale in its pathos – there’s plenty of suffering and hardship and punctuating moments of touching humanity. Only I found myself increasingly disconnected as the story wore on. I think at this point in my reading life I may need more from style than Markandaya has on offer. Her plaintive style is certainly readable but there’s no standout moments of sublimity in her technique. I did find it interesting to compare the narrator’s hardships in this book to American pastorals penned by women farmers (such as Cather and Ingalls-Wilder), as so many of the burdens and insights seemed shared by women across continents and centuries.   

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

emotional funny lighthearted reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Shakespeare’s finest comedy. While his tragedies and many of his histories are essential, most of his comedies are messy, excessive, and indulgent, and on top of that comedy rarely ages well. 𝘛𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘧𝘵𝘩 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 is a shining exception. For a Shakespeare, the plots are easy to follow and the conceits aren’t too confusing. The romances here, though typically contrived, are the Bard’s most believable, and Viola and Orsino’s emotional courtship is truly touching and thoroughly convincing. Furthermore, Shakespeare’s ironic tempering of the play’s cheerful exuberance with Malvolio’s funny-then-disturbing subplot, marks the play with the maturity and wisdom more commonly seen in his tragedies. After reading, I watched the 1996 Trevor Nunn movie adaption. It’s near perfect and remains remarkably true to the original script. There’s something about the 90s that had Hollywood producing exceptional Shakesperian films.

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie

adventurous emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

It's Salman Rushdie’s second latest novel in which he recasts the story of Don Quixote in contemporary USA. The story follows a retired pharmaceutical salesman as he quests across America with  his imaginary son in a mission to win the love of a daytime talk show host. Here, the quixotic protagonist’s mind is addled by television rather than chivalric poetry, and it’s fun to see Rushdie apply his signature satire entirely to American culture for a change. His swirling magical style is impressively on display here, but the book glances just shy of greatness in his oeuvre. For one thing, so much of the satire runs on television culture, and while Rushdie seems well enough versed in the boobtube milieu it doesn’t come across as entirely genuine. It’s like he knows the lyrics but cannot sing the tunes. I can’t imagine Rushdie spending hours each day in front of the set – the allusions seem more likely to have been compiled by an assistant on his behalf. It’s a detraction. Likewise his attempt to grapple with the opioid crisis in the book. After reading Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, Rushdie’s less than serious satire comes across as tritely thinned. Nevertheless, there’s a lot to love in Quichotte, not only in Rushdie’s artistry at the paragraph level, but additionally in a layered metafictional element he pulls of quite expertly in this narrative.