What they say about it “A comic novel on the grand scale written with tremendous confidence and verve. Mario, 18-year-old law student and radio news-editor, falls scandalously for his Aunt Julia, the 32-year-old divorced wife of a cousin, and the progressively lunatic story of this affair is interwoven with episodes from a series of radio [...]
Filed under: Book review, Culture, Family, Latin America, Satire | Tagged: Mario Vargas Llosa | Leave a Comment »
December’s meeting of MHLSRG discussed The Warden by Anthony Trollope. What they say about it An affectionate and wittily satirical view of the workings of the Church of England, The Warden is also a subtle exploration of the rights and wrongs of moral crusades and, in its account of Harding’s intensely felt personal drama, a [...]
Filed under: Book review, Culture, History, Manor House Saturday reading group, Satire | Tagged: Anthony Trollope | Leave a Comment »
What they say about it Elling has a wildly overactive imagination and has been molly-coddled by his mother all his life, so when she dies he is left completely incapable of taking care of himself. After a stint in the very helpful Broynes Rehabilitation Centre, Elling returns to Oslo with his room-mate Kjell Bjarne in [...]
Filed under: Book review, Poetry, Satire | Tagged: Ingvar Ambjørnsen | 1 Comment »
What they say about it Vernon Gregory Little has secrets – but none of them, or so he assumes, have anything to do with the recent massacre of sixteen students at his high school. What he cannot see is that the quirky Texan backwater of Martirio is unable to face its role in the tragedy, [...]
Filed under: America, Book review, Culture, Death, Satire | Tagged: DBC Pierre | 1 Comment »
What they say about it Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters – with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms and brutish Yahoos – give Gulliver new, bitter [...]
Filed under: Book review, Satire | Tagged: Jonathan Swift | Leave a Comment »
What they say about it The terrifying tale of Joseph K, a respectable functionary in a bank, who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. A nightmare vision of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the mad agendas of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. What [...]
Filed under: Book review, Satire | Tagged: Franz Kafka | Leave a Comment »
