planet impiazzi

This is pretty heavy-duty feminist stuff, which is not meant to be a negative criticism. In fact I quite enjoyed it. Roberts throws in lots of feminist literary theory, discussing phallocentric language and literature, the historical invisibility of women's writing and women's history, the male canon, the position of women in Western society over recent centuries - you name it, it's in there! But this isn't dry academic writing (even if it isn't exactly a novel). Roberts makes her points by telling stories, uses allegory and metaphor, and retells tales that have been appropriated by male writers and male discourse.
A challenging book, hard work but worth the effort.

In the same vein as Steinbeck, and Proulx, Boyle examines the plight of the migrant & immigrant in the USA. This book is heartbreaking - wonderfully written, the story follows the parallel lives of a Mexican couple - Candido & America, illegal immigrants camping just outside Los Angeles, and a professional American couple - Delaney & Kyra, who live in a luxurious house in an exclusive housing development close to the Mexicans'camp. Candido and his pregnant wife struggle to survive, exploited by their white neighbours and robbed by their countrymen. My heart was in my mouth at several points in the novel, as the lives of Candido and America took harrowing turns. Delaney agonises over his 'liberal' principles while being drawn into the paranoia of his bigoted wealthy neighbours to the point where he too sees the Mexicans as a threat to his comfort and security. Real estate agent Kyra sees the immigrants as garbage that blights the landscape, putting off potential buyers for the properties she tries to sell, reducing the huge commissions she earns from her sales. Delaney, a naturalist who writes a magazine column on the local flora & fauna, provides Boyle with the opportunity to consider the effect that the human population has on the physical environment.
The novel is heavy with irony, which Boyle uses to great effect in delivering a searing indictment on modern America. This book will stay in my mind for a long time. Highly recommended.

Well, the only thing I actually liked about this book is the Venetian setting. Having visited the city last year, and absolutely loved it, I enjoyed following the characters round in my mind's eye, remembering the sights and sounds of the Rialto, the market, the campos. But as for the quality of the writing - very pedestrian. And the plot - nothing exciting at all.

In Postcards, Annie Proulx does what she does best - write landscape that is evocative and compelling. I really felt the heat and dryness of the desert, smelled the vegetation in the forest, the chill of a blizzard.
This is the story of the Blood family, follwing them through the second half of the American 20th century, examining their relationships with the land. A farming family, gradually displaced and dispossessed by an increasingly corporate and technical society, Proulx maps out their decline as each becomes more alienated and lost, while trying to cling on to a rural existence that has become outdated and untenable.
The characters build well as the novel develops, so that the reader is drawn in to their difficult lives and I couldn't help but feel sympathetic towards them as they dealt with one hardship after another. The struggle to thrive as society changes is paralleled by Loyal's time spent digging dinosaur bones - his way of life faces extinction too - and his years as a fur trapper, while the wildlife declines in the face of modern farming techniques. In the woods back home, farming is edged out by tourism and trailer park poverty.
A recommended read.