September 9, 2007

More Danticat and Díaz reviews – Jess Row on Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, in the NY Times Book Review. – Lev Grossman on Junot Díaz’s Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, in Time. – And Jennifer Reese on same in Entertainment Weekly. (I’m afraid, dear readers, that because of the CRB’s long lead time, [...]

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September 7, 2007

Links, links, links – Geoffrey Philp reminds us that today is the birthday of the late Miss Lou. – In the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Richard Thompson reviews Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying. – In Open Letters, Sam Sacks reviews Junot Díaz’s Oscar Wao (thanks to CRB contibutor Garnette Cadogan for pointing this out). – And [...]

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September 6, 2007

“A carnivalesque mix of fantasy and gallows humor” (Which Caribbean writer has got the most mentions here in the last fortnight? As of this post, it’s Naipaul 6, Díaz 4.) Thanks to CRB contributor Garnette Cadogan for pointing out that the new issue of Bookforum includes a review by Marcela Valdes of Junot Díaz’s Brief [...]

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September 6, 2007

“A grave suspicion of poetry” Naipaul seems to understand something of the value of Walcott’s early poetry, but he reads poetry in the most intriguing way. And it is this approach to reading poetry that I find most intriguing in the work. Naipaul admits a grave suspicion of poetry. That is generous. He, at one [...]

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September 5, 2007

In the new issue of Caribbean Beat The September/October issue of Caribbean Beat is now online–with Rihanna on the cover and the usual mix of features on culture, style, sport, etc. As well as: an article by Caroline Neisha Taylor on the second Caribbean Literary Festival, scheduled for early November in Antigua; a piece by [...]

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September 5, 2007

“They all seem impossible to me” How has writing this novel differed from writing the short stories in Drown? I’m probably the worst person to ask that. I don’t have any sense other than that writing is extremely difficult for me. People are always asking, “Did it take you so long because writing a novel [...]

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September 4, 2007

“As if hooked by unseen fishermen” How can we let a day go by here at Antilles without posting a Naipaul link? Here’s another review of A Writer’s People, this time by Nicholas Shakespeare in the Telegraph: In 1970, the New Zealand artist Colin McCahon wrote to a friend: “I have the awful problem now [...]

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September 4, 2007

Kakutani times two The fearless and energetic Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times manages to review not one but two new Caribbean books in today’s edition. First, Junot Díaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: … a wondrous, not-so-brief first novel that is so original it can only be described as Mario [...]

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September 3, 2007

“We have had no Morgan or Port Royal” CRB contributor Jonathan Ali (whose review of the new Kwame Dawes novel appears in the August issue), poking around in some online archive, has made an entertaining discovery: “Oh dear, this really is the year of Naipaul,” remarked the CRB’s editor, after yet another link to an [...]

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September 2, 2007

Links, links, links – Another review of the new Naipaul–this time, by Chandrahas Choudhury in the UK Observer: Naipaul’s operative idea through the book is not so much prose style as what he calls ‘vision’. For him, how well a writer ‘sees’ is what makes his work forceful, ageless, truthful. Those who see clearly bring [...]

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September 1, 2007

“He might not always be saying what he means” V.S. Naipaul’s new book, A Writer’s People, isn’t officially published until this coming Friday, but the first review is already in: Amit Chaudhuri’s, in the UK Guardian. An odd sort of review, as much about D.H. Lawrence as about Naipaul: No writer since Lawrence has been [...]

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