S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
In 1864, after Union general William Tecumseh Sherman burned Atlanta, he
marched his sixty thousand troops east through Georgia to the sea, and
then up into the Carolinas. The army fought off Confederate forces and
lived off the land, pillaging the Southern plantations, taking cattle
and crops for their own, demolishing cities, and accumulating a
borne-along population of freed blacks and white refugees until all
that remained was the dangerous transient life of the uprooted, the
dispossessed, and the triumphant. Only a master novelist could so
powerfully and compassionately render the lives of those who marched.
The author of Ragtime, City of God, and The Book of Daniel has given
us a magisterial work with an enormous cast of unforgettable
characters–white and black, men, women, and children, unionists and
rebels, generals and privates, freed slaves and slave owners. At the
center is General Sherman himself; a beautiful freed slave girl named
Pearl; a Union regimental surgeon, Colonel Sartorius; Emily Thompson,
the dispossessed daughter of a Southern judge; and Arly and Will, two
misfit soldiers.
Almost hypnotic in its narrative drive, The March stunningly
renders the countless lives swept up in the violence of a country at
war with itself. The great march in E. L. Doctorow's hands becomes
something more–a floating world, a nomadic consciousness, and an
unforgettable reading experience with awesome relevance to our own
times.
Book Reviews
Library Journal - Henry L. Carrigan
Doctorow paints his canvas with his typical attention to period detail, but he is no Shelby Foote (Shiloh), Howard Bahr (The Black Flower), or Madison Jones (Nashville 1864), and this effort simply fails to engage. Still, his fans will be clamoring for it; be prepared.
Kirkus Reviews
Doctorow's previous novels have earned multiple major literary awards. The March should do so as well.
Booklist - Donna Seaman
Starred Review. Heir to Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, Doctorow's
masterpiece uncovers the roots of today's racial and political
conundrums, and taps into the deep and abiding realm of myth in its
illumination of sorrow and beauty, the continuity of human existence,
and the transcendence of tenacity, compassion, and love.
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
It is Mr. Doctorow's achievement in these pages that in recounting Sherman's march, he manages to weld the personal and the mythic into a thrilling and poignant story. He not only conveys the consequences of that campaign for soldiers and civilians in harrowingly intimate detail, but also creates an Iliad-like portrait of war as a primeval human affliction - "not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause," but "war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral principle," a "characterless entanglement of brainless forces" as God's answer "to the human presumption."
The Washington Post - John Wray The March conjures up the War of Secession -- also
known as the War Between the States and the War of Northern
Aggression -- as vividly as any contemporary account I've
read, and more plausibly than most. Devotees of our nation's
darkest hour, as well as that subset of Confederacy buffs
willing to entertain the possibility that all may not have
been roses in the antebellum South, will find a great deal
to admire in its pages.
When his daughter, Amy, died suddenly of a heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife moved in with their son-in-law and their three young grandchildren. His story tells how a family makes the possible out of the impossible.
You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family.
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
Masterfully blending true events with fiction, this blockbuster historical thriller delivers a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
I read this book in two days and found it so refreshing. Although you will learn a great deal about barn owls by reading it, the book is not just ...
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I enjoyed reading this book, however, feel that this is not completely her own ideas. This books remembers me of a cross between 'ghost','Sixth ...
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Lisa See has written a great book! This story is satisfying on many levels, some scenes horrifying, but seemingly truthful, and her handling of the ...
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Amazon 'buy button' rumors abound(Mar 18 2010) Rumors swirled today that Amazon could revoke the buy buttons for books by Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, or Hachette if the major publishers can't...
Full Story
Amazon's e-pricing threats(Mar 18 2010) With Apple's iPad launch just weeks away, Amazon raised the stakes again when it threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online...
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The March
Library Journal - Henry L. Carrigan
Booklist - Donna Seaman
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