First off, thanks to the good people at ARCycling and to Mariela O. for getting me this book. Free books are always a cause for thanks, regardless of what I end up thinking of the book itself. In this case....well, my reaction was just incredibly ambivalent. Robert Olen Butler is apparently a Pul...
Butler is funny as Hell while asking the Big Serious Questions. The more familiar you are with Dante, the better this novel. I knew right away, on page 2, I was going to like the book when one of the first denizens introduced was "George Clemens, inventor of the electric hand dryer for public res...
A while back, I decided (again) that life is just too damn short to read easy, pop books, and that I would dedicate my reading and living only to challenge. Then, after reading Pynchon's Bleeding Edge (Challenging and I loved it), I gave my brain a rest and read Olen's The Star of Istanbul. One o...
WARNING, SPOILERS:Though the racial and historical dynamics could've been dealt with better--though Butler certainly gives it a good try--what I found most interesting about the book is the revelation of incest at the end of it. The two have fallen in love only to discover they are father and dau...
I am a huge fan of the short story - a literary form which seems to have been largely demoted to appearing in magazines and journals (of various reputations), from which the crème de la crème is then selected and anthologized in volumes hardly anyone reads. An author who wants to publish a collec...
3 and 1/2 starsI don't generally get along with fables, so when I saw this work described as such on the inner flap that didn't bode well for me, though I also know inner flaps lie, so I hoped that would be true here. At first, it didn't seem like a fable at all (good) and then when it did, it wa...