Summer reading
Breiner, Laurence
Summer reading reading, but not leisurely telling. The alike, though all abundantly demon- Laurence...
...After all, it's The Circus of Dr...
...Histoof nothing but plays...
...or call #00-253-752...
...Another sub- comes to us narrated by a twenty-some- never admit you've read it...
...An equally re- than The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty ry...
...These are "At times Jean Bethke Elshtain reaches heights rarely attained in the books I hoard, that I'm contemporary moral philosophy...
...Mifflin, $12, 225 pp...
...set in postnuclea than 130 pages...
...Imagine a quiring different kinds of books...
...Lao (Buccaneer, $18.95...
...It's the season for the really good Dickens they didn't tell you about in school: Dombey and Son, and Little Dorrit, and Our Mutual Friend...
...ter of me...
...Faith-filled cultural criticism of a high order...
...A truth universally acknowledged initiates the story: Mrs...
...and Derek Walcott's salty Caribbean epic Omeros (Farrar Straus & Giroux, $12, 325 pp...
...A clue to how much fun this is: there's The result fully deserves the occasional But really, what goes in the straw basa film version, by effects-meister George reviewer's comparisons to Ellison's In- ket with the sunscreen and the big towPal, with Tony Randall hamming it up visible Man (Random House, $19.95, 616 els...
...pp...
...hardly is when you start packing sating with greater metaphysical weight, needs to be remembered, since almost that you realize how many is Georges Perec's masterpiece, Life: A everyone mentions it, but since hardly I different modes of summer User's Manual (Godine, $19.95, 600 pp...
...of a plot...
...about the opposite of tanning...
...Mehra needs a husband for her youngest...
...My worst plan was to read ki's Red, White, and Blue trilogy...
...There is, tale about the social impact of a scientifcatch phrase that deserves a place in yes, a story about a political campaign in ic breakthrough that turns black people everyone's vocabulary: "Never happen...
...Elshtain demonstrates her living from the bookshelves and begin describChristian faith by showing how it is relevant to the moral dilemmas ing them with such enthusiasm that I that we all confront every day...
...Well, if you want something really good," I say, then pull my favorites "With wit and humane sensitivity...
...The alike, though all abundantly demonLaurence Breiner texture is opulent and detailed, the big strate Welty's genius: her characteristic crowd scenes are wonderfully man- agility of imagination, the striking vaaged, and the whole story is full of in- riety of her light, the polyphony of cident without melodrama-an amaz- pitch-perfect American voices...
...Quite an achievement.' - GEORGE KATEB into my study requesting a book for summer vacation...
...This is leisurely Commonweal 19 June 16, 2000 South Florida, tells a freakish coming-of- (Riverhead Books, $12.95, 349 pp...
...On the subject of appearances, you need pack nothing more than Chang-Rae Lee's debut, Native Speaker there's also George Schuyler's Harlem Robert Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey (Farrar Strauss & Giroux, $10, 528 pp...
...There's read- ment building in Paris, told from the grant aunt who live beside an Idaho lake ing to accompany the morning's first perspective of a single moment...
...veres, and these days the book that gets - MICHAEL PERRY carried away is likely to be Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower (Houghton ISBN 0-8028-3888-X ' 1:95...
...an Asian district of New York City, but it white is so wonderfully wicked you can No way...
...Laurence Breiner teaches English and African ing feat, considering the political back- Summer is also the time to try to reAmerican studies at Boston University...
...There's ries of the people living in a large apart- prose, about two young sisters and a vareading for the rainy days...
...Set in eighteenth-century Saxony, this At your hookstorc...
...But tradition strongly associates the lazy days of summer with wildly ambitious reading...
...For total immersion (so to speak) as the Chinese impresario...
...But usually altruism and "No one who reads this book can come away unmoved or uninspired...
...Jean Bethke Elshtain, one of America's leading public intellectuals, finds amid the tensions and tragedies of our turn-of-the-century sod- Suzanne Berne ety pointers for recovering the life-affirming essence of what It means to be human...
...0047 AVM...
...Passions...
...For a homegrown product on a sim- stage Hamlet at the Emma Lazarus reMuch more successful was the summer ilar scale, you could hardly do better tirement home...
...MARY ANN GLENDON 1999 Orange Prize for fiction...
...He is ground, which several other big novels member all those books friends once the author of An Introduction to West In- of India are content to rely upon in lieu mentioned with a special note in their dian Poetry (Cambridge University Press...
...fession a sort of metaphysical hit man...
...In the with a train wreck at the bottom...
...Sum- say that Perec weaves together the sto- haunting novel, in gorgeous sinewy mer's not just a day at the beach...
...You need a little plan...
...I've tried parable to that of Krzysztof Kieslows- ing book about Jewish octogenarians several...
...This whole book both inspires and reluctant to lend when a visitor wanders chastises...
...Well, there are Jean Bethke Elshtain those who say that the only essential reading, every summer of your life, is Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (Harcourt Brace, $11, 209 pp...
...The nearest contemporary equivalent must be Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy (HarperCollins, $20)-1,300 pages of beautiful sentences, inhabited by a subcontinent of quirky and memorable characters...
...Marilynne Robinson s HousekeepConsiderably shorter, but compen- ing (Noonday Press, $12,219 pp...
...von Hardenberg, a student of philosoE-mail: salcsCaeerdmans.cont 255 JEFFERSON AVE...
...The search soon embroils four large families, and the political upheavals of India in the 1950s intrude unpredictably...
...1 GRAND RAPIDS...
...voices...
...Worried about ho are we...
...But now and then someone perse"A compelling set of reflections, both disturbing and prophetic...
...Thought-provoking...
...FIRST THINGS read three or four times, and plan to read again...
...Chance in Hell...
...being seen reading books whose text lies mostly left of center...
...a certain evangelical impulse get the bet-JOHN WITTE JR...
...MI 49503 phy and trainee clerk in the Directorate of Salt Mines, who is destined to beCommonweal 20 June 16, 2000...
...a funny and movup...
...Beautifully written here are a few books I've and warmly recommended...
...who undertake, against the odds, to books with the word "beach" in the title...
...This sardonic phony orchestra, errant Rastas, and a appears to be a political thriller...
...anyone can explain why it is so fine, you reading there are, all re- It is accurate, but hardly adequate, to have to read it for yourself...
...For a different kind of endgame, warding variation reveals the underly- (Harcourt Brace, $15, 648 pp...
...Bring it to a limely goofy novel is Charles Finney's thing Korean-American who is by pro- sparsely populated beach...
...Not hard books-fat books...
...coffee, when the birds are up but the reading, you will discover a novel full Here are some others: Alan Isles s The houseguests aren't...
...Egos...
...is a Renaissance classic, Black No More (Northage story garnished with a feral sym- moody and devious novel, which only eastern, $13.95, 222 pp...
...Summer reading reading, but not leisurely telling...
...generally succeed in persuading my vis-RICHARD J. BERNSTEIN itor not to borrow a book from me after all...
...There's insomniac of puzzles and conundrums, with an Prince of West End Avenue (Viking Penreading (when the houseguests are still emotional and intellectual density com- guin, $10.95,256 pp...
...B. EERDMANS novel focuses on the true story of Fritz Fax: 616-4s9-6540 PUBLISHING CO...
...Here are Denis Johnson's Fiskadoro (Harpering principle: Read no book of more more than forty pieces that never sound Collins, $11, 219 pp...
...pages . hardcover...
...Suzanne Berne's novel, A Crime in the "Vintage Elshtain - social criticism at its best, politically astute and Neighborhood (Algonquin Books), won the theologically informed...
Vol. 127 • June 2000 • No. 12
