I doubt Laura Lippman would want me to say this out loud, but she’s not a mystery writer anymore. Oh, sure, the talented Ms. Lippman, a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, is a mystery writer when she’s producing the popular, award-winning series featuring private eye Tess Monahan. But her stand-alones – there are five of them now – are something else again. Her latest, … [Read more...]
The View From Home 6: New releases on DVD
Tokyo Sonata (E1) Release date: May 4 Standard list price: $21.49 Tokyo Sonata, the latest from Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa, is seemingly a departure from the director’s preferred forte of cerebral horror and science fiction. At least that’s how it begins, with a focus on the lives of a middle-class Japanese family of four that echoes Yasujiro Ozu’s gentle domestic … [Read more...]
Banville’s latest a wizardly look at gods and man
The modern literary novelist faces two large difficulties. One is how to write something worth reading, a story perhaps, invoking, perhaps, the human condition, without recourse to the worn-out conventions of realistic narrative fiction (a situation brilliantly discussed by James Wood in the March 15 edition of The New Yorker). The second problem is what might be called the … [Read more...]