BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC Eight years after the critically-acclaimed short story collection The Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander’s first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, finally hit bookstores on May 1. This harrowing novel takes place during Argentina’s Dirty War (1976-1983), during which the junta government “disappeared” somewhere between 9,000 and 30,000 suspected dissidents and subversives, mostly students and liberals. Kaddish Poznan, hijo de puta (son of a whore) and outcast in the Jewish community, makes his living by erasing the names of wanton Jewish ancestors (pimps, whores and gangsters) from their gravestones on requests from more respectable […]
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AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Q&A W/ GARY SHTEYNGART
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC Gary Shteyngart’s second novel, Absurdistan, is a biting comical ride in the adventures of Misha Vainberg, the 325 lb. son of the 1,239th richest man in Russia. After attending Accidental College, USA, and living in the South Bronx with his hot Latina girlfriend, Misha must return to Russia to see his father. When his father kills an Oklahoma businessman, Misha can no longer obtain a visa from the INS. Misha’s love for New York and multiculturalism take him to the little-known country of Absurdistan, were he’s supposed to get a Belgian […]
REVIEW: This Is Your Book On Drugs
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Bantam, 1968, reprinted 1999) BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC “You’re either on the bus, or off the bus,” Ken Kesey chants. On the bus. Off the bus. With the Merry Pranksters. Or with the squares. On the bus. Off the bus. This phrase — a meaty reality bite all by itself, repeated like a mantra throughout the book — marks the metaphysical divide that is at the center of Tom Wolfe’s raw account of the psychedelic counterculture in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the legendary New Journalism chronicle of Ken Kesey (author of “One […]
BOOK REVIEW: Blonde On Blonde
The Blonde by Duane Swierczynski (St. Martin’s Minotaur. $23.95) BY MAVIS LINNEMANN From the opening line of Duane Swierczynski’s crime novel, The Blonde, you know you’re in for a wild ride. “I poisoned your drink,” says the titular blonde to Jack Eisley, a print journalist in Philadelphia to sign his divorce papers. Kelly White — The Blonde in question — has been infected with a deadly new technology, nanomachines, which have been designed to make privacy virtually obsolete. If there isn’t someone within 10 feet of Kelly at all times, she will die. Even more unnerving is that these nanomachines […]