For Casey, the search is the thing, whether as a writer or reader. This slim but astute volume is an inducement both to read...
Not whodunit, but why and how it works.
Ask a professional how great fiction is created, and you will usually receive an answer about the importance of a good plot, descriptive language, and writing “what you know about.” Casey (English/Univ. of Maryland; The Man Who Walked Away, 2014, etc.) goes for something deeper: how do great writers create that alluring kind of bewilderment that makes literary fiction unique? “Mystery in fiction,” she writes, “means taking the reader to that land of Un—uncertainty, unfathomability, unknowing. It’s Kafka’s axe to the frozen seas of our souls. In other words, it will—and it should—mess you up.” Using a variety of compelling examples, the author shows the myriad ways mystery can seduce and conquer. Writers like Isaac Babel create a structure of innocence where readers, along with his young protagonists, reach an epiphany. Mystery can make characters come alive as we learn a character’s secrets; perhaps even more so when we don’t. As the writer Paul Yoon tells Casey, just knowing that one of his characters has an undisclosed secret may be a way of knowing him “more deeply, having caught a glimpse into something so very private.” Mystery can also pull us deep into the lives of terrible people—e.g., the protagonist of J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians—or ones, such as Merricat in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in a Castle, whom we’d best avoid. These writers know how to normalize the most brutal or absurd private worlds. There is also imagery—whether it’s poor Hulga’s wooden leg in Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” or the multiplicity of windows in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”—that can transform the very environment of the story itself.
For Casey, the search is the thing, whether as a writer or reader. This slim but astute volume is an inducement both to read more deeply and to head for ever more unchartered, frozen, mysterious waters.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55597-794-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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