Review copy received 11/04/09 From the time of its announcement, I had been looking forward to this new book by Anne Rice. As I say in every review, I am not a die-hard Anne Rice fan. I found Interview with a Vampire interesting and intriguing, but in hindsight, must lay much of the responsibility of the current vampire as victim and love-object obsession at its feet. After that, I had no patience with her writing until Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. In that book I observed a kind of control and authorial voice that I had not seen in any of the books I had sampled since Interview . So too with Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. Perhaps because of the subject matter, perhaps for other reasons, these two books seemed to witness a level of control of language and story that the other books did not. Gone were messy florid passages that lavished two, three, four paragraphs on the description of the lace and flounce of a jabot. These new books were spare, polished, poetic. The
Steven, if I were to recommend half a dozen books written in the last twenty five years that everyone must read, McCarthy's BLOOD MERIDIAN would certainly be included in that limited list. So, what are you waiting for now? Read it! And then tell me what you think.
ReplyDeleteDear RT,
ReplyDeleteI've started it several times and found it not to my taste--but I tend to be a very moody reader. So, how 'bout this--I'll pick up Blood Meridian when you pick up Ulysses! I know, you're embarking on Bleak House (another I need to revisit) shortly, but surely you can fit Ulysses into a gap somewhere in your book list?
I will be picking up Blood Meridian soon--but I have several books of short stories I need to get through first--most importantly The Streams of Affection, but also Pastoralia and perhaps Wells Tower's opus d'annee.
shalom,
Steven
Let me know when you begin BLOOD MERIDIAN. That will be my provocation to begin (and complete?) ULYSSES. Deal?
ReplyDeleteDear RT,
ReplyDeleteAbsolutement!
shalom,
Steven