Angel Time--Anne Rice
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 sp...
Steven,
ReplyDeleteI haven't read anything by Bolano yet, but I might one of these days.
I've read several by Mieville though. He's a difficult and intriguing writer. The one I liked best was _The City and The City_.
Dear Fred,
ReplyDeleteI did try. The City and the City seemed most promising, but alas--there was nothing there for me, and given what little time we have to read, I felt it better to leave it for another time when, perhaps, I would be better oriented to it. But thank you for the encouragement. (I guess also his personal comments about other writers--Tolkien among them--makes me suspect that our sensibilities may not be compatible.)
shalom,
Steven
Steven,
ReplyDeleteI had recommended City for the SF book group and the reactions were rather mixed. Some of those who had liked the earlier Mieville didn't like this one.
I also have problems with his personal comments about other authors. This is one of those times when I will focus on his fiction and ignore his other writings.
I think most writers are lousy critics for they mistake their own personal prejudices and writing styles for universals. One size does not fit all.