Books I Read November 21st, 2021

I finally managed to sit my ass down and read a few books this week, so bully for me. They were;

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett – Actually I read this a month ago and somehow forgot to write anything about it, which is strange because I found this affectionate recreation of a fishing village in turn of the century Maine a genuinely charming idyll. A series of interconnected character studies offer an evocative and wistful view of a pre-modern world already fading from view, affectionate without being cloying. Lovely.

In the Freud Archives by Janet Malcolm – At a brisk 200 pages I found it impossible to avoid enjoying this engaging depiction of a scholarly feud between several Freud obsessives.

Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman – This history of the modern state of Israel as depicted through its extra-judicial killings, often as told by the people executing them. A riveting depiction of spycraft at its most savage, and the inevitable moral decline resulting thereof.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie – A pair of teenage boys are exiled into rural China during the Cultural Revolution, find a cache of Western novels, have misadventures with the eponymous tailor. Lyrical and unexpected, elegiac and strange and meaner than I anticipated. Fun stuff.

Inspector Ali by Driss Chraibi – An returned-expatriate Moroccan writer of genre fiction grapples with his place in society and his role as an author. Sort of like if Saul Bellow was Moroccan and less pretentious and Herzog was 200 pages rather than 500. Madcap and meandering in the best sort of way, Chraibi deserves rediscovery.