At the time Rachel Kushner's second novel, The Flamethrowers, was released, I was very much interested in the story. Before it had even hit shelves, I was enticed by the cover and the promise of a thrilling tale within. Well, curse the infinite to-read list. While I've held the best intentions of re...
The Mars Room, Rachel Kushner, author and narrator Although the author does a good job of reading the book, the subject matter could not hold my interest. The main character was a lap dancer. She is now being transferred to a new prison. She is serving two concurrent life sentences for murder. She d...
This is actually two tales. One of a woman, Romy, who is in jail falsely accused and the other is a dirty cop, I can't remember his name, he wasn't worth it, who fears for his life everyday because of the people he has confined to those bars. The book tells of prison life seen from the eyes of these...
The Flamethrowers is a shape-shifter, a slinking fire-lizard, spectacular and formless. It's lines are curving, colorful and deceptive, you can't tell where it is going and I wouldn't care to anyway. I assume it was my own fault that this book was so far to the limits of my radar but Rachel Kushner ...
Rating deleted. I can't in good conscience keep ratings for books by any of the 204 writers who signed the letter protesting the award for courage PEN gave to Charlie Hebdo. Such willful obtuseness by writers, of all people, toward freedom of expression is very troubling and sad.
Speed, motorcycles and the New York art scene during the 1970s combine with leftist revolutionaries in Italy in Kushner's novel, making for a pleasurable immersion into another era full of fascinating characters. More here.
Cuba in the fifties was a paradise for American expats. For employees of the United Fruit Company and the Nicaro Nickel Company--for the American employees, anyway--there were servants (carefully trained to cook good American food), parties, and private schools. For Cubans, and for the Haitians and ...
Nominated for the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction (US). An arresting cover, a story that starts with 1970s speed records & racing, yet has a curious, but gorgeous effect of catching small moments in time… zoomed in but stretched out, each scene a clear, magnified vision seen as if you are float...
Well, I have been reading this book for some time now, and still haven't managed to make my way though it. It is tedious and rambling. The idea of this book turns out to be much more interesting than the actual book itself. I was looking forward to reading about the New York art scene in the late se...
This novel is set in Cuba before Castro's revolution. It focuses mainly on the lives of Americans who are exploiting the Cubans through the sugar, nickel and fruit industries. On the positive side, this book reminded me how cut off we are from Cuba and how we really do not learn anything about thi...
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