Джордж Сондерс4.0 Американский писатель Хунот Диас так описал «эффект Джорджа Сондерса»: «Он, как никто, метко подметил абсурдные и обесчеловечивающие параметры нашей нынешней „культуры капитала“. Но есть в его произведениях и другая грань: холодная строгость уравновешивается глубочайшим состраданием». Это относится и к сборнику «Десятого декабря», где присутствуют все любимые жанры Сондерса: душераздирающая антиутопия, чистый реализм, социальная сатира. В США сборник стал одним из самых заметных литературных событий 2013 года. 3 января «Нью-Йорк таймс» категорично заявила в заголовке: «Джордж Сондерс написал лучшую книгу из тех, которые вы прочтете в наступившем году». А уже в апреле Сондерс был включен в список «Сто самых влиятельных людей мира», регулярно составляемый журналом «Тайм», и удостоен премии для крупных мастеров короткой прозы «ПЕН/Маламуд» (среди лауреатов прошлых лет — Сол Беллоу, Джон Апдайк, Джойс Кэрол Оутс). Давние поклонники писателя были приятно удивлены этим ажиотажем. Сондерс далеко не дебютант. В 1996 году Томас Пинчон похвалил его первую книгу, заметив: автор «рассказывает именно те истории, которые помогают выжить в наше время». Собратья по цеху давно ценят Сондерса за виртуозную работу со словом. Зэди Смит поставила его рядом с Марком Твеном. «Сондерс словно бы играючи решает почти непосильные задачи. Нам очень повезло, что он у нас есть», — написал Джонатан Франзен. Почему же широкий читатель открыл для себя Сондерса именно в 2013 году? Рассказы из новой книги «пробирают сильнее, чем ранние» — как пишут в отзывах в интернете. С другой стороны, на фоне экономического кризиса и затяжных войн в каких-то непостижимых странах легче понять проблемы любимого персонажа Сондерса — измученного безденежьем «маленького человека», потерявшегося в жестоком и абсурдном мире.
Энн Карсон4.5
In a stunningly original mix of poetry, drama, and narrative, Anne Carson brings the red-winged Geryon from Autobiography of Red, now called 'G', into manhood, and through the complex labyrinths of the modern age. We join him as he travels with his friend and lover 'Sad' (short for Sad But Great), a war veteran, and with Ida, an artist, across a geography that ranges from plains of glacial ice to idyllic green pastures; from a psychiatric clinic to the sombre house where G's mother must face her death. Haunted by Proust, juxtaposing the hunger for flight with the longing for family and home, this deeply powerful picaresque verse invites readers on an extraordinary journey of intellect, imagination, and soul.
Амити Гейдж0.0
* Shortlisted for the Folio Prize 2014 *
Attending a New England summer camp as an adolescent, young Erik Schroder - a first generation East German immigrant - adopts a new name and a new persona - Eric Kennedy - in the hopes that it will help him fit in. This fateful white lie will set him on an improbable and ultimately tragic course.
Schroder relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years later through the New England countryside with his six-year-old daughter, Meadow, in an attempt to outrun the authorities amidst a heated custody battle with his wife, who will soon discover that her husband is not who he says he is. From a correctional facility, Eric surveys the course of his life in order to understand - and maybe even explain - his behaviour; the painful separation from his mother in childhood; a harrowing escape to America with his taciturn father; a romance that withered under a shadow of lies; and his proudest moments and greatest regrets as a flawed but loving father.
Jane Gardam0.0
Shortlisted for the 2014 Folio Prize.
Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat told with bristling tenderness and black humour the stories of that Titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Old Filth QC, and his clever, misunderstood wife Betty. Last Friends, the final volume of this trilogy, picks up with Terence Veneering, Filth's great rival in work and - though it was never spoken of - in love.
Veneering's were not the usual beginnings of an establishment silk: the son of a Russian acrobat marooned in northeast England and a devoted local girl, he escapes the war to emerge in the Far East as a man of panache, success and fame. But, always, at the stuffy English Bar he is treated with suspicion: where did this blond, louche, brilliant Slav come from?
Veneering, Filth and their friends tell a tale of love, friendship, grace, the bittersweet experiences of a now-forgotten Empire and the disappointments and consolations of age.
One long last summer for Dad Lewis in his beloved town, Holt, Colorado. As old friends pass in and out to voice their farewells and good wishes, Dad's wife and daughter work to make his final days as comfortable as possible, knowing all is tainted by the heart-break of an absent son. Next door, a little girl with a troubled past moves in with her grandmother, and down town another new arrival, the Reverend Rob Lyle, attempts to mend strained relationships of his own.
Utterly beautiful, and devastating yet affirming, Benediction explores the pain, the compassion and the humanity of ordinary people.
Rachel Kushner3.7 The year is 1975 and Reno—so-called because of the place of her birth—has come to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity in the art world—artists have colonized a deserted and industrial SoHo, are staging actions in the East Village, and are blurring the line between life and art. Reno meets a group of dreamers and raconteurs who submit her to a sentimental education of sorts. Ardent, vulnerable, and bold, she begins an affair with an artist named Sandro Valera, the semi-estranged scion of an Italian tire and motorcycle empire. When they visit Sandro’s family home in Italy, Reno falls in with members of the radical movement that overtook Italy in the seventies. Betrayal sends her reeling into a clandestine undertow.
The Flamethrowers is an intensely engaging exploration of the mystique of the feminine, the fake, the terrorist. At its center is Kushner’s brilliantly realized protagonist, a young woman on the verge. Thrilling and fearless, this is a major American novel from a writer of spectacular talent and imagination.
Eimear McBride0.0 Eimear McBride's debut tells, with astonishing insight and in brutal detail, the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. Not so much a stream of consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist, to read A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator's head, experiencing her world first-hand. This isn't always comfortable - but it is always a revelation.
Touching on everything from family violence to sexuality and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma, McBride writes with singular intensity, acute sensitivity and mordant wit. A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is moving, funny - and alarming. It is a book you will never forget.
Sergio De La Pava0.0 Casi is a hotshot public defender working on the front line of America's War on Drugs. So far he's on the winning side. He's never lost a case. But nothing lasts forever, and pride like his has a long way to fall.
Funny, smart and always surprising, A Naked Singularity speaks a language all of its own and reads like nothing else ever written. Casi's beautiful mind and planetary intelligence make him an inimitable and unforgettable narrator.
In De La Pava's hands, the labyrinthine miseries of the New York Justice System are as layered and diabolical as Dante's nine circles of Hell. But the Devil doesn't hog the best lines. There are plenty here to go around.
