Review by New York Times Review
ELIZABETH BISHOP: A Miracle for Breakfast, by Megan Marshall. (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99.) A former student delves into Bishop's complex personal life, which the poet fiercely tried to protect. Drawing on a trove of new documents, Marshall, a Pulitzer Prizewinning biographer, notes parallels between Bishop's published and private writing, and writes frankly about her alcoholism and central love affair. THE MORAVIAN NIGHT: A Story, by Peter Handke. Translated by Krishna Winston. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.) An unnamed writer invites friends to a houseboat docked in the Balkans, where he regales them with stories of his travels across Europe. The writer's personal history is bound up with that of Central Europe, including stops in places irrevocably changed by time. THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICAN GROWTH: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War, by Robert J. Gordon. (Princeton, $24.95.) The economic growth that powered the United States between 1870 and 1970 was probably a one-time event, Gordon, a noted macroeconomist, argues. As our reviewer, Paul Krugman, said here: "This book will challenge your views about the future; it will definitely transform how you see the past." SIGNALS: New and Selected Stories, by Tim Gautreaux. (Vintage, $16.95.) Gautreaux chronicles the life and times of ordinary Louisianians throughout this collection. Southern literary giants haunt Gautreaux's writing, including James Dickey and Flannery O'Connor, whose protagonist from "Everything That Rises Must Converge" he resurrects in one of his tales. The "stories all begin in the relatively humble territory of realistic fiction," our reviewer, Rebecca Lee, said here. "The real thrill of this collection is its inevitable march into poetry." THE WORD DETECTIVE: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary, by John Simpson. (Basic Books, $16.99.) A former chief editor of the dictionary, Simpson reflects on nearly four decades as a gatekeeper of the English language. Along the way, he offers insight into how words come into being and a look at origins of a scattering of words: inkling, deadline, apprenticeship, balderdash. CHRISTMAS DAYS: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days, by Jeanette Winterson. (Grove, $16.) For years, Winterson has made a tradition of writing a story at Christmastime, ranging from the sentimental to the bittersweet: A team of frogs saves an orphanage; a woman finds solace in a haunted seaside mansion. In this gift book, she shares a collection of those tales, along with recipes for favorite holiday dishes.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 29, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. This gem from Marcel Proust could not be more relevant to acclaimed Austrian writer Handke's meandering, semiautobiographical, fictional travelogue, which is more an account of self-discovery and a continent's gradual evolution than a strict accounting of sights seen. Sure, the writer-narrator describes tables groaning with food and plenty of quaint villages studding the landscape, but the shell of the story consists of recounting his travels across Europe, noticing the tiniest of fissures in the notion of a united Europe. As his protagonist travels from the gloomy Balkans to Spain and beyond, Handke (Don Juan: His Own Version, 2010) describes not just a continent in flux, where once rancid-tasting Montenegrin olive oil is now good enough to compete with the best that Tuscany pours, but also crafts a journey of growth, in which the narrator must make peace with the ghosts of his own past. A searching exploration of how travel and storytelling can help us find our truest selves.--Apte, Poornima Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The Moravian Night is the name of a boat moored on the Morava River, where a gathering takes place in which a writer tells friends the story of a journey he once took through Europe. The book's journey appears to begin in Kosovo. The somewhat unreliable narrator tells his friends of "following the example of the rivers," meandering through Spain, Portugal, and Handke's native Austria, before circling back to the Balkans, which no longer exist the way the storyteller once knew them. He encounters a varied cast of characters. Few places are named, nor does the reader ever know precisely where the narrator is, on land or in the mind, recollecting, philosophizing, dreaming. Further muddling the narrative are the friends the narrator has gathered, who sometimes take up or interrupt the story with their own version of things during the long dark night. At the center is a woman, on the boat and in the story, a mysterious figure lurking, serving, talking, perhaps even orchestrating. In this story where memory and reality battle, Handke (The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) once again showcases his valuable insight and imagination. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The renowned Austrian novelist looks back on a body of work and a terrible century in this elegiac tale, first published in German in 2008.Every country has its Samarkand and its Numancia. So opens Handkes (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos, 2007, etc.) novel, evoking the Thousand and One Nights, Cervantes, Machado, Borges. These fabled places of refuge on the far ends of the world are joined by a houseboat on the Morava River, a tributary of the Danube where the Slavic and German worlds meet and armies have long clashed. There, a storyteller gathers a group of friends, associates, distant neighbors, collaborators of the former writer, for whom, in the face of deep danger, he offers a multitiered, time-shifting tale that crosses borders and decades, one in which figures from other Handke novels make appearances, to say nothing of angels and demons. Some of Handkes text is a kind of meditation on history; having come under much criticism a quarter-century ago for his defense of Serbia during the most recent round of Balkans wars, he places that region on the edges of Numantia and Samarkand, joining it to the fabulous: Where had they begun, his and our Balkans? Long before the geographic and morphological border. Some of it is a subtly defiant self-defense, begging the question of who turned out to be right: A sad story? the tale closes. That remained to be seen. And some is simply lovely, as when, in one of his guises, the narrator, passing across La Manchashades of Cervantes againsuddenly confronts his literary and actual past: One after the other, his forebears came toward him in the early light, reached him, went by him. All play a role in his life and story, he adds, one whose threads are still playing out even as Handkes modern epic ends. A sad storyperhaps, but one in which fantasy and history dance nimbly. Stellar. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
