Three Deaths is a very short yet very powerful book, and a wonderful introduction to the work of Josip Novakovich
Because of his nomination for a Man Booker International Prize, and because he recently became Canadian, Novakovich swam into my ken about three weeks ago. He is a writer who should be much better known. Yugoslavian-Croatian born, Novakovich is not just a writer in a step-mother tongue. Like Conrad, Nabokov, Ondaatje, and Rushdie, he is one of those immigrant, cosmopolitan writers who find their raw materials on the borderland between savagery and civilization. While their roots and their experiences often give their writing a flavour of the exotic, their writing… Read more
My Mother's Wars provides an opportunity to comment on the ever increasing number of mother memoirs being published. Mother memoirs are finally coming into their own. Prior to the beginning of this century less than twenty had been published (compared to more than sixty patremoirs), but in the last twelve or so years there have been over fifty, ranging from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's No More Words: A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2001) to Alison Bechdels Are You My Mother? (2012).
While many matremoirs are historically important, deeply insightful, or extremely well written, My Mother's War is a disappointment. In her preface Faderman tells us that "Thirty years after… Read more
What the euphemism! (Am I allowed to say "What the Euphemism?" in an Amazon review? If you read this as typed the answer clearly is yes. If the remark is expurgated you should know that this item was intended to start with a variant of "What the Greek Euphemism?" With that, I'll start over.)
And over, again. This euphemised version is evidence that the original was censored:
What the euphemism! I might as well write a review of my own book. Its a great book after all, one which deserves to be better known than it is, and it is also a book which lead me formulate the concept of the patremoir and to become a minor expert on the subject. It is a good starting point for… Read more
