Monday, October 4, 2010

Great House

Guess what hits bookshelves today? Nicole Krauss's new novel, Great House. FINALLY. And after reading 3 of Franzen's works in the past month, an invigorating next step:

From The Huffington Post,
"Among contemporary novelists, Krauss does not share, for instance, Jonathan Franzen's preoccupation with an accretion of detail in the service of social commentary; if anything, she is the antithesis of Franzen. In surges of mesmerizing sentences that are so complicated, clever, artful, and logically challenging that they read almost like aphorisms, Krauss aims to explicate, not the underlying implications of her characters' behavior, but the very cycles of history."

Although, I have to question the Byrne's claim of Krauss creating 'complicated, clever, artful, and logically challenging' sentences, as I believe I called Krauss's excerpt The Young Painters in The New Yorker 'easy, smart, and raw. Writing that rises to greet you and doesn't apologize for its simple state.' Huh. Guess I'll have to rethink her style as I read the full novel? Makes me want to go straight home to my flannel sheets and put on my glasses.

Happy reading, October.

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