Brushing Away

January ended with mixed messages. The weather whispered renewal in defiance of the calendar. This confusion fortunately didn't extend to my reading. Balzac, Turgenev and Lampedeusa each affected me greatly. There was a bit of waddled after that. The puddles of uncertainty often irk. I read We The Animals by Justin Torres which struck me as a talking therapy submitted to a MFA Program. Itwasn't bad, but the ruminations on the feral didn't lead very far.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray was dispatched next. This wasn't akin to Infinite Jest in any constructive sense. Thoughts towards such a thesis are hopeful, at best. Murray has an ear for the speech of adolescents but as a novel it was soggy and unsatisfying. I finished the week by enjoying a collection of essays On British Fiction, edited by Zachary Leader and featuring a number of favorite authors: Amis, McEwan and Hitchens. A fortunate byproduct of this reading has been an inclination to plunge back into the novels of Iris Murdoch.