Jenny Erpenbeck: The Old Child / The Book of Words (via Asylum)

Excellent review. I particularly like the line:

But they are only difficult if the reader is anticipating from the book a monologue rather than a dialogue: and where’s the fun in that?

I bought this book early in the year, thrilled to see something out of the ordinary in one of those titchy unpromising shopping-centre branches of Waterstone's. (There's someone with taste at their Ballymena branch – not normally a place associated with literary highs. I also bought E.T.A. Hoffmann and Hjalmar Söderberg there). I started reading it in February, only to be struck down – or at least, struck unable-to-concentrate-through-the-pain – … Read More

via Asylum