26 Books

Black Hearts – full title: Black Hearts: One platoon’s descent into madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death – is the harrowing story of one company’s experience of war in Iraq. This company – Bravo Company of the Black Heart Brigade – is notable because four of its soldiers committed one of the highest-profile war crimes [...]

I’m tempering my short fiction reviews with something a little harder – books about war. I’ll review five in all, starting with Jarhead, Anthony Swofford’s Gulf War memoir.

Jarhead
Anthony SwoffordScribner 2004, Paperback, 260 pages, £7.99

As a lance corporal in a US Marine Corps scout/sniper platoon, Swofford was trained to kill, but didn’t ever get the chance. His memoir, [...]

This is the fourth in my series of five reviews of short fiction collections. Close Range is Annie Proulx’s first collection of Wyoming Stories — spare tales of lives lived and lost in a harsh and lonely land.

Close Range
E. Annie ProulxFourth Estate 1999, Paperback, 320 pages, £12.00

One of the themes of these reviews is what I believe [...]

This review of Raymond Carver’s Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? is the third in my series of five short fiction reviews.

Will You Please be Quiet, Please?
Raymond CarverVintage 2003, Paperback, 192 pages, £7.99

Carver is widely regarded as a master of the short story, a man who reinvigorated an old form and made it his own, churning out [...]

Alice Munro’s 11th book, Runaway, is the subject of the second in a series of five reviews of short fiction collections.

Runaway (Vintage)
Alice MunroVintage Books USA 2005, Paperback, 352 pages, £9.69

Runaway is heavy with accolades: it won The Giller Prize, was a New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year, and made the shortlist for the [...]

This review of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Haruki Murakami’s latest collection of short stories, is the first in a series of five reviews of short fiction collections.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Philip Gabriel (Translator) Alfred A. Knopf 2006, Hardcover, 352 pages, £16.11

I love the short story form, and I hold good short stories and those who write them in higher [...]

Douglas Coupland is a tricky one for me. I should be a huge fan. His name is synonymous with Vancouver, my home city. He is bright and highly observant — the slightly awkward local son you ought to love because he knows your city and by extension you, and his work reflects your personal, political [...]

Jeannette Walls’ memoir is the story of a childhood spent moving from town to town and hovel to hovel, propelled along an increasingly unhinged adventure by her father and hero, Rex.
Dreamer, drinker, and erstwhile architect of the titular house of sand, Rex Walls has charisma to burn. That he does so, to the ground, is [...]