Date: 2004 Author: Michael Ignatieff No disputing that Ignatieff is a stylish essayist. A brilliant novelist he is not. This…

Date: 1996 Author: Jennifer Belle Quell and crabs and Laura Ashley: Belle’s naïve protagonist Benny (Bennington) Bloom gets her fill…

Date: 2003 Author: Paul Auster Auster’s story-within-a-story honors Hector Mann, a mysterious silent film star who captivates the narrator, a…

Date: 1984 Author: Don DeLillo DeLillio is foremost a collector of “dense anatomies of feeling.” His 1980s masterwork is an…

Date: 2003 Author: Andrea Lee Merope says “Italians are just intensified versions of men from anywhere.” Merope is the Monserrat-American…

Date: 1998 Author: Michel Faber Ah, Mr. Faber. Frances and Nick are on the rocks over children. But there’s a…

Date: 2004 Author: Franklin Foer Foer’s premise is unoriginal. Soccer explains sects, gangsters, nationalism, anti-Semitism, racism, radical Islam, and so…

Date: 2004 Author: Paul Auster Written under the text-and-celluloid spell cast by its predecessor, “The Book of Illusions.” In 1982,…

Date: 2003 Author: Dan Rhodes It’s a dog’s life, and you can thank Rhodes. Timoleon Vieta — call him TV…

Date: 1997 (1999) Author: José Saramago, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa This is Saramago’s allegorical rumination on…

Date: 2004 Author: Graham Swift ALondon whodunit played out in reverse in that crime and culprit are clear from the…

Date: 2004 Author: Debra Weinstein The young poet Annabelle loves the great poet Z. Positively venerates her. What could be…