Literary.

"Its flaws are so many and so foregrounded that they all but dare the reader to work through them and engage the ideas with which Wright was grappling. Without having first read his thunderous classics, one might plausibly dismiss this author as a tendentious, technically naive amateur and disdain the works that made him indispensable in American letters." RON POWERS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Richard Wright's unfinished novel divided critics. Some hailed it as "a prescient examination of the generational and class conflicts that await black Americans as they move from the margins of society into the cultural mainstream" (Washington Post); others panned its wooden dialogue, melodrama, and disappointing exploration of racial identity. They all agreed, however, that Wright would most certainly have tackled these narrative flaws. Despite the novel's shortcomings, Wright's admirers will be grateful for the opportunity to hear his voice once more.

THE AUTHOR'S CLASSICS

NATIVE SON (1940):In this unforgettable novel of bigotry and violence, Bigger Thomas, a troubled young black man from a Chicago ghetto, tries to make his way in a world governed by white privilege when an accident causes him to spiral out of control.

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BLACK BOY (1945): In this compelling autobiography, Richard Wright recounts his early life--from his childhood on a plantation in Roxie, Mississippi, through the criticism he suffered from his strict, religious family and the inescapable racism of the early 20th century, to the genesis of his writing career in 1930s Chicago.

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***

The Painter of Battles

By Arturo Perez-reverte, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

Life and art in the shadow of war.

World-weary war photographer Andres Faulques has retired to an isolated castle where he obsessively paints a mural that intertwines violent memories with his favorite battle paintings. An unexpected visitor arrives one day--a former Croatian soldier, Ivo Markovic, whose picture, taken during the Battle of Vukovar, brought Faulques instant fame at the cost of everything Markovic valued. Markovic announces that he intends to kill Faulques, but, he explains, "I need for us to talk first; I need to know you better, to be sure that you realize certain things." In the days that follow, the two men debate human nature, morality, fate, and the relationship between life and art.

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Random House. 224 pages. $25. ISBN: 1400065984

Providence Journal ****

"This astute, heart-rending, remarkable novel by the spanish author of the historical series that features captain alatriste raises so many terrifying and all-too-human enigmas and dilemmas that it will take your breath away. ... the beauty of Perez-Reverte's spell-binding, disturbing novel lies in the author's rich and lyrical prose with its images of death, volcanoes, bodies leaking blood, victims and victimizers, celebrated paintings of massive massacres, ravaged landscapes and shattered cities." SAM COAlE

Philadelphia Inquirer ****

"In what may be his most personal novel yet, Perez-Reverte draws on his lengthy experience as someone who has witnessed and reflected on war without ever actually participating in combat. ... The narrative development may sometimes move slowly or seem repetitive, but Perez-Reverte is a skillful architect of the tension between the retired photographer and his former subject, of those who witness and take photographs and those who fight, kill, beat, and torture." KATIE GOLDSTEIN

San Francisco Chronicle ***

"Laying on page after page of this philosophical rhetoric, the way his artist hero slathers parts of his mural in paint, tends to amplify Faulques' fate, as Perez-Reverte elevates his novel above the level of the merely entertaining pages of King and Grisham. It also, alas, reminds American readers of the sublime rhetoric of Faulkner and how such passages in the hands of a master can add to the momentum of the story and how, in instances such as this, it can also drown out the music of the plot." AlAN CHEUSE

Guardian (UK) ***

"The Painter of Battles is a strange book, much of its material shoehorned cornily into its flashbacks, its central dialogue straining under the moral weight placed upon it; it's a messy clash between showing and telling. And yet in a way it also becomes the mural of which it tells, drawing a perfectly obsessive, claustrophobic panorama." STEVEN POOlE

San Antonio Exp-News ***

"The Painter of Battles is an intoxicating mix blending philosophy, art history and treatises on the nature of love, the elusiveness of justice, man's inhumanity to man, human cruelty, the utility of war and the necessity of revenge. ... Trouble is, this cocktail is light on the essential ingredient: story." STEVE BENNETT

NY Times Book Review **

"The reader feels remarkably distant from these horrors, perhaps because the perpetrators have such drawn-out pseudo-intellectual discussions about who feels the least, who committed the worst wrongs. And perhaps it's because these discussions are interspersed with cumbersome descriptions of the mural the photographer is painting and how it relates to other works of Western battlefield art." LORRAINE ADAMS

Los Angeles Times *

"Unfortunately, Faulques' extensive philosophical ramblings--as well as flashbacks to his life as a war photographer--soon begin to impinge on the novel's forward progress. ... By Page 50 or so, the novel's philosophical ambitions and stop-and-start structure become insurmountable problems." RICHARD ZIMlER

CRITICAl SUMMARy

"It's the nearest I've got to a Personal memoir," explains best-selling Spanish author Arturo Perez-Reverte, who drew extensively on his experience as a war correspondent while writing The Painter of Battles. A departure from his highly regarded thrillers and historical dramas (Captain Alatriste, **** SElECTION, Sept/Oct 2005; Purity of Blood, **** Mar/Apr 2006), it received mixed reviews from the critics. The novel, developing slowly through lengthy philosophical discussions and flashbacks, troubled some reviewers who wanted more plot and forward momentum; however, others overlooked this deficiency and praised Perez-Reverte's lush Prose and keen insight into human nature. "Readers who Prefer action to intellectual discussion, especially when accompanied by coolly objective descriptions of the appalling things men do to each other, will prefer to leave this novel on the shelf " (Sunday Times).

CITED BY THE CRITICS

EMBERS | SANDOR MARAI, TRANSLATED FROM THE HUNGARIAN BY CAROL JANEWAY (2001): An old man is summoned to the crumbling castle of a former friend after four decades of separation. There, he is forced to relive the final days of their close friendship and the act of betrayal that split them forever.

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A CLOSED BOOK | GILBERT ADAIR (1999): Narrated almost entirely through dialogue, this psychological thriller explores the relationship between an award-winning author permanently blinded in a horrifying car crash and the man he hires to help him write his first book since the accident.

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***

The Reserve

By russell Banks

A beautiful backdrop for bad behavior.

Artist Jordan Groves is rich, internationally famous, and about to get in way over his head with a beautiful but unstable heiress named Vanessa Cole. Jordan and Vanessa meet in the summer of 1936 at the Reserve, her family's idyllic Adirondack mountain retreat, and in no time at all, the sparks are flying between them. But when Vanessa's brain-surgeon father dies, she becomes convinced that her mother is plotting to lock her up in a European insane asylum in order to block her inheritance. This conviction leads her to kidnap and imprison her mother at the Reserve, which sets into motion a chain of events leading to adultery, insanity, and murder. Harper Collins. 287 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 0061430250

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Boston Globe ****

"The Reserve is at once a harrowing mystery, an illuminating psychological novel of subverted love and family dysfunction, and a powerful commentary on class structure in America. ... Banks's willingness to confront ... the hard truths about the world we live in, and to follow those truths to whatever dark places they may lead, goes a long way toward explaining his longstanding reputation as one of America's finest contemporary fiction writers." HOWARD FRANK MOSHER

Los Angeles Times ***

"The Reserve gratifies page by page. But when the pages are gathered together, held in retrospect, there is the sense of an echo still awaited, some deeper gratification promised in the meditative pose of the mysterious, beautiful woman on the first page." SVEN BIRKERTS

NY Times Book review ***

"While the reader might not anticipate all the twists of the plot before they occur, the most outrageous possibility to dance speculatively in his mind at any given point in the story is likely to find fulfillment before long. ... In The Reserve [Banks] has penned a ripping yarn, which seems equally suited to Hollywood, the book clubs and the talk shows." lUC SANTE

Chicago Sun-Times **

"Banks' descriptions of the Adirondacks, where he lives, are first-rate. ... But with its odd, awkward plotting and thin characterizations, this is a mere placeholder for a writer capable of far greater things." LLOYD SACHS

Philadelphia Inquirer **