Historical Fiction

Book Review: Ragtime

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E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime. Wow. What a book. This is a page-turner (even with its unfashionably long paragraphs –some longer than a full page). We have an omniscient narrator fully in control of his material, a historical period (1910-14 or so) absolutely brimming with fascinating events and people (Magician Harry Houdini, Magnate JP Morgan, Architect Stanford …

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Book Review: Jack Maggs

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Jack Maggs: A Novel. Peter Carey. A third-person account of Jack Maggs, a Londoner shipped to Australia as a boy convict. It tells the story of Maggs’ return to London as a fully grown but immature man: now rich, physically imposing, dangerous, suffering from terrible headaches, determined to contact his son. Maggs is exploited by …

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Book Review: The Little Stranger

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little_stranger_175x275The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters. This story set in post-WW II England is a masterful exploration of the hazy edges of unreliable first-person narration. Faraday, a country doctor, narrates this tale of an aristocratic family driven to madness and suicide by “the little stranger” in Hundreds, their decaying Warwickshire mansion—but Waters gradually reveals …

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