books | David F. Cooper

Book review: How to Behave in a Crowd by Camille Bordas

August 20, 2017

“How to Behave in a Crowd will resonate with readers who grew up in large intellectual families, but it should also appeal to fiction readers interested not only in families but in learning how to find fulfillment by balancing the life of the mind with life among others in the world outside oneself.” — from my […]

Book Review: Moving Kings by Joshua Cohen

July 11, 2017

“Though Moving Kings is considerably shorter and more accessible—with less erudite but nonetheless stimulating vocabulary, similes, and fewer stream of consciousness run-on sentences—than Cohen’s previous novel Book of Numbers (also reviewed on NYJB) it, too, skillfully weaves descriptive character portraits and plot lines into a novel of ideas that addresses issues as diverse as capitalism, gentrification, army veterans, the […]

Book review: The Journal of Albion Midnight by Kenneth Patchen

June 6, 2017

“like a sonnet whose beautiful lines are undermined by its flawed argument.” — from my review of The Journal of Albion Midnight in New York Journal of Books

2 book reviews: God’s Ear by Rhoda Lerman & Sonora by Hannah Lillith Assadi

April 5, 2017

Lerman’s sense of humor has been compared to that of Philip Roth (who is three years her senior), but in God’s Ear the humor also employs the traditional Jewish irony and Eastern European Jewish folklore of Isaac Bashevis Singer, especially his short stories. Most of Lerman’s Hasidic folktales in God’s Ear are too long to quote, but the following […]

Two book reviews: A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman & Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

March 1, 2017

“At first glance Israeli novelist David Grossman’s new novel, A Horse Walks into a Bar, which as the title suggests recounts a stand-up comedian’s performance one evening at a night club in the coastal city Netanya, appears to be a complete change in tone and direction from his previous two fiction books To the End […]

Book review: The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping by Aharon Appelfeld

February 9, 2017

“With its universal themes of healing, recovery, creativity, and finding one’s vocation The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping should engage the wide readership Appelfeld’s prose deserves. Readers may want to buy extra copies and donate them to VA hospitals.” — from my review in New York Journal of Books.

Book review: Recitation by Bae Suah

January 25, 2017

“After two novellas translated into English (Nowhere to be Found, 2015 and A Greater Music, 2016, the latter reviewed in NYJB) South Korean post-modernist fiction writer Bae Suah and British translator Deborah Smith—who also translated A Greater Music and two novels by Han Kang (The Vegetarian and Human Acts)—return with an even more ambitious full […]