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Wednesday reviews roundup for 17th June
Posted by Paul Raven on June 17th, 2009 at 23:49
It’s that time of week once again! Let’s see what people have been saying about PS books in the last seven days…
First of all, The Baryon Review tackles the mammoth tome that is The Very Best of Gene Wolfe:
Many years ago, the first time I met Gene Wolfe, he wrote in my autograph book “even if he won’t tell me what he likes about my stories”. Here it is some thirty years later and a lot more stories and books read and I’m still disappointing Gene Wolfe. I can’t just say that they are well written, interesting and thought provoking, which they are on many levels. My answer is that I like them and they stir my emotions. No one else writes like Gene Wolfe and that’s what I like about his stories. I hope that’s a good enough answer, it’s the only one I have.
This is a well produced volume, as are all of PS Publishing’s offerings. It deserves a place in your library. I know it demands a place in mine.
Do bear in mind that this hefty and handsome book is very close to selling out in advance of its actual publication at the turn of the month, in all editions – so click through on the cover and place your order now to avoid disappointment!
And our second mention is doubly special. Not only is it a starred review in Booklist, the prestigious magazine of the American Library Association, but it is for The Painting and the City by our very own Robert Freeman Wexler:
At a friend’s party in Manhattan, sculptor Jacob Lerner sees an 1842 portrait of a young woman and quickly becomes obsessed with it. He sets a librarian friend searching for information about artist and subject, which eventuates in finding the painter’s journal of his New York sojourn for the commission. Philip Schuyler’s testimony (which appears in two separately paginated inserts in a different typeface) discloses that the painting is one of five that together constituted a threat to the subject. That threat is tangentially related to the commercial growth of Manhattan, another of Lerner’s obsessions and the motive behind a pair of installation pieces, one a dour vision of modern New York, the other a serener conception. As he sleuths the painting and builds the installations, Lerner has hallucinations in which, guided by a glass marionette, he observes scenes related to Schuyler’s and his subject’s fates, in which a not-quite-conspiracy of property owners, dating from Manhattan’s Dutch colonial days, is implicated. Seemingly informed by an artist’s eye and driven by its fantastic elements, this complex, enthralling novel is concerned with relations between art and commerce, and nature and commerce; the importance of the past; the everyday oppression of capitalism; and how art may shape history.
So, there you have it – if librarians don’t know a good book when they read one, who does?
As always, click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse. And if you’ve read one of our books, new or old, be sure to drop us a line and let us know what you thought, be it good or bad – that way we can keep on improving. :)