![]() The most ambitious novel of 2016 so far, Hystopia might also be the last thing we expected in a first novel by the veteran storyteller David Means: a counterfactual narrative by a Vietnam veteran about his experience in a therapeutic, psychedelics-based trauma recovery program initiated by an unassassinated John F. In 2014 the novelist and essayist Jenny Diski received a diagnosis of lung cancer “with a side attraction of pulmonary fibrosis: two fatal diseases - I don’t do things by halves.” She undertook this memoir, published serially in the London Review of Books about her illness (“another fucking cancer diary”) and her decades-long relationship with the late Nobel laureate Doris Lessing, who took her in when she was a 15-year-old in flight from abusive parents and “the bin.” Diski’s North London truancy in the early 1960s, her initiation into writing through Lessing’s example, and her dry thoughts about her coming end (who would die first, her or Clive James) - these elements make for the final masterpiece of a writer whose prose always delivered the force of her personality. Such great fiction has rolled out, fresh, in some cases frothy – but good overall. The first half of 2016 has been phenomenal. My intuition says that this year will be remembered for the emergence of a new generation and the last words of one great voice. ![]() ![]() Top 10 Best Books of 2016 :: Best Books of the Year, Books in 2016 ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |