Category: Reviews & Rezensionen
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“The hog-squeal of the universe”: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
Last semester at FernUni Hagen was all about Großstadtliteratur (urban literature? Metropolitan literature? Eh, books about big city life. You get it.) and provided me with a huge collection of extracts and excerpts from the finest authors from the turn of the 19th/20th century. I’ve read some Rilke and some Raabe, the whole fivehundredsomething pages…
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Genetics, Gender, and the Greeks. On Jeffrey Eugenide’s Middlesex.
Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar. Middlesex is Jeffrey Eugenide’s second novel. After the much promising The Virgin Suicides, it was not surprising that his…
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Facing your fears: The Snail-Watcher
Confession: I suffer from slugophobia. Not sure that word exists (yet), but I use it anyway to describe my very unnatural abhorrence of those slimy little bastards. Shell or no shell, slug or snail – doesn’t matter. I see one, I freeze, I panic. Molluscophobia is the proper name for it. I was scared of…
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Ian McEwan: Black Dogs
In 1946, a young couple sets off on their honeymoon. Fired by their ideals and passion for one another, they plan an idyllic holiday, only to encounter an experience of darkness so terrifiying, it alters their lives forever. Quoth the blurb. It’s my fourth Ian McEwan after Atonement, Solar and The Children Act. When I…
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Funny, Clever, And Meaningful: Watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Ah, Netflix and me. What an intense relationship. Netflix, always checking up on me. “Are You Still Watching You?” when I binged the first season of You must have been the freakiest question I ever read on a screen and almost as meta as Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch episode. “Yes, Netflix, I do. I still watch…
