Books I Read November 28th, 2022

Happy belated. Thanksgiving. I read these books last week.

Rainy Season by Jose Eduardo Agualusa – A semi-fictionalized account of the author’s experiences during Angola’s long and bloody post-war history intertwined with an also possibly fictionalized biography of Lidia do Carmo Ferreira, an Angolan poet and intellectual who disappeared in 1992, just before a resurgence in combat.  A compelling and peculiar attempt to make sense of a tragic epoch.

Autumn Rounds by Jacques Pouline – A recluse and some friendly hippies drive a bookmobile around rural Quebec.

Cogan's Trade by Eddie Higgins – The robbery of a mob-protected card game and the fallout thereof. Higgins’s was a crime reporter and defense attorney and it shows in his uncannily excellent ear for dialogue, which makes up the vast majority of the book. Higgins has a gift for conversation which is at once thematically perfect and feels completely authentic to the characters. Excellent.

The Middle Passage by V.S. Naipaul – A blistering investigation into the psychosis of the post-Colonial West Indies. I thought the stuff about Naipaul’s own island of Trinidad was stronger than much of the rest, but apart from that I’m still working through my larger thoughts on Naipaul. I know you’re all waiting with baited breath, just hold out another week please.