Jun 26 2020
Rural Bavaria at the outbreak of the Great War still moved to the rhythms of nature and the seasons. Village life revolved around the inn, the smithy, and the farms that surrounded both. Generations shared the same house, the young people paired up early and had little choice but to stick together, and families kept …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/26/die-rumplhanni-by-lena-christ/
Mar 27 2020
In the early 2000s, I am led to understand, the editors of the Süddeutsche Zeitung found that the paper had more printing capacity than was being used to put out the daily news. One way to set that capacity to productive use was with a foray into book publishing. The newspaper’s staff put together a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/03/27/salz-im-blut-by-andreas-neumeister/
Mar 19 2020
What a lot of fatuous nonsense. First of all, let’s talk about the marketing for this novel. It’s being touted as the story of a Muslim Indian-American family and sure yes, but also it’s a very specific brand of Muslim, a conservative Shi’ah that’s as bizarre to me, raised a mainstream Sunni Muslim, as the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/03/19/a-place-for-us-by-fatima-farheen-mirza/
Feb 12 2020
What a delightful thing to read in the lead up to Valentine’s Day. Being both thrifty and impatient, I actually read the online copy for free at The Hathi Trust digital library, as the original came out in 1922 and is yet unavailable for e-reader. Since I’ve been listening to Rosalia’s El Mal Querer on …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/12/the-story-of-flamenca-the-first-modern-novel-arranged-from-the-provencal-original-of-the-thirteenth-century-by-william-aspenwall-bradley/
Dec 27 2019
There are two really standout things about Anstey Harris’ Goodbye, Paris. The first is the exquisite attention to detail in re: playing music and crafting musical instruments. Ms Harris’ husband is a violin-maker, and you can tell she’s shadowed him quite closely for the purposes of this novel. Her gifts as a writer are even …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/12/27/goodbye-paris-by-anstey-harris/
Dec 06 2019
The series introduction to Herrn Dames Aufzeichnungen (Herr Dame’s Notebooks) calls it “the key novel about the Bohemian scene in Schwabing around 1900″ and the volume’s introduction notes that in it Reventlow worked through some of her experiences with the “Cosmic” circle that included writers and artists such as Stefan George (the only name I …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/12/06/herrn-dames-aufzeichnungen-by-franziska-grafin-zu-reventlow/
Oct 26 2019
Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series takes place mostly in an England that’s a republic a Wales that’s a socialist republic; of Scotland there is practically no mention, though I cannot say whether that is a comment or happenstance. The Crimean War was still being fought in 1985, and there are various other bits of history …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/26/the-woman-who-died-a-lot-by-jasper-fforde/
Jul 21 2019
Wolfgang Koeppen was born in 1906 and thus grew up in Germany’s Weimar years. He published his first two novels after the Nazi takeover but before the war began. At first, his work as a scriptwriter for film studios in Munich made him exempt from the draft. Following a bomb attack, he went underground and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/21/tauben-im-gras-by-wolfgang-koeppen/
Jul 21 2019
Not quite 100 pages in on this one, I pronounced the Eight Deadly Words. Sorry, eponymous Jonathan. Even sorrier, Sophie, who lived and died some years before the main action, and who existed to give Jonathan regrets. And perhaps to show that the corrupt Egyptian brothers might be a darker shade of grey than the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/21/the-night-manager-by-john-le-carre/
Jul 19 2019
Welcome to Lagos begins well outside of the Nigerian metropolis, at a hot and dirty army outpost somewhere in the Niger delta: oil country, but also rebel country. Serving under a corrupt colonel and terrorizing local people is not what Chike Ameobi signed up for the army to do. After twelve months as an officer …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/19/welcome-to-lagos-by-chibundu-onuzo/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire