Apr 23 2026
Is it weird that I read this book and immediately assumed that the protagonist must have grown up with a super critical parent or guardian who absolutely failed him in preparing him for an autonomous life? Lol, the irony there, ofc, being me asking if that’s weird, given the title of this book. And I …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/23/was-that-normal-by-alex-potts/
Apr 19 2026
Translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler Once again, I have finished a Platonov novel and I am left with the question of where to even begin. Chevengur is horrifying, and hilarious. It is surreal, and realistic; it is a blistering attack on Bolshevism, and full of characters asserting the correctness of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/19/chevengur-by-andrey-platonov/
Mar 09 2026
God bless short stories for how easily digestible they are, having stripped away so much extraneous matter to properly capture a mood and make a point, at least, tho not exclusively, in the literary genre. Oliver Munday’s new collection of ten short stories exemplify this, almost to the point where I wanted more from several …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/09/head-of-household-by-oliver-munday/
Jan 22 2026
I tend to read a lot more female authors than male, which apparently puts me in the minority of readers worldwide. It’s especially unusual for me to read “serious” fiction by men, and while there’s a touch of the supernatural in each story collected here, this is still very much the kind of literary writing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/22/wandering-souls-and-other-stories-by-philip-caputo/
Nov 22 2025
A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by László Krasznahorkai belongs to the branch of literature that’s more “do unusual things with words” than “tell a story.” I picked it up on a recent trip to Frankfurt because Krasznahorkai won the 2025 Nobel …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/11/22/a-mountain-to-the-north-a-lake-to-the-south-paths-to-the-west-a-river-to-the-east-by-laszlo-krasznahorkai/
Oct 05 2025
Where Miklos Banffy spends nearly 1500 pages of his Transylvanian Trilogy chronicling the life of Hungarian nobility across their half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, in The Confusions of Young Törless, Robert Musil compresses much of the experience of the Austrian half into less than a tenth of that in a tale of life in a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/05/die-verwirrungen-des-zoglings-torless-by-robert-musil/
Sep 27 2025
No Longer at Ease follow Things Fall Apart a generation later, although that is not immediately apparent. What is immediately apparent is that Obi Okonkwo is in a heap of trouble. He is in the dock, on trial in a case that has been the talk of Lagos for weeks, and the only thing remaining …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/27/no-longer-at-ease-by-chinua-achebe/
Sep 25 2025
Containing graphic adaptations of City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room. When I was in my 20s, I dated a guy who loved Haruki Murakami and Paul Auster. Those weren’t the reasons I dumped him, but they should have been signs. And it’s not like I didn’t try my darnedest either! I did get …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/25/paul-austers-the-new-york-trilogy-by-paul-karasik-lorenzo-mattotti-david-mazzucchelli/
Sep 21 2025
Things Fall Apart grabbed me from its very first page, even though nearly 70 years have passed since its first publication. It had fallen into the category of reputed classics that I have never quite gotten around to, what with there being a lot of books both old and new, and if not for the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/21/things-fall-apart-by-chinua-achebe/
Aug 27 2025
translated from the original Kurdish by Sami Hezil. It feels a little strange to be talking about a(nother) book on the subject of the legacies of the departed, especially since this definitely takes the opposite tack of yesterday’s What Happens After? That book talked about grief and acceptance, whereas this speaks of guilt and vengeance. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/27/lovers-of-franz-k-by-burhan-sonmez/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire