Word: knopf
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...same time she learns that her mother, approaching 60, has been told she has inoperable lung cancer. This juxtaposition of a birth and a death foretold offers some fairly obvious ironies and occasions for pathos, almost all of which Jayne Anne Phillips avoids in her third novel, MotherKind (Knopf; 291 pages; $24). Instead of ruminating on the metaphysical significance of her premise and the story that springs from it, Phillips concentrates on the day-to-day details of ordinary existence suddenly afflicted with extraordinary pressures and the conflicting tugs of joy and grief...
...Alfred A. Knopf...
...here, eight years after its author became world famous, is Anil's Ghost (Knopf; 307 pages; $25). The new novel seems, at first, very much of a piece with its acclaimed predecessor. Once again, the story unfolds episodically, with frequent time shifts, as if a dark mural were being illuminated by flashbulbs. Once again, a small group of characters--several men and a woman who forms the emotional link between them--struggle to maintain their hold on reality, whatever that has come to mean, amid the pervasive violence...
...Alfred A. Knopf...
...idea of a long novel about horses and horse racing has all the appeal of an afternoon at a seedy OTB outpost, read on. For Jane Smiley's Horse Heaven (Knopf; 561 pages; $26) turns out to go down quite easily--more like a pitcher of mint juleps at the Kentucky Derby. Smiley, who has already given us an epic about Greenland, an academic comedy set in the Midwest and historical fiction about abolition, has as great a range and as much intellectual curiosity as any novelist writing today. In her latest book, she takes on a fresh topic...