Banville, Le Clezio, Fennario, Adiga, Pamuk, Doctorow, Enright

Since my last post, I've read John Banville's The Sea. The praise on the cover is extravagant, but despite my understanding of death and grief I was untouched and unmoved. I liked better Anne Enright's Gathering, a novel about an Irish woman coming to terms with her life and her family, troubled as it is. I read Black Book by Orhan Pamuk, which I didn't like, and Snow, which I liked better. Le Clezio's Étoile errante showed his affinity for the marginalized. His much earlier Voyages de l'autre coté had some interesting experiments in structure and form, which actually worked, but I like his later, more conventional work much better. I read David Fennarios' play Balconville to see how he handled a bilingual play -- it is primarily in English, with some few scenes in French, brave though that experiment was in 1976. I read Aravind Adiga's White Tiger, about a poor man in New Delhi, with some interest. It was not lyrical, but I like struggle and success stories, even when the hero is none too moral. Finally, I enjoyed Doctorow's latest novel, March, about the Civil War, as I have all his other novels. A quick easy read well worth the trouble, picturesque in its detail although the plot is looser than I remember his other novels to have.