Have Words–Will Write 'Em

On Books, Writers, Most Things Written, Including My Light Verse.

Archive for April, 2016

It’s Always a Surprise: A Conversation with Allison Amend and Others.

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Allison Amend answers questions from Hemingway, Woolf, Carver, Doctorow, Plimpton, and Peschel.

Click the image below to read the interview in the Los Angeles Review of Books

Amend in middle of Hem. Woolf Plimpton

Written by Joe Peschel

April 25th, 2016 at 8:48 am

I Review Edna O’Brien’s “Little Red Chairs”

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The novel’s title may be a bit misleading, evoking images of mundane objects that might belong to children. They do indeed belong to children, but these red chairs, 643 of them, commemorate the deaths of the children killed during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992. Thus, the love story, set in 2012, about a lonely Irish woman who has an affair with a mysterious man becomes a political novel, since the man is later revealed to be a possible war criminal. He’s a composite fictional character who resembles the former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, who was recently found guilty of genocide and other crimes.

You can read my review of The Little Red Chairs, by Edna O’Brien, in the Sunday, April 3, edition of the News & Observer, by clicking the image below.

The Little Red Chairs

You can buy The Little Red Chairs at Barnes and Noble.

Written by Joe Peschel

April 3rd, 2016 at 12:08 pm

Posted in Light Verse