The launch of Under the Skin of War, by Chantal Ringuet, takes place this evening at Librairie Le port de tête.
Phillip Ernest has written two extraordinary and unique novels that have few comparisons in literature. Kenneth Radu explores the both real and imagined horrors found in The Vetala and The Far Himalaya.
It’s absurd to compare the Pier, not to mention the giant Ferris wheel circling above the beach, to the gleaming perfection of the famous Assembly rooms in Bath, but absurdity is intrinsic to the Pier, so all comparisons are sublimely ludicrous.
The heart of the novel is the brilliant and painful, detailed and multi-layered depiction of Annabel herself from his earliest years as the boy Wayne to the excruciatingly awkward and sometimes devastating experiences of the young woman Annabel in St. John’s. In scene after scene Winter wonderfully conveys a child’s literal-mindedness and imagination, a child’s consciousness of physiological transformations and emotional changes, an adolescent’s conflicts and yearnings, tensions within the family, all complicated by the salient fact of his/her gender.
The Cipriani Pool [Photo: Marco LoVerso]