Book reviews added in the week of 8/12-8/18

Hi all,

Multiple links to full-length professional reviews of the following
books released in the US have been added to http://www.reviewsofbooks.com
in the last week:

"Man in the Dark" by Paul Auster - "Man in the Dark" refers to August
Brill, a 72-year-old retired literary critic recovering from an auto
accident at his daughter's Vermont home. Brill can't sleep at night,
and to keep from thinking about his own inner demons, Brill constructs
a story in his mind where 9/11 and the war in Iraq have never
happened, yet the country is torn apart by civil war when some of the
states tried to secede. Only one man can end the war by assassinating
the man who started the war. His dream, though, can't keep at bay
thoughts about his wife's death, his daughter's marriage, and his
granddaughter's fiance's brutal murder. Brill's concocted story may
be unsettling and violent, but not as horrific as events in his own
life that have traumatized his life. Paul Auster's novel has received
positive reviews with Pop Matters saying, "This superb small novel
isn't, despite initial impressions, about war or politics at all. It
is about, in the face of guilt and horror, choosing whether to die and
how, if that is the choice, to live. It is, at heart, about the
stratagems that we, but in particular our best novelists, devise as a
means of keeping us going in the face of the 'pitiless dark' that will
swallow us all."
All reviews are at:
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/man_in_the_dark
Amazon.com link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805088393/?tag=reviewsofbooks8-20

"Pharmakon" by Dirk Wittenborn - "Pharmakon" (a Greek word meaning
both poison and cure) is narrated by Zach Friedrich, whose father,
William, a psychology professor at Yale just after World War II,
developed a pill from a New Guinea plant that created happiness in
people. His use of a human test subject, though, created disastrous
results. Unaware of this episode of his father's life, Zach tells of
his family life where psychopharmacology is a normal part of their
family life. His mother suffers from mental illness, which his father
is willing to treat, and Zach finds family secrets about his older
brother's death. Zach examines all the family dynamics, not realizing
his upbringing was not a normal one. Dirk Wittenborn's novel has
received positive reviews with the New York Times saying, "Ultimately
'Pharmakon' is a smart, eccentric coming-of-age story about an entire
culture's maturation process, not just one about the workings of a
single family. And Mr. Wittenborn is able to channel a lifetime's
worth of psychiatric symptoms into one improbably universal story."
All reviews are at:
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/pharmakon
Amazon.com link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670019429/?tag=reviewsofbooks8-20


Happy reading!

Bill - administrator of http://www.reviewsofbooks.com