A brilliant storyteller--Literary Review

In One Person by John Irving. Sunday Times, 13 May, 2012.

In Criticism on May 13, 2012 at 1:39 pm

In One Person by John Irving

Stephen Amidon
  • The Sunday Times
  • Published: 13 May 2012
  • Fiction

John Irving: inspirational and exasperating in equal measures

John Irving’s 13th novel is an audacious exploration of the shifting frontiers of sexuality that proves to be inspirational and exasperating in equal measures. Set in the familiar Irving ­territory of New England prep schools and expatriate Vienna, it depicts the sentimental education of…

The Good Father by Noah Hawley. Sunday Times, 22 April, 2012.

In Criticism on April 22, 2012 at 12:33 pm

The Good Father by Noah Hawley

Stephen Amidon
  • The Sunday Times
  • Published: 22 April 2012
  • Fiction

Noah Hawley: an effective portrait of a harrowed parent

If it is every parent’s nightmare to watch helplessly as a child goes bad, then Paul Allen, the anguished narrator of Noah ­Hawley’s gripping new novel, is living that nightmare in front of millions of spectators. Not only has his 20-year-old son Danny been accused of shooting a man in…

William Boyd. Waiting for Sunrise. Washington Post, 16 April, 2012

In Criticism on April 20, 2012 at 5:27 pm

Book World:

William Boyd’s “Waiting for Sunrise.”

By Stephen Amidon, Published: April 16

In the early pages of “Waiting for Sunrise,” William Boyd’s cunning tale of espionage in World War I, a Viennese soldier warns Lysander Rief, the book’s naive hero, not to be fooled by the apparent placidity of the Austrian capital. Below the surface, he warns, flows a powerful “river of sex,” capable of sweeping away anyone who wades too deeply into its waters.Rief appears in particular danger of going under. The young English actor has traveled to Vienna to seek treatment for anorgasmia, the inability to achieve climax during sexual congress. His doctor is a fellow British expatriate named Bensimon, part of a legion of psychoanalysts mushrooming in Freud’s fertile shadow throughout the city. In Bensimon’s waiting room, Rief makes the acquaintance of two patients who will play decisive roles in his life. The first, a free-spirited sculptor named Hettie Bull, soon becomes his lover. The second, a military attache at the British consulate named Alwyn Munro, will become a perhaps even more intimate figure: his spymaster.  Read on…
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