http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Fri, 11 Jul 2003 15:43:38 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/07/11/154338.php Charles MurtaughAll day, I've been fidgeting and restless, like St. Paul must have felt after his confrontation with the Lord: I must get the word out! The New Pornographers show last night was so goddamned good! (Perhaps language that Paul would have avoided.) Definitely the best show I've seen in the last year or two, possibly the best ever.Their US tour is sadly winding down, and I think most of the remaining dates are sold out, but you can prepare yourself for their next go-round by listening to their remarkable CDs, the stunning debut Mass Romantic and its even-better follow-up The Electric Version. And for those of you lucky enough to have tickets for an upcoming show, I salute you in the spirit of AC-DC.What made last night's show such an extraordinary experience? One word: energy. The venue, Cambridge's Middle East Nightclub, remains the best place to see live rock in Boston and one of the best in the country, and last night's show was sold out and boisterous. The band's joyous, high-spirited power-pop is perfectly suited for a small-mid-sized club audience, and the enthusiasm of the band pumped up the crowd and vice-versa: a perfect live show snowball effect.I'm pretty sure they played every song from their two albums, but I was too busy having fun to keep track. Boston audiences can be staid and even dour, but there was a remarkable amount of dancing in yesterday's crowd, so much so that lead singer Carl Newman actually summoned a kid out of the audience to dance on stage about halfway through the set. By the end of the set there were three more dancers, all just goofy fun-loving kids lost in the urgency of the rhythms, the razor-edge guitars and the extraordinary harmonies created by Newman, drummer Kurt Dahle and chanteuse extraordinaire Neko Case. (If I weren't a married man, I might observe that simply watching Neko Case onstage for an hour-plus is worth the price of admission.)This was a band in its prime of vigor and practically quivering with excitement about playing its music. (The above disclaimer applies to the experience of seeing Neko Case quiver.) About two-thirds through their set, Carl had broken strings on both his guitars, and had to step offstage to restring one. In the interim, Neko told a couple of funny stories, and then asked if the audience had questions."Do you know any Beatles?" someone shouted. "No," Neko replied, and then a few seconds later the band ripped into the intro of "Paperback Writer." As the vocals were about to kick in, Carl ran back onstage, and just as he started to sing the band cut off and left him in the lurch, to much laughter. He went back offstage to finish with his guitar, and someone else requested that they play some Heart. The lead guitarist kicked off the opening riff of "Barracuda," and the rest of the band joined in, and Neko launched into a spine-tingling first verse and chorus, before cutting it short as she couldn't remember any more of the words. It was obvious that all this was entirely spontaneous: like a racehorse galloping around its paddock, wanting more to race than to graze, this band wants to rock.The crowd managed to coax three encores out of them, including that vanishingly-rare breed, the encore after the house lights have come on and the between-sets tape put on the PA. Afterwards we all stumbled into the cool late night air, trembling with excitement and the urge to spread the Good Word about the New Pornographers. Music6886@blogcritics.org Fri, 11 Jul 2003 15:43:38 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/04/27/084022.php Charles MurtaughThe last year has seen a flurry of new activity in my music collection, and among the best CDs that I was recommended recently was the Delgado's Hate. Like far too many bands of its ilk -- indie label, no radio play, Scottish -- the Delgados flew under my radar with their previous albums, but their latest CD, and their concert performance this past Friday at Boston's Paradise club, make me want to save you from the same mistake.Hate is produced by Dave Fridmann, producer of the Flaming Lips's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and his aura of shimmering grace similarly infuses this album. The songs are among the most beautifully-rendered catalogues of despair and desparate hope that you might hope to encounter, often played so uptempo that the downer lyrics come as a surprise. The wonderfully clear voices of the lead singers, Alun Woodward and Emma Pollock, cut through the swooping strings and clanging guitars to deliver their payloads of depression ("Hate is everywhere/Look inside your heart and you will find it there" -- from "All You Need Is Hate," the video of which you can see on the band's site).In concert, Woodward and Pollock's singing voices were similarly clear -- Pollock has a particularly beautiful singing voice live and on record -- and the band was tight, but their thick Scottish accents made them completely incomprehensible when speaking between songs. As my wife observed, this made them the polar opposites of their opening act, Aereogramme.Aereogramme was also Scottish, but their singer sang at such a screechingly high pitch that his lyrics couldn't be understood, and one had to gleen their emotional content indirectly, akin to those of the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. But where Sigur Ros's singer has no difficulty hitting his characteristic high notes, the Aerogramme's vocalist had an unfortunate struggle of it, and often his voice couldn't even be heard over the Smashing Pumpkins-esque clangor of the band. This wasn't necessarily the result of a long and exhausting tour, as this problem also plagues their latest CD, Sleep and Release.Between songs, ironically, we had no problem understanding him, and his speaking voice was in the typical male mid-range. If he adjusted his singing voice accordingly, the band would be a lot better live and on CD. Musically, they are cohesive, loud and driving, with a wickedly powerful drummer. My wife, who had heard little of either band before the show, noticed halfway through Aereogramme's set that nearly all their songs were in three, which gave them a waltz-like swing. The time signature also looked like a lot of fun for the drummer, giving him ample opportunities to bang out bam-bam-bam emphases as their songs crescendoed.About half of the Delgados's songs were in three as well, which may reflect some kind of Scottish musical heritage. They used the time signature to sneakily progress from orchestral swoops to hard rocking squalls, with songs that started out quiet, driven by strings (they brought along two violinists and a cello player) and keyboard, relentless swinging upward in intensity and finally exploding in distorted guitars and, again, the very enjoyable-looking bam-bam-bam drum crashes.Their Boston date was one of the last on their US tour, but I'm sure they'll be back. Maybe the best way to judge a band's appeal is to bring someone who doesn't know their stuff to a concert, and my wife's review afterwards was as enthusiastic as mine. Music4889@blogcritics.org Sun, 27 Apr 2003 08:40:22 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/01/21/222221.php Charles MurtaughMy wife and I sometimes jokingly complain that we haven't yet found the obsessive subculture that is right for us. I think guns are okay, but she won't let me near 'em. She might well become a cat person, but I'm allergic. Neither of us is in any danger of becoming a Trekkie, or joining the Society for Creative Anachronism.We may have met our match since Christmas, when my parents gave us the DVD boxed set of "The Prisoner". My wife, at least, who had never seen the show before a few weeks ago, has succumbed to its cult, and enthusiastically fowards me URLs for fan sites. She has even suggested, less than half-ironically, that we "drop by" one of the Six of One conventions held annually at the Welsh resort, Portmeirion, where the series was filmed.For those who, like my wife until this month, knew "The Prisoner" only from the obscure "Simpsons" references that cracked up your weird college buddy, this fan site introduces the plot and history of the series quite well. It aired in Britain in 1967, and then here on CBS, and has been shown several times since on public television. That's where I caught it, as a kid -- my parents' approval for "The Prisoner," and their ever-so-subtle contempt for "Star Trek," are among the many things for which I owe them gratitude -- and I was hooked from the start.The story is simple: a British secret agent, played by the show's creator Patrick McGoohan, resigns from the service, but is immediately kidnapped and transported to the mysterious Village. All his needs are attended to, but his every move is watched, and week after week The Village's head honcho, Number 2, tries to break his spirit. No one has a name in The Village -- McGoohan's character is dubbed Number 6, and although he insists that he is not a number, we never learn his name. Needless to say, he refuses to give up his secrets, and week after week Number 2 leaves in disgrace, his or her schemes in tatters, and is replaced the next week by "the new Number 2."Thematically, and in some ways visually, "The Prisoner" anticipates "The Matrix", "The Truman Show", and yes, even "Austin Powers". Although it was a contemporary of the James Bond films, and of other espionage shows like "Mission: Impossible," "The Prisoner" retains freshness because it is about so much more than spy games, and is infused with wry, self-mocking wit.McGoohan had actually been offered the role of James Bond, but turned it down because of his moral objections to the sex and violence entailed by the role. To watch McGoohan talk and think his way through each episode (with occasional fisticuffs -- but no gunplay) is to see an alternate version of late twentieth-century man play out, and you could argue that we are the worse off that his wasn't the model to prevail. McGoohan blazes on the screen: whether radiating arrogance, cool wit, or frank lunacy, his face invites empathy, while his voice commands.The wit of the screenplays are matched by an extraordinarily lively and variable soundtrack, ranging from typical spy-movie string arrangements to be-bop jazz and cutting electric guitars. The look of the show is similarly sharp: the other inhabitants of The Village are dressed in vibrant primary colors that match the perpetually sunny weather ("Rise and shine, it's another lovely day" proclaim the loudspeakers each morning), but what secrets do they hide beneath their bright exteriors? (One nice touch, in the episode "Free For All": a loud, excited-sounding crowd scene, when shown in close-ups, reveals the Villagers' faces to be somber and silent: the crowd's noise is piped-in.)I haven't even talked about the malevolent white balloons that enforce lethal order, lest the mask of levity slip -- there's no way I can convey in words how scary a villain the show makes out of a growling weather balloon. Nor have I mentioned the DVDs' numerous special features -- interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, trivia games, etc. -- mainly because I've barely delved into them myself. My wife and I have made it through five episodes so far, with twelve more to go, and she's been pulled in as deeply as I ever was. Pick up an episode at your local video store, and when you feel yourself succumbing to "The Prisoner"'s charms, pick up the whole boxed set. One of us, one of us...Be seeing you -- perhaps at next year's Portmeiricon. Video2750@blogcritics.org Tue, 21 Jan 2003 22:22:21 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/01/02/220103.php Charles MurtaughAt some point in the past ten or so years, I became something of a literary snob. It may have been when I put down Ender's Game and said, Well, that's enough sci-fi for you! Or maybe it was when I finished The Sum of All Fears, amazed and appalled that Tom Clancy could get away with such a brazen, openly acknowledged rip-off of Thomas Harris's much-superior Black Sunday. Or maybe -- well, you get the picture. I was burned-out on mass market fiction, and starting to enjoy more and more the richer characterizations and more realistic plotting of so-called literary fiction.The problem is, of course, that literary fiction often lacks the zing of thrillers (it needn't, of course -- witness this year's triumphant Atonement), and after a while you start to crave the racing pulse of an old-school page-turner. This urge is was what found me in the bookstore last Friday night, before a flight to California -- I'm now halfway through Anthony Powell's very enjoyable A Dance to the Music of Time, a droll stroll through the life of an upper-class Englishman, but it wasn't going to keep my blood pumping for a six hour trip. I needed something like an old Le Carre, or a Ross MacDonald -- a genre writer with real literary flair.The perfect thing turned out to be Alan Furst's Night Soldiers. Those coming late to the game, like me, are perhaps dimly aware of Furst's prominence, lately, as the World War II spy thriller writer. He's far too young to have any firsthand knowledge of the war, but he spent some of his early life in Paris, a city prominently featured in many of his novels, and he has clearly drank deeply from the well of mid-twentieth century fiction and autobiography. Hemingway, Orwell, Koestler, Solzhenitsyn, certainly, but also, I think, Sholokhov, Sartre, Babel, and other writers who lived through -- or died in -- Europe's cataclysmic struggle with Communism and Fascism: Furst seems to have read them all, digested them and managed to put them back together in a very compelling manner.Night Soldiers follows a young Bulgarian man, Khristo Stoianev, who is recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934. By a stroke of good luck, Khristo takes to the NKVD's training extremely well; his bad luck, though, is to be on hand just as the Stalinist purges get underway. The purges catch up to him in revolution-torn Spain, where he has been dispatched to infiltrate the Republican side. This first section of the novel is absolutely brilliant; Furst's re-creation of Stalinist Moscow and Civil War-era Spain glitter with telling details, and the growing weight of suspicion, betrayal and counter-espionage press on the reader as on Khristo himself, forcing one ahead faster and faster with the novel.Furst's characters are also well-drawn, if rather familiar from the war and espionage novelists of years past: the world-weary Russian spymaster, drinking away his fear; the naive American drawn into a dark world beyond her ken; the jolly Eastern European emigre with a well-worn grudge and a secret plan for revenge. Furst falters somewhat in the later portions of the novel, after Khristo has fled Spain, languished in a Paris jail and joined up with the French Resistance in the struggle against the German Occupation. Here Furst seems to tread water a bit, in particular with the character of an American counterpart to Khristo, similarly drawn into the struggle almost by accident. Things pick up again toward the end, as a last mission draws Khristo -- now in the service of the OSS -- further east, back toward his home, across war-torn Europe.I brought all sorts of magazines and journal articles along with me on the flight, in case I didn't get into Night Soldiers. I needn't have worried -- I read almost continuously for six hours, and then stayed up a couple of nights to polish it off. On the way home, I devoured another very good Furst thriller, The World at Night, which follows the travails of a French filmmaker in the months following the German conquest of Paris. Both novels tell the sort of untellable stories that one can only imagine from the obituary pages, as the last survivors of those years silently pass away. And they tell those stories very well, combining genuine literary talent with a gift for drama and suspense -- if the mainstream thriller moves to meet Furst halfway, airport bookstores will be a much better place. Books2373@blogcritics.org Thu, 2 Jan 2003 22:01:03 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/11/06/141815.php Charles MurtaughIt was really something, going to college in the early 90s. On the one hand, you had friends around you who are really obsessed with music, and anxious to pass along recommendations. On the other hand, the swamp gas of alt rock was finally bubbling close enough to the surface that you could get a heady whiff of it. And you liked what you smelled. You found a lot of new bands, even in the first few years after you graduated, when the alternative rock stations were still finding weird, shiny new things and dangling them in front of you.When did it go wrong? Was it 1997, when you started hearing more and more from bands that didn't know how to spell their own names, like Limp Bisquick and Qorn? Maybe your friends were just becoming lame, and they weren't sending enough good CDs your way. So that for some four years, you discovered maybe three bands that were worth following up on. Sad.Are things changing? The other day, on a commercial radio station that plays something like adult contemporary rock, which you put up with because even Steve Winwood beats System of a Clown, you heard a quirky song by a band that you hadn't heard from since college, when they had a novelty hit with a song about a girl using vaseline instead of butter. And after that, a moody new song about something by a heartbroken ex-hipster who used to specialize in songs about nothing. Is there a fresh wind blowing in popular rock and/or roll?I'm here to testify: yes there is, and here are five newish CDs to prove it.Beck, Sea Change Once upon a time, I would have scoured Rolling Stone and Spin to learn about the backstory here, the heartbreak and remorse that has transformed Beck from a funk-happy ironist to a painfully sincere crooner. Does he really mean it when he sings, "Mister Bluebird at my window/I can't hear you anymore"? It doesn't even matter. The title has it right -- the success that was spoiling Beck has turned to dross, and he's got the blues, or at least he's doing a damn good impression of them. Be warned, though: as another reviewer said, there is no more devil's haircut, no more ass pants.Interpol, Turn On the Bright Lights Yes, it sounds a lot like Joy Division, yes, the lyrics make less sense than old Beck ("The subway is a porno"? "Friends don't waste wine when there's words to sell."?). Did it bother you with Beck? Did you not like Joy Division? This is a compulsively-listenable CD, and as for the charge that they're just 80s recyclers, I'll quote the Boston Phoenix's Annie Zaleski:"It's in alluding to these bands that Interpol find their own charms -- not as post-punk clones, but as preservers and extenders of a sound and an era."Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots It would be better, perhaps, if this album were also about nothing, but let's be straight: it's mostly about Yoshimi, battling the pink robots. It's embarassing how much we like this album at work, and it's actually starting to get airplay as well. I got a bit burned by their last CD, The Soft Bulletin, which the critics loved but I found abrasive; it's perhaps a good sign that the critics are less overexcited about this one. Give in to the robots...Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Give in to the Tweedy. He and his bandmates have pared out the sort of extraneous annoying songs that pop up in their previous outings, and leave you with eleven amazing tracks that range from straight-ahead heartfelt ("I Am Trying to Break Your Heart") to strange-but-compelling-in-a-"Pyramid Song"-sort-of-way ("Poor Places"). And you, too, will fall in love with the drummer.Cinerama, Torino The previous entries are all CDs that the moderately-hip will be well aware of, even if they haven't already bought them. Cinerama, on the other hand, still don't have the sort of following that they deserve, and I consider it an amazingly fortunate accident that I know about them at all. I've given their CDs to several people, and no one has failed to like them. Their latest is their best, an absolute triumph of pop-rock. Bandleader/singer/songwriter David Gedge specializes in songs about what you might call "lying in bed," and here, under the characteristically-tender touch of producer Steve Albini, he marries his sardonic, bitter humor to the sort of gale-force guitarwork that it's been craving all along. The music, in other words, aurally enacts the very emotions that underpin the lyrics.And what lyrics! Gedge takes the basic rhyming couplet as far as any rock songwriter before him. From "Estrella," in which he begs his girlfriend to take note of his cheating, and make it easy by breaking up with him: "Oh, yes believe me, yes, you should leave me/You're making it too hard/How can you disregard/What I'm doing, who I've been screwing?" From the ironically-titled "Get Smart," imploring his adulterous wife to be a bit more discreet: "No don't flip, here's a tip: all it needs is a little thought/This will surprise you, but I don't want you to get caught/That's a price that I'll pay to stop you going away/Keep telling your lies, I won't criticise if it means you will stay."The album winds up on a much more tender note, "Health and Efficiency," in which Gedge looks back wistfully on a youthful love affair. As he notes, "This is such a cliche but/You don't appreciate the joy until you lose it." As true of the passing of early-90s alt rock as of anything else. Here's to the possible signs of a new spring. Music1710@blogcritics.org Wed, 6 Nov 2002 14:18:15 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/10/22/163722.php Charles Murtaugh"So what are you doing this weekend, Charlie?""Well, Mom, I'm going down to New York City to see a band with a friend of mine.""You're going to see a band? I hope it's not one of those disgusting mosh bands.""C'mon, Mom, it's been years since I moshed. That's totally 1994.""You're a grown-up married man, Charlie. That moshing is just disgusting and juvenile.""Look, Mom, I swear: I have no intention of moshing."My resolve lasted about three songs into the Supersucker's Friday night set at Manhattan's Knitting Factory. They opened with two new songs, from their charmingly-titled forthcoming album Motherfuckers Be Trippin', and then popped the cork on some of their old favorites. I think it was probably "Creepy Jackelope Eye," off 1994's La Manu Cornuda, that drew me into the pit for the first time since my mid-twenties, and between old and new songs I was trapped there for the rest of the brilliantly successful set.How to describe the Supersuckers, for the uninitiated? Cowboy-punk? Country-metal? Maybe you'll indulge me in coining the term "smirk-core," which gets at the essential ingredient in the Supersuckers's excellence: their sense of fun. They play with the tightness and intensity of the greatest heavy metal bands, but their lyrics are entirely free of bombast, and their stage presence is closer to Green Day than to Guns-N-Roses, to whom they might be compared musically. Who else but the Supersuckers could whip a jaded New York crowd into a song-and-response of "Are you ready? Yes we're ready!" in the chorus of a song entitled "Rock Your Ass"?The Supersuckers know how to treat their fans, and they brought out most of their "hits," such as they are. Their new material sounded great as well, including a jokey lament for the music industry entitled "Rock-and-Roll Records Ain't Sellin' This Year" and "Pretty Fucked-Up," which had a chorus to make Axl Rose proud: "She used to be pretty/Now she's pretty fucked-up." Needless to say, they also rocked very hard, bouncing back and forth between the tight rhythm section of drummer Dancing Eagle and lead singer/bassist Eddie Spaghetti, and the dueling lead guitars of Dan Bolton and Ron Heathman. The latter may be the best unknown rock guitarist playing today; close your eye on his solos on "Jackelope Eye" and "Born With A Tail," and you can almost see the notes cascading off his strings in a synesthetic shower of sparks. Having several too many Boddington's may help with this, of course.Given how much fun the band has on stage, it's easy to forget that they, too, are grown-up married men. At one point, on the verge of launching into "Retarded Bill" from their debut Sub Pop CD The Smoke of Hell, they ended up cracking up because they couldn't remember how it went. "Give us a break," Eddie told the audience, "this song is twelve years old." Most of the audience probably hadn't had their first beer when the Supersuckers wrote the song, which they quickly remembered and peeled out on.Are the Supersuckers the greatest rock-and-roll band in history, as proclaimed by the title of their recent greatest-hits CD? From the evidence of their recorded songs, I'd say maybe so, but whenever I see them live they put me over the top. By all means, buy their CDs, and try and figure out how any band can do so much with what would appear to be such slim material: songs about slacking out ("On the Couch"), random violence ("How to Maximize Your Kill Count") and getting stoned ("High Ya," "Ron's Got the Cocaine," and my favorite, "I Want the Drugs") that end up wedged in your brain, egging on the inner headbanger that you don't even think exists. But much more importantly, see them live. They are on a North American tour, and this is your chance to help keep rock evil and have an unbelievably good time to boot. Music1449@blogcritics.org Tue, 22 Oct 2002 16:37:22 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/09/25/130413.php Charles MurtaughIn a recent New Yorker article on the late Stephen Jay Gould, biologist H. Allen Orr describes the difficulty that paleontologists have with the sparse fossil record: "Imagine trying to reconstruct Western history from two snapshots, one of Pontius Pilate and the other of Evel Knievel."We humans face a similar problem in our everyday lives, simply trying to understand each other. What evidence do we have for what goes on in our fellow man's head? Close friends, parents, spouses, family members remain able to surprise us long after we think we've gotten to know them as well as we can know anyone else, so sparse is the "fossil record" of speech and action by which we know their inner thoughts.This inevitable gap between supposed and real understanding has provided the grist for many novelists' mills, and indeed if this gap were to close, one wonders whether the novel would have much future. The novel offers us at least the comforting illusion that we can access another person's thoughts, understand their motivations as well as we understand our own. The problem, of course, is that even our own thoughts can't be adequately captured as prose, let alone as narrative prose, and so the novel remains an approximation at best. In the past century, writers tried hard to throw off this constraint through experimental techniques, such as the stream of consciousness, that arguably leave the reader even more alienated. In recent years literature has seen a profusion of irony and exotica, as if writers are too exhausted to keep up the fight, and instead hope to distract us.This is why Ian McEwan's newest novel, Atonement is so important. At one level, it is a well-plotted, unusually (for this author) emotionally-involving piece of conventional fiction; at another, it is radically meta-fictional, tackling head-on the gap of human incomprehension and the novelistic project to bridge that gap.Atonement begins on a hot summer day in 1935, in an English countryside setting unusual for this author who is often drawn to extreme situations. Writing a quintessentially traditional third-person narrative, McEwan dances in and out of the minds of his characters, members of the Tallis family, cousins and friends. Central to the novel is an adolescent would-be writer, Briony Tallis, whose taste for drama and demand for attention lead her to tell a terrible lie about a family friend, Robbie Turner. McEwan fans will not be disappointed by the agonizing (and extreme) consequences that ripple out of her decision.McEwan is often labeled a cold fish, and not without justification, but in this novel he makes us care more deeply about his characters than in any other that I've read. I personally found it hard to put down the book, I was so worried about the fate of his almost helpless dramatis personae. This is particularly true in the second portion of the novel, which leaps ahead to the early days of World War II. Robbie is in the British Army, in its infamous retreat to Dunkirk, while Briony and her sister Cecilia are nurses in London. McEwan's portrayal of this agonizing period in history is fantastic; Briony describes waking up every morning with an almost excited sense of something important about to happen, and then remembering what it is: a German invasion.I won't ruin the novel's conclusion, and I'd recommend avoiding any "spoiler" reviews, because the shock of the epilogue is part of what makes this the best novel of the year, and the most unexpectedly metafictional. Having presented us with a prose narrative so conventional it is almost Victorian, and proven that the traditional novel retains its power to bridge the gap between people, McEwan trips off a final explosive charge that reverberates after the book is closed, and reminds us again of the paucity of the interpersonal fossil record. Books857@blogcritics.org Wed, 25 Sep 2002 13:04:13 EDT