Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful for what it is
Review: a slim story here gets the royal treatment from Morton, whose previous work "Starting Out in the Evening" was also a great novel. If you like novels more concerned with character than ideas, this one is for you. Quite funny as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a fan of this book
Review: A wonderful novel, full of great characters and all the sundry nuances of daily life, yet dramatic as well.
Rating:
Summary: Just not a fan of this book-
Review: I agree with the person who said there's no plot! These characters need to get up and DO something instead of just thinking about their situations.By the end of the first few chapters, I knew this book was a waste of my time. Don't waste yours!
Rating:
Summary: Not a fan of this book
Review: I didn't like this book at all! The characters were incredibly frustrating because they refused to communicate their true feelings with each other, which caused plenty of avoidable heartache on both sides. I wanted to yell at them to get out of their own heads and get a life! The writer had a very disjointed style. He would have a paragraph or two that was well thought out and flowed beatifully, followed by a paragraph that seemed haphazard and totally out of place. The worst part was the ending. He totally leaves you hanging, but sadly, I almost didn't care.
Rating:
Summary: A delightful surprise
Review: Never have I been so happy that I picked up a book by an author I'd never heard of. I devoured "Window," pausing only to laugh out loud occasionally. Writers are often advised to avoid writing about creative artists, especially other writers. I'm glad Morton ignored that advice. He shows that a novel about artists can be exciting because the creative process is an adventure--a journey to an unknown destination, which the traveler may not reach. He may not come back alive, either. Morton gives us a love affair between a writer and a photographer. The photographer has career problems, terrible struggles with the editors and curators who control the fate of his work. The writer has problems with her own creative process. She can't control what her imagination does with her material, which is her life and the lives of people she loves. This is a sad story, but (as I said above) a very funny one. For instance, when a character falls in the river, the description of what a mouthful of the Hudson tastes like is worth the cover price in itself.
Rating: 
Summary: Powerful story of love and art
Review: Nora and Isaac are a curious pair of artists in love, out of love, and in love of truth, in capturing it in word and in image. "A Window Across the River" is a powerful story of love and of art, which makes for a fascinating marriage. And missing my hometown of New York, I especially liked the setting. Morton does an exceptional job capturing its heart as well.
I also recommend "A Secret Word" -- Paddock ; "Amagansett" -- Mills
Rating:
Summary: "When she wrote, she became a cannibal, feeding off lives."
Review: Nora Howard, a thirty-five-year-old writer, is almost always in the grip of a creative fever, but though she always starts out intending to write fiction, she soon finds that the problems and misfortunes of her friends, relatives, and acquaintances seep into her stories. Before long, she is reading into the real person's mind and divining thoughts, motivations, and emotions--and using these observations in her stories. Though this leads to stunning realism, her friends feel betrayed.
When Nora reconnects with Isaac Mitchell, an art photographer and former lover who was a major part of her life five years before, he is hesitant about resuming their past relationship. His early promise as a creative artist has not borne fruit in the way he has hoped, and he is now working as deputy photo editor for a newspaper, a job that he enjoys, though he fears that he is no longer the "moral touchstone" that Nora once thought him.
In alternating chapters, Nora and Isaac tell their stories, past and present. The story of Nora's "writing life" becomes more complex when her aunt Billie, her only remaining relative, becomes seriously ill, and Nora must make sacrifices. Meanwhile, Isaac's young protégée Renee is finding great success, and he can't help resenting the fact that for her, photography seems far easier and more natural than it does for him.
Exploring the creative life in detail here, author Brian Morton demonstrates that for Isaac, "photography had [once] taken the place of prayer in his life" and for Nora, "it was the best way she had ever found to express her fascination with life, her quarrels with life." The sacrifices and compromises one makes for art are nicely realized, and when Nora writes a story about a character named, symbolically, "Gabriel," a story she is submitting to an Atlantic magazine contest, the stage is set for a confrontation with Isaac. Billie's illness leads to a broadening of themes and to additional questions, not only about the creative life, but about how we find personal satisfaction and how we want to be remembered.
Homely details and dialogue give insights into the relationships of the characters, while Morton's unpretentious style keeps the reader focused on the here and now. The realism is leavened with irony and humor, at the same time that the author makes important points about who we are, as opposed to who we want to be. Through small events and small details, Morton keeps his novel focused, showing real people learning or not learning from their experiences. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: a writer's read (and for non-writers too!)
Review: Starting Out In the Evening, Brian Morton's second novel, made me an afficianado of his work, since the book was that refreshing and rare treat: a novel about a writer. Writers often avoid writing about writers, perhaps fearing that their fiction will be disdained as being too autobiographical. As a result, there are far too many writer-characters out there who are thinly and inadequately disguised as artists, composers, etc. It's a blessing to find an author brave enough--and in love enough with the mysteries, joys, and challenges of the writing process--to step up to the plate and address them. (Starting Out also offers heartbreaking meditations on aging--the main character reflects, for instance, that he feels ashamed of his aging body, as if he's done something wrong in getting old.)
In his third novel, A Window Across the River, Morton offers more trenchant writer portraiture: one of his protagonists, Nora, struggles with her inevitable penchant for cannibalizing the less savory characteristics of those she loves in order to create her fiction. As any serious writer knows, the question of what and how much to borrow from those around us results in some serious moral quandaries, which Morton explores here with his typical compassion, delicacy, and humor. Window and Starting Out are both Bibles of sorts for writers who want to read about writers--along the lines of the novels of Andre Dubus. And both books are highly recommended for discriminating readers who aren't writers but are seeking the old-fashioned, ultimately satisfying good read.
Rating: 
Summary: Tried to like it . . .
Review: This book had an excellent beginning, with Nora and Isaac speaking to each other for the first time in five years. It then began to set up their characters, two people in love with a craft (Nora writing and Isaac photography), and then somehow it went wrong. But very subtly.
The characterization is skewed just slightly to the point that none of these characters seemed real to me. Maybe it was how Morton made Isaac and Nora so dedicated to photography and writing. How, during a certain time in his life, all Isaac wanted to do was take pictures. That's not a trait of a real person. Isaac would have other things interesting him during this time period. Morton just never explores it. Nothing makes these characters human.
And I didn't like Morton's writing style. On every other page, a character thinks of some literary or cinemtaic reference that relates to their situation, and I began to wonder if there was going to be a bibliography at the end of this research paper. Nora thinks of a John Berryman quote or Isaac remembers a passage from a book he read in high school. This happens constantly. Again, this is Morton trying to make his characters human but failing.
This is a book that imitates good writing. Sorry.
Rating:
Summary: Just not a fan of this book-
Review: This is truly one of the best books I've ever read by someone who's still breathing. It all rang true, from the New York atmosphere to the ups and downs of the couple's relationship to the slight tinge of resentment over Nora's mostly giving and sweet relationship with her aunt. Every page brought the sort of "ah-ha" moment when you read something that seems like it should be obvious but that is worded in a way that makes it seem entirely new and fresh--kind of, "I could have thought of that--nah, who am I kidding." This is one of those books that you finish and instantly turn back to page one to start again and recommend to your friends while envying them the experience of discovering it for the first time. Wonderful, just wonderful.
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