Famine

Rating:
Summary: i'd rather starve than read famine again
Review: gAg! this book is so horrible i don't even know where to begin! here's the basic plotline: A guy is traumatized by the death of his younger brother, so he decides not to eat. So he goes into a clinic and meets a girl who doesn't eat. They are 15 years old but play under sheets in the clinic? Eventually they have a kid, i'm not sure if they let her eat or not. But anyway, the guy who doesn't eat starts a feeding place for homeless people.....but continues not to eat himself! And every other chapter is written by some boring detective guy, which makes the book further more uninteresting...the detective never uses the word "the" either, it goes,"i am detective. cop sees chair. cop takes coffee from secretary. cop says "i have to pee" To give you the basic jist....i couldn't even get through the whole thing it was so awful.....AVOID THIS BOOK AT ALL COSTS!

Rating:
Summary: What's it all about?
Review: I give it three stars because I think there is some beautiful evocative prose in Famine. I must admit, however, that the beauty of the language did not help me understand where the plot was going. Maybe the author wanted us to confuse the two Daniels. Maybe he wanted us to be so unsure of who did what to whom that we needed to fill in all the blanks ourselves. I thought Komarnicki's convention was ingenious, but I would have liked to feel that I had understood his intent when I finished the book. I think he could have fleshed things out a bit more for his readers. It kind of left me wondering if the time I invested in reading Famine could have been better spent reading a book that was both well written and understandable.

Rating:
Summary: Crime fiction plus
Review: I'm a huge fan of straight ahead noir from Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett & David Goodis to contemporary writers like Andrew Vachss, Nicola Griffith & Colson Whitehead. This is, unbelievably, even darker but more deeply satisfying the way the best literay fiction is. Komarnicki's prose and storytelling is incredibly daring, risky and I guess "experimental" but also thrilling and uniquely effective. What sounds gimmicky when it's described really works when you're reading it, perhaps at least in part because it's so visual, cinematic. I look forward to reading what Komarnicki writes next.

Rating:
Summary: Crime fiction plus
Review: I'm a huge fan of straight ahead noir from Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett & David Goodis to contemporary writers like Andrew Vachss, Nicola Griffith & Colson Whitehead. This is, unbelievably, even darker but more deeply satisfying the way the best literay fiction is. Komarnicki's prose and storytelling is incredibly daring, risky and I guess "experimental" but also thrilling and uniquely effective. What sounds gimmicky when it's described really works when you're reading it, perhaps at least in part because it's so visual, cinematic. I look forward to reading what Komarnicki writes next.

Rating:
Summary: Quietly shattering.
Review: Indeed, the first 30 odd pages are a bit self-conciously angsty, but after that--fuggheddaboudit. Komarnicki knows and is able to boil down the most sad dark places--sans po-mo "hip" /"cool" hoohaw--into a few terse sentences that leave you, quite literally, stunned. And looking at your own life, and wondering. What higher praise is there for a book than that?

Rating:
Summary: Quietly shattering.
Review: Indeed, the first 30 odd pages are a bit self-conciously angsty, but after that--fuggheddaboudit. Komarnicki knows and is able to boil down the most sad dark places--sans po-mo "hip" /"cool" hoohaw--into a few terse sentences that leave you, quite literally, stunned. And looking at your own life, and wondering. What higher praise is there for a book than that?

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic magical realism
Review: This book is great. It is not a linear detective story as many who are into the "mystery" genre might hope for, but a wonderful psychological story along the lines of Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or, more recently, Arundhati Roy. Part of the beauty of the book is that it is as maddening and enchanting as living itself can be. Kudos to the author.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic magical realism
Review: This book is great. It is not a linear detective story as many who are into the "mystery" genre might hope for, but a wonderful psychological story along the lines of Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or, more recently, Arundhati Roy. Part of the beauty of the book is that it is as maddening and enchanting as living itself can be. Kudos to the author.