|
|
DECEMBER 18, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 24
Books
ALSO
The Best (and Worst) of 2000: Year in Review
When we look back, we'll remember Tiger Woods, Harry Potter and Sydney's Olympic gala
Historians may look back on this year as the thin edge of the e-publishing
wedge, the moment when books made of paper and ink began sliding into
digital obsolescence. But those not yet ready for the brave new reading
world can mark 2000 by the extraordinary output of new fiction from big-name
veteran authors, all producing energetic work at age 60 or older: Margaret
Atwood, Saul Bellow, Doris Lessing, Joyce Carol Oates, Edna O'Brien, Philip
Roth, Susan Sontag, John Updike. The year also brought posthumous books
by Joseph Heller and Mario Puzo. The millennium has so far been generous
to readers. In with the new! In with the old!
|
ALSO IN TIME
|
|
|
|
FICTION
1. THE BLIND ASSASSIN Margaret Atwood's novel is part family saga,
part social history, part suspense tale and altogether captivating. As
its elderly narrator, Iris Chase, looks back on her life—and some
mysterious deaths—she evokes not only a tangled past but a luminous
fictional realm.
2. THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY Michael Chabon's serious
but never somber tribute to the golden age of American comic books leaps
600 pages in a single bound. The title characters create an imaginary
pulp icon while they live through a vivid era of real-life melodramas
from the 1930s to the '50s.
3. RAVELSTEIN Much ink was spilled wondering how much Saul Bellow's
novel told of the real life of his deceased friend Allan Bloom. Such a
waste of energy. What matters is that the author, 85, produces another
brainy, complex and cantankerous hero to add to his gallery of memorable
fictional beings.
4. BEOWULF The Anglo- Saxon epic, the bane of English majors, looks
brand-new and thrilling in a verse translation by Nobel laureate Seamus
Heaney. The tale may still strike readers as bloodthirsty, but Heaney's
language evokes Beowulf's tragic stature, his helplessness to avoid—and
his bravery while facing—the dictates of his fate.
5. WHITE TEETH Zadie Smith's miraculous first novel takes place
in a tumultuously multicultural London where unlikely friendships and
even more unlikely romances rule. Much of the action is comic, but even
at their most foolish, Smith's characters are both fascinating and admirable.
NONFICTION
1. NOTHING LIKE IT IN THE WORLD Veteran historian Stephen Ambrose
writes at full throttle about the construction of the U.S. transcontinental
railroad during the 1860s. This magnificent tale of high finance, low
finagling and workers hacking through 3,200 km is magnificently told.
2. ROBERT KENNEDY Evan Thomas calls his superb biography "the story
of an unpromising boy who died as he was becoming a great man." Bobby's
well-documented life and legend are re-examined here with moral clarity,
psychological subtlety and a bracing dramatic pace.
3. A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS Dave Eggers tricks
out his riveting memoir with an ironic title and plenty of literary gamesmanship,
but the story he tells is indeed heartbreaking: the death of his parents
and his subsequent guard-ianship of his younger brother. His book shows
how laughter is sometimes the only medicine.
4. EXPERIENCE Taking a breather from fiction, Martin Amis writes
movingly about life with his famous father Kingsley, who died in 1995.
The book hums with the same antic prose and looping comic riffs that characterize
Martin's novels, along with a surprising admixture of tenderness.
5. IN THE HEART OF THE SEA In 1820 the Nantucket ship Essex was rammed
and sunk in the South Seas by an angry whale. This event, which inspired
Moby Dick, is thrillingly retold by Nathaniel Philbrick.
Write to TIME at mail@web.timeasia.com
This edition's table of contents
TIME Asia home
Quick Scroll: More stories from TIME, Asiaweek and CNN
|
|
LATEST HEADLINES:
|
Click Here for the latest regional analysis from TIME Asia
|
|
