Reviews by Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

The Gift of an English Country Idyll.

Anita Mathias — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:09:00 +0000

The Gift of an English Country Idyll. I have thoroughly enjoyed the 5 years we have lived in the English countryside, in Garsington. One of my favourite novels (if it can be called a novel) Naipaul’s “The Enigma of Arrival” deals with a similar idyll. “Naipaul’s 19th book yields its pleasures slowly. Its plot is […]

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Omnibus Review by Anita Mathias of Rushdie, Ishiguro, Lahiri, and Manil Suri

Anita Mathias — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 17:48:00 +0000

Anita Mathias Omnibus Review Commonweal Magazine. Salman Rushdie’s dazzling, densely textured maximilist novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Picador USA, $16, 575 pp.) tracks the brilliant rock stars, Ormus Cama and Vina Apsara, a contemporary Orpheus and Eurydice, through three great cities, Bombay, London, and, inevitably, New York; and through the familiar story of fame, […]

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Review of Ann Hood’s Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles.

Anita Mathias — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:58:00 +0000

Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time Ann Hood Picador, USA, $23, 256 pp. Review by Anita Mathias Commonweal Magazine Teach us to care and not to care, Teach us to sit still Our peace in His will. In “Ash Wednesday,” T.S. Eliot describes the perfection of faith. When a […]

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“White Teeth” by Zadie Smith. A review by Anita Mathias

Anita Mathias — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:14:00 +0000

Here’s an old review I wrote of “White Teeth,” Smith’s first book, for Commonweal Magazine in 2000White Teeth Zadie Smith Random House, $24.95, 448 pp. A VIEW FROM THE MARGINS.by Anita MathiasSo-called multicultural literature in many ways extends the enterprise of the early feminist writers: “the custodians of the world’s best-kept secret:/ Merely the private […]

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Review by Anita Mathias of Sacred Water: A Pilgrimage up the Ganges

Anita Mathias — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:42:00 +0000

Sacred Waters A Pilgrimage up the Ganges River to the Source of Hindu Culture Stephen Alter Harcourt, $25, 368 pp. A Review by Anita Mathias Sacred Waters is a lovely, tranquil account of a spiritual journey undertaken by a third-generation missionary kid, born and raised in the Garwhal foothills of the Himalayas, where his parents […]

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