CategoryReviews

“The Zone of Interest”

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About “The Zone of Interest,” long-time movie critic Manohla Dargis at the New York Times wrote, “Jonathan Glazer has made a hollow, self-aggrandizing art-film exercise set in Auschwitz during the Holocaust.” I couldn’t disagree more. This film, loosely based on the plot of a novel by British writer Martin Amis, packed an emotional punch whose pain lingers in me days later. I’m more convinced...

The Tragedy of Oscar-nominated Short Films

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I tell myself I won’t but I do it every year: I go to see the Oscar-nominated Live Action Short Films that my local theater shows. I say I’m not going because invariably the films are extremely depressing and tragic, as if short films (most are thirty minutes or less) are required to be about death, war, tragedy, and trauma to be relevant. While there is no such requirement, again this year...

“When We Were Orphans,” Kazuo Ishiguro

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Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the world’s most respected novelists, having won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017 based on a body of work of only seven novels and one collection of short fiction. I say “only” because many Nobel Prize winners have a much larger oeuvre. But Ishiguro’s work has a distinct and unique voice. He’s unlike any writer I’ve come across. His novels feature...

What We Talk About When We Talk About . . .

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Back in 2020, I listed “The Most Important Novels in My Life” (including a couple of short story collections). I stated my goal of re-reading these twenty-five books to discover my top ten. I’ve bailed on ever being able to pick a top ten, but I’ve re-read most of the books on my list and just finished Raymond Carver’s collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, originally published in...

Chain-Gang All-Stars

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I had plenty of reasons to pick up Chain-Gang All-Stars, the debut novel by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. It made The New York Times “Ten Best Books of the Year” list. It was nominated for a National Book Award. And it was a Read with Jenna Book Club pick (that would be Jenna Bush). Plus, I’m always up for a good dose of dystopia (even wrote one myself: The Culling). The premise: a privatized, for...

Unusual Movie Choice for a Holiday

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For various reasons, it was just the four of us this year for Thanksgiving. With Owen studying forestry in New Haven and Julia working full time as a dietician and studying for her Master’s, the kids lead busy lives. Having this day together felt like a gift. We all contributed to our Thanksgiving feast. Owen is the cranberry sauce expert. Julia handled the Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes...

Does Anyone Still Read Charles Dickens?

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I asked Julia if she had to read any Charles Dickens in high school. Her groan was quite audible: Great Expectations, the coming-of-age story of the orphan Pip, which she called a long and boring slog. Her response jogged my own memory of slogging through Great Expectations and then A Tale of Two Cities for a class and then never reading Dickens again. At one time the most famous and popular...

The Surreal Swimmer

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A writer friend of mine was telling me how much he admired the movie, “The Swimmer,” based on a story by John Cheever. Of course I had to investigate. Cheever was one of those mid-twentieth-century literary lions, and his story “The Swimmer” is his most famous one and was often anthologized (not anymore: twentieth-century white male authors have fallen out of fashion). Before seeing the movie, I...

Killers of the Flower Moon

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I was hesitant to see the new Martin Scorsese film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” because its runtime is almost 3.5 hours. I doubted any movie could hold my interest for that long or that I could stay in my seat for that length of time. But my sister insisted I had to see the film, so I did. I stayed in my seat. And I was interested, from beginning to end. The story, based on the book of the same...

The Atheist’s Calling

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I remember bits of a conversation with my father, who was a devout Catholic, and along with my mother raised all of his five kids in the Catholic religion. I was an adult at the time, living in California, and back in Buffalo for a visit. I’m not sure what led to his question, which was this: “You believe in God, don’t you?” I didn’t. I’m an atheist. But I didn’t come right out and say it. I...

Facing (or not) “The Long Goodbye”

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I just read novelist Amy Bloom’s brief memoir, In Love, about her husband, Brian Ameche, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and decided he’d rather take matters into his own hands and his life rather than face the “long goodbye” of dementia. Although it may be easy enough to kill yourself—guns, razor blades, high heights, etc.—such methods are very messy and traumatic for survivors. Brian...

“You’re Not Too Smart, Are You? I Like That in a Man”

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“You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.” So says femme fatale Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) to inept but cocky lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt) when they first meet in Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 directorial debut, the steamy noir film Body Heat. Matty’s pronouncement on Ned’s intelligence sets the stage for what’s to come: she convinces Ned to help her murder her husband so she can...

Why Read a Sad Story?

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I have a friend who doesn’t want to read books or watch shows or movies that are sad or involve tragic circumstances. It’s a form of curation: she doesn’t need that negativity in her life, doesn’t want to be exposed to those feelings because it interferes with her happiness. I’m the opposite. I find sad, depressing, painful, tragic stories to be essential to my own quest for well-being. These...

Can You Define Gender Queer?

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As a writer of books, I believe in the freedom of all writers to write whatever they want, to express whatever ideas are bubbling in their brains. Consequently, I’m against all book bans, which I consider the equivalent of banning free thought. And yet book challenges and bans have become a primary front in the pathetic culture war being waged in our country. What exactly are book challengers...

“Marketing Executive” Barbie

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We went to see Barbie the other night. There’s a reason the movie is breaking all kinds of revenue and attendance records: it’s highly original, visually compelling, and a lot of fun. Margot Robbie (Barbie) and Ryan Gosling (Ken) deliver outstanding performances. And it had me smiling a lot. In some ways, I’ve never seen a movie like it—the way it depicts Barbie’s perfect, plastic fantasy world...

David Klein

Published novelist, creative writer, journalist, avid reader, discriminating screen watcher.

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