This week, I had the pleasure of reading four novels — three recent, one older — in which styles and genres that one might not expect to collide are brought together. Sometimes this is ornately constructed; for others, the approach seems to have been to place disparate elements in close proximity and see what emerges.
Tobias Carroll When I was in the midst of my holiday shopping, I picked up a copy of Muriel Spark’s Not to Disturb at Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore. I read (and was floored by) Spark’s Memento Mori earlier in the year; Not to Disturb is a bit less resonant but deeply enjoyable. It’s very Gothic — locked rooms, sinister plots, and multiple references to “him in the attic” — but there’s a Richard Lester-esque briskness at work as well.