Your Editors Literary Fiction E-mail from Amazon.com Books

[Bruce Appelbaum]

Here's the big deal review from Amazon's e-mail 
literary fiction department.

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The principal titles reviewed in this Expert Editors 
message include:
     
"Mason & Dixon" by Thomas Pynchon 
Publisher: Holt 
     
and
     
"The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare" 
by Stephanie Cowell 
Publisher: Norton
     
You can find these books and more at 
http://www.amazon.com/literary-fiction
     
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This month our novelists look to the past for their 
inspiration.
     
First of all, the Pynchon has landed. It's been about 
seven years after since last novel, but Thomas Pynchon, 
the famous reclusive writer, is back with "Mason & 
Dixon," an eruditely comic, faux 18th-century novel 
based on the lives of the English surveyors Charles 
Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. The two left a permanent mark 
on the United States in 1763-67 when they mapped the 
Mason-Dixon Line between the North and the South.
     
Moving on to England, historical novelist Stephanie 
Cowell invokes the most famous of all literary figures 
in her recreation of the life and times of William 
Shakespeare in her new novel, "The Players: A Novel of 
the Young Shakespeare." Cowell writes about 
Shakespeare's youth in Stratford, his family and love 
life, his move to London, and the early development of 
his literary sensibilities.
     
It's certainly far more surprising to find a literary 
critic at the center of a historical novel, but author 
Jay Parini has done just that, and with great success, 
in his "Benjamin's Crossing," a retelling of the life 
of philosopher and essayist Walter Benjamin. In recent 
years, Benjamin's writings have become immensely 
popular among scholars for his brilliant and subtle 
insights into literature, but the dramatic and tragic 
life of this German Jew who fled his country to escape 
Hitler, will be compelling reading to anyone with an 
interest in pre-war Europe and the history of ideas.
     
--Paul Karon is a freelance writer living in Los 
Angeles and has an MFA in Fiction from the University 
of Southern Mississippi.
     
You'll find Paul's favorite literary fiction on the 
shelves of Amazon.com 
http://www.amazon.com/literary-fiction
     
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