After a false start, I have posted my full review of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
Here it is, a song-by-song tour of the new U2 album.
Forgive my intial write-up of the album. I’m just one listener out of zillions. But every time I hear U2, my heart is blessed in a way no other band can accomplish. This time I was impatient, and I spoke too soon. The blessing came after I’d vented some frustration.
So now I’ve written about the blessing. As always, it’s a long and rambling review. You’ve been warned.
I’ll second your warning about coming to the book without any previous knowledge about the plot. I’m just starting it, but Amazon.com’s “editorial review” spoiled one of the big surprises for me.
I’ve only read one Ishiguro book so far, his first: A Pale View of Hills. I recommend it to anyone who likes David Lynch films, particularly Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive. While the novel’s content is less extreme than those films, it does a similar number on your brain and has an unreliable narrator who is a monstrous liar! From what I’ve seen so far, Ishiguro is a very strong storyteller who exercises a delicate control of his prose.
BTW, while I liked The Village well enough, that great story about an isolated community may also be found in the book Shyamalan ripped off. He pretty obviously stole the basic story from a young adult novel–Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Running out of Time (1995).
Slate Online ruined it for me, but I’m picking it up anyway. Loved Remains of the Day, but I haven’t picked up his other works because their descriptions didn’t interest me.