Reviews by Mark
August 3, 2014 “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” by David Shafer Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times Literary fiction rarely seems edgy or even fun these days. One theory is that most of the smart, ambitious and talented writers started migrating to movies and television back in the 1980s. Go Read more…
January 16, 2009 “This One is Mine” by Maria Semple Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to the Seattle Times Maria Semple has lived in Los Angeles and written for television shows, including “Arrested Development,” “Mad About You” and “Ellen.” According to publicity materials, she recently “escaped” L.A. and now lives with Read more…
August 15, 2008 “Pharmakon” by Dirk Wittenborn Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to the Seattle Times Dirk Wittenborn is the literary equivalent of the Velvet Underground, the 1960s band that didn’t sell many records but was famous in certain circles because almost every kid who bought a Velvet Underground record started Read more…
April 4, 2014 “Blood Will Out” by Walter Kirn Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times “I was in the mood for an adventure…. I was a writer, even more importantly a writer between books, and I had a hunch I was going to meet a character.” Thus Walter Read more…
March 29, 2015 “Crow Fair and Other Stories” by Thomas McGuane Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times By outliving Raymond Carver, Thomas McGuane became one of our best living American short-story writers. Now, Captain Berserko, as McGuane was known in the 1970s, just has to outlive Richard Ford Read more…
October 4, 2015 “Bream Gives Me Hiccups and Other Stories” by Jesse Eisenberg Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to the Seattle Times Depending on your taste, Jesse Eisenberg is either the funny, awkward guy who shot Bill Murray in “Zombieland,” or the funny, awkward guy who played Mark Zuckerberg in “The Read more…
May 23, 2008 “Snuff” by Chuck Palahniuk Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times. Cassie Wright is about a porn superstar in the twilight of her career who decides to go out with a bang, so to speak, by setting a world record for serial fornication on film. “Six Read more…
Sunday, August 18, 1991 Force Majeure by Bruce Wagner (Random House: $23; 474 pp.) Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Los Angeles Times Book Review Mark Lindquist is the author of “Sad Movies” and “Carnival Desires.” Thousands of people are coming to Los Angeles in a new gold rush. Legends abound: Seven-Eleven clerk sells Read more…
Sunday, July 19, 1992 “Rich Kids” by Robert Westbrooke Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Los Angeles Times Book Review You will probably not be shocked to learn that the children of rich movie-industry parents are likely to grow up spoiled, unhappy and mentally unhealthy. Robert Westbrook brings personal experience to the Read more…
Sunday, May 30, 1993 “Shopping in Space: Essays on America’s Blank Generation Fiction” by Elizabeth Young and Graham Caveney (Atlantic Monthly Press/Serpent’s Tail: $21; 263 pp.) Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Los Angeles Times Book Review Mark Lindquist is the author of “Sad Movies” and “Carnival Desires.” “Bright Lights, Big City,” “Less Read more…
Monday, September 27, 1993 “Fan Mail” by Ronald Munson; Dutton $21, 309 pages Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Los Angeles Times Joan Carpenter is an anchorwoman. Her stated ambition is to be rich and famous. The Watcher is a fan. “Fan Mail” is a creepy book about their symbiotic connection. When Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts, Sunday, November 14, 1993 ”Family Values” by Lawrence David By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Eighteen years of family life are, for the most part, convincingly and engagingly drawn in Lawrence David’s first novel. The multiple points of view are handled skillfully, and much Read more…
Sunday, February 13, 1994 “Pool” by Ajay Sahgal Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Los Angeles Times Book Review, Front Page “Pool” is one of the most authentic Los Angeles novels you are likely to read and the beauty of it is that not a single moment is set in L.A. Emery Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Sunday, July 17, 1994 ”Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Happiness” by Peggy Noonan Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Seventy-three percent of Americans believe the United States is in “moral decline,” this decline a national obsession, according to Newsweek. Peggy Noonan, a Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: February 5, 1995 ”Scorched Earth” By Stuart Stevens Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times War, Ernest Hemingway once observed, is the best drama. War without guns is called politics and it is – or ought to be – a close second for dramatic value. Read more…
October 15, 1995 “Baby Cat Face” by Barry Gifford Reviewed by Mark Lindquist New York Times Book Review Barry Gifford has been chronicling the decline of Western civilization for 25 years: as America goes, so goes Mr. Gifford. Not surprisingly, his books have become increasingly twisted and senseless, their plots Read more…
January 7, 1996 “One Night Out Stealing” by Alan Duff Reviewed by Mark Lindquist New York Times Book Review In ”Pulp Fiction” and ”Get Shorty,” John Travolta defines the current pop culture image for hoods: hip, clever if not bright, and effortlessly charming. The hoods — or ”crims” — in Read more…
Sunday, March 10, 1996 “Blade Runner 2” by KW Jeter Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Los Angeles Times Book Review Seattle writer and lawyer Mark Lindquist has lived in and written about Los Angeles. He is the author of “Sad Movies” and “Carnival Desires.” Los Angeles, 2021. The atmosphere is scoured Read more…
June 30, 1996 “The Runaway Jury” by John Grisham Reviewed by Mark Lindquist New York Times Book Review In his latest novel, John Grisham returns to his favorite theme: cleverness prospers. He’s also still hooked on the idea of the underdog who cons the evil cabal and scores big. “The Read more…
July 21, 1996 “Outrage: Five Reasons Why OJ Simpson Got Away with Murder” by Vincent Bugliosi Reviewed by Mark Lindquist New York Times Book Review Most prosecutors in the United States believe they could have done a better job of trying the O. J. Simpson case than Marcia Clark and Christopher Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts, July 23, 1996 “Outrage: Five Reasons OJ Got Away with Murder” by Vincent Bugliosi Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial To The Seattle Times Most prosecutors in America thought they could have done a better job of trying O.J. Simpson. Vincent Bugliosi actually could have. The onetime prosecutor Read more…
February 23, 1997 “The Clinic” by Jonathan Kellerman Reviewed by Mark LindquistNew York Times Book Review This is the 11th novel in a series featuring Alex Delaware, a psychologist who solves crimes simply by being smart. He also chats with a lot of interesting people. The plot in this latest Read more…
September 14, 1997 By Mark Lindquist THE KINGDOM OF SHIVAS IRONS By Michael Murphy Michael Murphy’s ”Golf in the Kingdom” is the best-selling golf novel ever published, maybe because it’s as much about metaphysics as it is about golf — about golf as spiritual knight errantry. Now Murphy (a founder Read more…
August 3, 1997 “Chasing the Dream” by Harry Hurt III and Other Golf Books Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special To The Seattle Times In a possible sign of the impending Apocalypse, golf is creeping through the national consciousness. Tiger Woods and Greg Norman are as likely to be discussed at Read more…
September 28, 1997 “Balling the Jack” by Frank Baldwin Reviewed by Mark Lindquist New York Times Book Review The title of Frank Baldwin’s first novel is a slang expression for betting everything on one attempt. Here the bet is on a game of darts — and the everything is both Read more…
November 23, 1997 By Mark Lindquist TOUCH AND GO By Eugene Stein Eugene Stein has followed his first novel, ”Straitjacket & Tie,” with this uneven but sometimes inspired collection of short stories, absurdist sketches and incomplete, high-concept improvisations. One of the best stories, ”Close Calls,” is narrated by an executive Read more…
October 11, 1998 “Love is a Racket” by John Ridley Reviewed by Mark Lindquist New York Times Book Review John Ridley’s crime-noir first novel, ”Stray Dogs,” was made into the Oliver Stone movie ”U-Turn.” This may explain why Ridley’s second novel, “Love is a Racket” (Knopf, $24), blends elements of Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, December 6, 1998 “Model Behavior” by Jay McInerney Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times In the late ’70s and early ’80s we called it “punk” when an artist said never mind the critics or, for that matter, the general public. “Bright Lights, Big Read more…
December 20, 1998 “The Gates of Eden” by Ethan Coen Reviewed by Mark LindquistNew York Times Book Review Ethan Coen and his brother, Joel, have made some of the more interesting movies of the last two decades: ”Blood Simple,” ”Raising Arizona,” ”Barton Fink” and ”Fargo.” Ethan Coen writes and Joel Read more…
July 7, 1999 “Chump Change” by David Eddie Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times “I am a failure,” begins David Eddie’s narrator, David Henry. Though it is risky to assume a first novel is autobiographical just because first novels often are, it’s a safe bet here. Eddie Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts, Sunday, February 28, 1999 “South of the Border, West of the Sun” by Haruki Murakami Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special To The Seattle Times This is a Japanese novel that feels as American as the movie “Casablanca,” which it brings to mind in both tone and plot. Read more…
April 10, 1999 “Burning Girl” by Ben Neihart Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special To The Seattle Times Ben Neihart’s first novel, “Hey Joe,” a racy coming-of-age story, was fresh, hip and well-received. “Burning Girl,” his follow-up, focuses on Drew Burke, a 20-year-old scholarship student who becomes involved in the secret Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Sunday, May 09, 1999 “Another Life: A Memoir of Other People” by Michael Korda By Mark Lindquist Special To The Seattle Times This autobiography put me in mind of a line from a Jim Morrison poem, “Did you have a good world when you died, enough Read more…
Entertainment News: Thursday, May 20, 1999 “Music for Torching” by A.M. Homes Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times A.M. Homes’ fifth book is daring, original, smart and artful, yet does not quite work as a novel. Paul and Elaine, the lead couple, were first featured in Homes’ short Read more…
July 4, 1999 Wormwood” by David Levien Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times This first novel was apparently written in the early to mid-nineties, but not published. Levien went on to co-write the screenplay for “Rounders,” a Miramax Pictures release starring Matt Damon, which was a hit. Now Read more…
Entertainment News: Sunday, August 15, 1999 “Not Ready for Prime Time” by Brent Askari Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times In his book “On Becoming a Novelist,” John Gardner, the writer and teacher who was a mentor to Raymond Carver among many others, had this advice for writers: Read more…
September 5, 1999 “Are You Experienced” by William Sutcliffe Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times This cross between a coming-of-age story and a road-trip novel was a best seller in England when it was first published in 1996. Now it makes its American debut in trade paperback, Read more…
September 20, 1999 “Everybody Smokes in Hell” by John Ridley Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times John Ridley’s first two novels, “Stray Dogs” and “Love is a Racket,” were the kind of thrillers that critics and fellow writers like: smart, edgy, ugly but with moments of poetry. Read more…
Entertainment News: Sunday, November 21, 1999 “Soft Maniacs” by Maggie Estep Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times If you like your fiction dark, demented and highly sexed, this book is for you. You may even remember author Magge Estep as the videogenic gamin on MTV’s “Poetry Unplugged,” circa Read more…
Sunday, January 2, 2000 “Lo’s Diary” by Pia Pera Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times The legal issues raised by the retelling of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” from the pubescent child’s point of view are, unfortunately, more interesting than this first novel by Italian journalist and short-story writer Read more…
Entertainment News: Sunday, January 16, 2002 Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times Douglas Coupland’s first novel, “Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture,” was published in 1991. “Miss Wyoming” is his eighth book in nine years. Coupland also works as a designer and Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, March 05, 2000 “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” by Dave Eggers Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times We’ve all had a friend who was bright, neurotic, unsatisfied, overanalyzed everything and just wouldn’t shut up. We hung out with that person because the Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: March 14, 2000 “Phoenix: A Brother’s Life” by J.D. Dolan Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times The memoir has become our most abused genre and, mercifully, seemed to have recently reached its high water mark with “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” Dave Eggers’ smart-alecky Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, June 25, 2000 “War Boy” by Kief Hillsbery Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times This energetic and ambitious first novel is narrated by Radboy, a 14-year-old deaf skateboard punk. “Storytellers lie,” he warns us right away, then proceeds to tell as much truth Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, July 2, 2000 “Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man” by Joseph Heller Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Joseph Heller died in December 1999, at the age of 76, just after finishing this novel, which was presciently designed to be his Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, August 06, 2000 ‘What’s Not to Love’ is hilarious, postmodern By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times There’s not much to say about this book except that it is often hilarious. Here is what Ames says in an open letter to reviewers: “I should describe Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, October 1, 2000 “Love Hexagon” by William Sutcliffe Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times A United Kingdom best seller, this satirical sex farce has a clear target audience: twentysomething Londoners. Comparisons to Evelyn Waugh are inevitable, at least the Waugh of the “Bright Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, October 15, 2000 “Ready, Okay!” by Adam Cadre Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Someone had to do this. Ever since the Columbine High tragedy, I have been waiting for an author brave enough or shameless enough to write an adolescent novel that Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Friday, October 20, 2000 “Four Blondes” by Candace Bushnell By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Author Candace Bushnell wrote a gossipy sex column for the New York Observer, which became the book “Sex and the City,” which became the hit HBO series, which made her Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Sunday, February 04, 2001 Grisham’s strong, literary ‘House’ By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times You will probably not be surprised to hear that John Grisham, author of 11 best-selling legal thrillers, has written another page-turner. You may be surprised to hear that his latest Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, June 3, 2001 Norweigan Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times “Norwegian Wood,” Haruki Murakami’s second novel, just published in America in paperback, sold more than 4 million copies in Japan when it was published in 1987. Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, June 10, 2001 “Glue” by Irvine Welsh Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Irvine Welsh is best known to the mainstream as the man who wrote the novel that the movie “Trainspotting” was based on. In the “rave” culture, he is revered as Read more…
July 15, 2001 “All the Finest Girls” by Alexandra Styron Reviewed by Mark Lindquist New York Times Book Review ”Do you think it’s possible to be a great artist as the progeny of one?” This question is posed by the father of the narrator of ”All the Finest Girls” – Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: August 16, 2001 “Heavier Than Heaven” by Charles Cross Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Rock biographies became a publishing phenomenon after “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” the Jim Morrison biography, became a New York Times best seller in 1980. For those of Read more…
Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, September 23, 2001 “All Families are Psychotic” by Douglas Coupland Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Douglas Coupland has been quoted as saying that fame is the key to success, a belief he adopted from boyhood hero Andy Warhol. “Generation X,” Coupland’s first Read more…
July 28, 2001 “How to Be Good,” by Nick Hornby Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to the Hartford Courant Fans of Nick Hornby’s first novel, the decidedly hip and male “High Fidelity,” initially may be perplexed as to why Hornby is now writing about humdrum grown-ups from a female point Read more…
January 13, 2002 “Why Did I Ever” by Mary Robison By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Back in the 1980s, Mary Robison was one of the minimalists mentioned in company with Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie. At about the time the John Hughes movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” came Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts; Sunday, April 28, 2002 “My Life in Heavy Metal” by Steve Almond Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times This is the coolest and freshest collection of short stories I’ve read since the 1980s. While his contemporaries turn to novels and screenplays, Steve Almond Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Sunday, June 30, 2002 “American Falls” by Barry Gifford Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times The author of 40 published books — fiction, nonfiction, poetry, literary biographies and miscellaneous mischief — Barry Gifford is a lesson in perseverance. He is 55 years old. His Read more…
August 2, 2002 “Ash Wednesday” by Ethan Hawke Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to the Seattle Times If Ethan Hawke were not already a famous actor, his second novel, “Ash Wednesday” (Knopf, $22.95), might make him a well-known novelist in the much smaller way novelists are known. He’s written the Read more…
September 8, 2002 “Anything Goes” by Madison Smartt Bell By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Elvis Costello once said that writing about music is like “dancing about architecture, it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” With “Anything Goes,” Madison Smartt Bell joins the ranks of Salman Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts, Sunday, October 6, 2002 “Lullaby” by Chuck Palahniuk Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times Ranting against consumerism and all the noise of the material world may seem passe, but what doesn’t these days? Chuck Palahniuk’s novels are here to say that alienation and despair Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts, October 17, 2002 “Porno” by Irvine Welsh Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Irvine Welsh’s first novel, “Trainspotting,” was an international best seller and a cult-classic movie. His witty twisted take on the youth culture of Edinburgh was daring and original. Sales have Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Sunday, February 16, 2003 “11 Karens” by Peter Lefcourt Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times While the memoir emerges as the favored form of our time, Peter Lefcourt has chosen to tell his life story the old-fashioned way. He calls it a novel. Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Friday, July 25, 2003 Bushnell takes another stab at skewering New York’s social circles By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times As the line between high art and low art becomes increasingly blurred, into the picture steps Candace Bushnell, author of “Sex and the Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Sunday, August 31, 2003 “Diary” by Chuck Palahniuk Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Chuck Palahniuk just keeps popping out the books. This is his seventh in as many years. His prose style, rather than sharpening, is becoming increasingly jagged and addled, which Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Friday, July 18, 2003 See Portland through ‘Fight Club’ writer’s eyes By Mark Lindquist Special to the Seattle Times Crown Journeys, a series of “literary travel books,” matches interesting writers with interesting places, or at least that’s the idea. Roy Blount Jr. on New Orleans, Bill Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Friday, August 01, 2003 ‘The Wave’ captures Seattle’s years on the cutting edge By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times In the 1970s and 1980s, many young people with an adventurous or alternative bent left Seattle for New York and Los Angeles. In the Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Sunday, December 28, 2003 “Still Holding” by Bruce Wagner Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times How much hypocrisy, insanity, neediness, dysfunction and delusion can an author stuff into a novel of just under 300 pages? If the author is Bruce Wagner and the subject Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Sunday, March 28, 2004 “Little Children” by Tom Perotta Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Tom Perrotta has carved out an impressive career writing about adolescents in “Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies,” “The Wishbones,” “Election” and “Joe College.” Though not all of Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Sunday, March 27, 2005 “The Disappointment Artist” by Jonathan Lethem Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times “These confessions have started to bore me,” Jonathan Lethem writes toward the end of “The Disappointment Artist,” a memoir thinly disguised as a collection of pop-culture essays. Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Monday, May 02, 2005 “The Evil B. B. Chow” by Steve Almond By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times “I liked the guy. … But there was something desperate in his tone, which made me suspect he hadn’t really decided who he was, that he Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Sunday, May 15, 2005 “Haunted” by Chuck Palahniuk Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Chuck Palahniuk, like the unnamed narrator of his best-selling novel “Fight Club,” appears to be going around the bend. In “Haunted,” he has splintered his personality into 23 hapless Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Friday, October 21, 2005 “Veronica”: The soulful memoir of a fallen model By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times In the past, memoirists borrowed form from novelists. Now novelists are borrowing from memoirists. Intensely personal narratives find an eager audience in our confessional times, especially Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Friday, April 28, 2006 “This Book Will Save Your Life” by A.M. Homes By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times New York may be the city where most authors like to live, but Los Angeles is the city where most authors like to set Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Friday, June 09, 2006 “JPod” by Douglas Coupland By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times “I think people in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of cluelessness.” “I’ve come to the conclusion that documents are thirty-four percent more boring when Read more…
August 18, 2006 “Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs” by Irvine Welsh Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Drunks have long been a comedy staple, and Irvine Welsh, the Scottish author of “Trainspotting,” spices up their drunkenness with drugs for an extra comic kick. With his eighth Read more…
Entertainment & the Arts: Friday, January 05, 2007 “Kockroach” by Tyler Knox Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times The premise here sounds like a high-concept Hollywood pitch: “It’s Damon Runyon meets Kafka, except instead of a man becoming an insect, a cockroach becomes … a man, a Read more…
Entertainment & Arts: Friday, February 16, 2007 “Ten Days in the Hills” by Jane Smiley Reviewed by Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Hollywood has bedeviled novelists since its inception. Jane Smiley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, is yet another example. Smiley’s strengths are many, she is smart, insightful, observant, Read more…
April 27, 2007 “Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey” by Chuck Palahniuk Reviewed by Mark LindquistSpecial to The Seattle Times Journalists often lift technique from novelists, and sometimes novelists return the compliment by imitating the documentary style of nonfiction. In “Rant,” Chuck Palahniuk adopts the oral biography format used Read more…