The Book Against God (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: James Wood
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1990-1991
- Setting: London, Durham, Sundershall, and Wiltshire, England
- Principal Characters: Tom Bunting, Jane Sheridan, Max Thurlow, Peter Bunting, Sarah Bunting, Karl
- Genres: Long fiction, Novel
- Subjects: Wives, Parents and children, Marriage, God, England or English people, London, Truthfulness and falsehood, 1990’s, Morality or morals, Great Britain, Theology, Immaturity
- Locales: London, England, Wiltshire, England
In a profile of James Wood in The New York Times, Dinitia Smith described him as “the most brutal, the most loathed, the most respected literary critic of his day.” Wood has become renowned in literary circles for praising novelists who create characters with depth and who dramatize, rather than merely state, ideas. These writers include Anton Chekhov, D. H. Lawrence, Saul Bellow, Alice Munro, W. G. Sebald, and Norman Rush. More notoriously, Wood has lambasted the likes of Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie, and Zadie Smith for their postmodern excesses. Wood...
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