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The Conversation by David Brooks

by
November 2012, no. 346

The Conversation by David Brooks

University of Queensland Press, $29.95 hb, 240 pp, 9780702249440

The Conversation by David Brooks

by
November 2012, no. 346

The epigraph from Plato’s Phaedrus cleverly introduces the Socratic dialogue on which David Brooks’s new novel turns. This makes for a brilliant foray into the contradictions at the heart of the truths that both characters are seeking in The Conversation. This question-and-answer exchange is presented as a kind of Scheherazadian dégustation of narratives, where the novel endures for as long as the stories continue. For this reason, the emphasis is on pauses, languor, and an understanding of the way in which something can consume (‘eat away at’) a person.

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