My Name Is Red/ The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme

Going back a few years, but one you might have missed: a good review of Oran Pamuk's, My Name Is Red, from Chandrahas Choudhury's

The Middle Stage

I recently finished Andrei Makine's, The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme, and had intended to write a post on this book, but find that Chaudhury's 2005 San Francisco Chronicle REVIEW echoes my own thoughts closely enough, that I'll link to that review as well.

One thought I would add: in the scene early in the book where the narrator takes a manuscript of his first novel to an editor, who rejects it when he tells her the story of the flier was real ("Insufficiently fictionalized," she says, and sends him on his way): I had the impression that the book that resulted, with the story of Jacques Dorme excised, was Dreams of My Russian Summer. The scene with the editor didn't quite belong--as though pointing to something outside this novel, begging for speculation about the author's intentions. The general plan of the narrative, so much a reprieve of Dreams, seemed to confirm that suspicion.