Those tales have now been expanded into this book, named after one of Dostoyevsky's most perplexing novels, which "narrates the descent into madness of a circle of intellectuals in a remote Russian province".
Best known for a "little epic" in dactylic hexameter entitled "At the Baby Doll Lounge Salome Dances; the Baptist Tips Her a Ten Spot," the heroine of Binnie Kirshenbaum's perplexing third novel, "Pure Poetry," is, as she puts it, "as famous as any poet in America can get without being dead and having an intermediate school named after you".
So it is comforting to hear Kermode say, point-blank, "It is simply inconceivable that anybody at the Globe... could have followed every sentence of 'Coriolanus.' "Again and again he reminds us that during his stylistic evolution Shakespeare was continually challenging -- training" -- his audience to accept novel and perplexing modes of delivery and exposition.
KAZUO ISHIGURO'S sixth novel is disturbing, perplexing and frustrating.
How exhilarating, then, to discover David Peace through his brilliant, perplexing, claustrophobic and ambiguous seventh novel, "Tokyo Year Zero".
Tucked inside that last sentence is not simply the near-title of the novel but a perplexing memory of her first appearance, hundreds of pages ago — "a tall girl in a black dress," who "lingered in the doorway, slim and charming," observed by Ralph as he wandered on the lawn.
The second half of Joshua Ferris's frequently brilliant, often perplexing The Unnamed is a "road" novel of the most curious kind.
Ali Smith's new novel opens with a perplexing prologue: a story within a story about a man on an exercise bike whose eyes and mouth are covered by what look like mailbox flaps.
All of her novels constellate around this perplexing transaction, none more so perhaps than "Sula," and "Love" is a sister to that fiery 1974 book.
But the print ads for Nell Freudenberger's new novel, "The Dissident," contain a perplexing spin on that cliché.
