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Jim Higgins

Christopher Moore novel on Impressionists paints them extra blue

Last updated Sunday, April 15, 2012 - 7:22am

"SACRE BLEU: A COMEDY D'ART." By Christopher Moore. William Morrow. $26.99.

Christopher Moore's new novel blends diligently researched art history smoothly with his fevered, fiendish imagination. So smoothly, in fact, that you must never, EVER give this book to a docent who gives museum tours.

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Lauren Fox's 'Friends' a sharp portrait of female friendship

Jim Higgins Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last updated Sunday, February 19, 2012 - 8:35am

FRIENDS LIKE US. By Lauren Fox. Knopf. 288 pages. $24.95.

As I read Lauren Fox's new novel, I dog-eared the pages with witty lines, or impressively bitter ones, or ones that made me laugh.

Please forgive me, Alfred A. Knopf, for what I've done to your book. I hadn't intended to make origami out of it.

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Black history told in images, essays

Jim Higgins Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last updated Sunday, January 29, 2012 - 4:48pm

"LIFE UPON THESE SHORES: LOOKING AT AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY 1513-2008." By Henry Louis Gates Jr. Knopf. $50.

222The great strength of "Life Upon These Shores" is the "abundance of images" that Gates, the editor-curator, and his team of associates have woven into this book. with more than 700 photos, maps, illustrations, posters and cartoons.

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'Pigeon English' speaks childhood fluently

Jim Higgins Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last updated Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 4:02pm

"PIGEON ENGLISH." By Stephen Kelman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $24.

Like "Room," whose author Emma Donoghue provided an enthusiastic blurb, and Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," to which it is occasionally compared, Stephen Kelman's "Pigeon English" is a novel for adults told in the remarkable voice of a child. All three virtuosic novels are worth reading if only to enjoy the spell those voices create.

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Tom Waits opens up in book of interviews

Jim Higgins Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last updated Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 4:18pm

"TOM WAITS ON TOM WAITS: INTERVIEWS AND ENCOUNTERS." Edited by Paul Maher Jr. Chicago Review Press. $19.95.

In "Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters," editor Paul Maher Jr. has compiled more than 50 interviews from singer-songwriter Tom Waits to "illustrate his creative progression through the years." Maher has organized them chronologically around Waits' albums, beginning with "Closing Time" (1973).

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