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Roderick | John Sladek | 1,980 | The title character is an intelligent robot, the first to be invented. The opening chapters describe the creation of Roderick and show his mind (at first consisting of a bodiless computer program) developing through several stages of awareness. Finally, Roderick is given a rudimentary body and, through a series of misadventures, finds himself alone in the world. Due to his sketchy understanding of human customs, and intrigues surrounding the project that created him, he unwittingly becomes the center of various criminal schemes and other unfortunate events. |
The Leopard | Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa | 1,958 | Most of the novel is set during the time of the Risorgimento, specifically during the period when Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of Italian unification, swept through Sicily with his forces, known as The Thousand. The plot focuses upon the aristocratic Salina family, which is headed by the stoic Prince Fabrizio, a consummate womanizer who foresees the upcoming downfall of his family and the nobility in Italy as a whole but is unable to act upon this. As the novel opens in May 1860, Garibaldi's Redshirts have landed on the Sicilian coast and are pressing inland to overthrow the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This chapter begins with a detailed description of the exquisitely-decorated drawing room where the Salina family recites their daily rosary. After the last mysteries are completed, the Prince wanders out into the garden, where the sickly, over-ripe smells of lush foliage threaten to overwhelm him with memories—specifically, of a dead Neapolitan soldier, who, in his last moments, had clawed his way into the lemon grove and died there. He recalls the specific, gut-spilled details of the soldier's body, recollections that lead him to a brief contemplation of his own death. Perturbed by these thoughts, the Prince takes refuge in watching his dog, Bendicò, joyfully dig up the garden, and in thoughts about the behavior of his wayward nephew, Prince Tancredi Falconieri. At dinner, the Prince's family notice that he is perturbed, and remain tense and silent as he serves them dinner. Ultimately, he angrily announces his drive his coach into Palermo. The adults at the table, including the Princess and the family's Jesuit chaplain, instantly know that the only reason he's leaving is to visit a brothel. As the Prince is driven in his carriage into the city, he passes Tancredi's villa, worrying again that Tancredi's fallen in with bad company --specifically, with the rebels fighting to overthrow the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The military guardsmen, posted to prevent the entrance of Garibaldi's Redshirts, allow the Prince to freely pass into the city. As the Prince makes his way to the brothel, his thoughts vacillate between anticipation and guilt, between disgust with his wife (who crosses herself whenever they make love) and admiration of her prudery. Two hours later, his thoughts run a similar course, with the addition of a kind of disgusted satisfaction with the prostitute and a satisfied disgust with his own body. He is driven back to the villa, again passes the bonfires and again worries about Tancredi. When he arrives back home, he finds the Princess in bed, thinks affectionately of her, climbs into bed with her, and finds he can't sleep. "Towards dawn, however, the Princess had occasion to make the Sign of the Cross." The following morning, the Prince's shaving is interrupted by the arrival of Tancredi, who jokes with him about his visit to the city—Tancredi was at the guard post and saw him arrive. Tancredi also reveals that his position in the Italian nationalist movement has risen. He adds that he will soon be joining Garibaldi in the mountains. The Prince suddenly imagines his beloved nephew dead in the garden with his guts trailing out like the Crown soldier, and tries to dissuade him from departing. Tancredi, however, insists that he is fighting for a very good reason. If the nobility refuses to accept the Kingdom of Italy, "They will foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." Later, as the Prince gets dressed, he realizes the practicality of Tancredi's words. As he ponders the coming upheavals, he realizes that his nephew is more aristocratically like-minded than he thought. After breakfast, the Prince, accompanied by the playful Bendicò, goes into his office, which is lined with century-old paintings of the Salina family's estates. As he sits at his cluttered desk, the Prince recalls how much he dislikes both the room and the work it represents. This dislike intensifies during visits from his accountant and one of his tenants, both of whom are allied with the Redshirts. Both of them assure the Prince that the unification of Italy will be peaceful and will benefit everyone, including the nobility. The Prince allows himself to be reassured, certain that the class system will remain unchanged no matter what. The Prince's visit to the Salina chaplain, Father Pirrone, atop a tower where the men practice their joint hobby of astronomy, reinforces this belief. Pirrone insists that the coming Revolution will eventually result in the destruction of both the Roman Catholic Church and the nobility. The wealth and estates of both will be distributed to the Redshirt leaders. The Prince, however, assures him that the transformations of time are inevitable, and while the Church and aristocracy are desperate to hold on to their status, to attempt to do so would be foolish. Both angry and both resentful, the Prince and Father Pirrone take refuge in conversation on the safe topic of the stars, with "the bluster of the one and the blood on the other merg[ing] into tranquil harmony. The real problem is how to go on living this life of the spirit in its most sublimated moments, those moments that are most like death." At lunch, the Prince becomes aware that his family is worried about Tancredi's safety. As a result, the Prince makes an effort to appear simultaneously concerned and reassuring. When dessert is brought out, he is surprised and pleased to see it's his favorite - a large, castle-shaped jelly. As dessert commences, the castle is essentially demolished before Don Paolo, the Prince's son and heir, gets a chance to have any. After lunch the Prince returns to the office, where he finds that two of his tenants have come with his share of their product—a particular cheese, which the Prince hates, slaughtered lambs, whose spilled guts remind the Prince of the Crown soldier, and a cluster of hysterical chickens. He gives orders for everything to be disposed of, for the windows to be opened to let out the smell, and for the accountant Ferrera to write out receipts. That evening, the Prince receives a letter urging him to flee to safety from the revolution. In response, he simply laughs. Later, as the Salinas gather to say their rosary, the Prince reads in a newspaper of the approach of Garibaldi and his men. The Prince is disturbed, but reassures himself that Garibaldi will be reined in by his Piedmontese masters. After a long journey by coach, the Prince, his faithful dog Bendicò, and the squabbling Salinas arrive after a long hot drive at their country farm on the way to their estate at Donnafugata. As lunch is prepared with water from the farm's well, narration describes the harsh song of cicadas as "a death rattle from parched Sicily at the end of August vainly awaiting rain." As the family travels on to Donnafugata, the Prince reflects on Garibaldi's recent conquest of the island. Upon his arrival, the citizens of Palermo rejoiced and, later, local leaders of the movement had called at the Salina palace. Although they treated the Prince with great respect, one of them insisted on flirting with Concetta. Narration also describes how the Prince has also been having nightmares, but how, with the rising of the sun, the dreams and the fears triggered by them always fade. As his entourage draws nearer to Donnafugata, the Prince anticipates his usual warm welcome. The welcome is indeed warm and both the officials of the town and the common people greet the Salinas as gladly as always. Their numbers include the new mayor, Don Calogero Sedàra and the church organist, Don Ciccio. Narration describes the Prince's graciousness, the Princess' fatigue, and the somewhat flirtatious manner in which Tancredi brushes flies away from Concetta's face. After Mass (actually just Te Deum), the Princess invites the officials to the traditional first night dinner and Don Calogero requests permission to bring his daughter Angelica instead of his wife. As the Prince gives his consent, the Prince also invites the villagers to visit later in the evening. "And the Prince, who had found Donnafugata unchanged, was found very much changed himself; for never before would he have issued so cordial an invitation: and from that moment, invisibly, began the decline of his prestige." As the Prince inspects his property and possessions, the manager lists everything that's been done to keep the estate in order, and then passes on some local news. Don Calogero, who was active in Garibaldi's invasion, has become a wealthy landowner and businessman. To the dismay of the Prince, Don Calogero is now almost as wealthy as the Salinas. The manager adds that Angelica, Don Calogero's daughter, has become quite full of herself as a result. As a result, the Prince wonders what dinner will be like with the two of them there. He realizes that he is somewhat resentful of Calogero's status, but narration comments "deep down he had foreseen such things; they were the price to be paid." He then goes into the house for a nap and a bath before dinner. However, the Prince's bathing is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Father Pirrone. Although he is quite embarrassed at seeing the Prince naked, the Jesuit nevertheless fulfills his charge. Concetta has asked Father Pirrone to tell her father that she is in love with Tancredi and that she believes her feelings to be returned. What is more, Concetta believes that her cousin is about to propose and that she desires her father's instruction on what she is to say in response. The Prince ponders his fondness for Concetta, which is based in her apparent submissiveness and placidity. However, he has also noticed the occasional flash of steel in her eyes when she doesn't get what she wants. Narration also describes his thoughts of Tancredi, whose charm and ambition have left him destined for great things. However, Tancredi's ambitions may require more money than Concetta will bring as her dowry. Keeping his thoughts to himself, the Prince decrees that Father Pirrone is to tell Concetta that the Prince will discuss it with her later. However, this will only be when he's certain that "it's not all just the fancy of a romantic girl." After a nap, the Prince goes out into the garden, where his contemplations of an erotic statue are interrupted by Tancredi's teasing about sex, comments which also apply to a small crop of beautifully ripe peaches in a nearby grove. The Prince uneasily changes the subject, and he and Tancredi gossip their way back to the house, where they join the rest of the family and the arriving dinner guests. Soon after, Don Calogero arrives, and the Prince is relieved to see that he's dressed quite tastelessly. His relief ends abruptly when Angelica arrives - he finds her attractive enough to feel the stir of lust. Tancredi, unusually for a young man so fond of female beauty, merely returns to his conversation, but Pirrone, looking through his Bible, spends the rest of the evening reading the stories of Delilah, Judith and Esther, all women who manipulated their men through sensuality. Narration of this section begins with a detailed description of the dinner's first course. As the guests each enjoy their food, narration comments that they did so "because sensuality was circulating in the room..." This sensuality, narration adds, emanates from Angelica, who flirts openly with Tancredi—who, in his turn, finds himself attracted to both Angelica's beauty and her money. For her part, Concetta is enraged. At the conclusion of dinner, Tancredi flirtatiously tells the enraptured Angelica stories from his battles with the Redshirts, including a raucous story about an incursion into a convent in the company of a man named Tassoni. Scandalized, Concetta berates her cousin for being ill-mannered and turns her back on him. The following day, the Prince and his family uphold a centuries-old family tradition and visit a convent founded by a female ancestor. Narration details the reasons why the Prince is one of only two men allowed to enter the convent. While everyone is waiting for admission, Tancredi suddenly announces his wish to go into the convent as well, saying that a particular interpretation of the rules would allow it. Before the Prince can respond, Concetta makes cutting comments about how Tancredi has already been in a convent. Before Tancredi can respond, and before the Prince can absorb the meaning of Concetta's words, the nuns open the door. After his visit, the Prince is surprised to learn from Father Pirrone that Tancredi has left after remembering an urgent letter he had to send. After returning from the convent, the Prince looks out his window at Donnafugata's town square and spies Tancredi, dressed in his, "seduction color," of Prussian blue. He is carrying a box of peaches from the grove and is seen to knock on the door of the Serdàras household. This chapter begins with a lyrically-written introduction to the silent, still, dim, early morning world at Donnafugata in which the Prince likes to walk with Bendicò. Narration then describes how Tancredi writes every week, but never to Concetta and always with comments that he would like the Prince to pass on to Angelica, who, in turn, visits every day, pretending to come to see the girls but in reality to learn news of Tancredi. All the while, the Prince is becoming more and more uneasy with the unaccustomed tact he has to employ with the rest of the family and with the world at large since the revolution. Narration likens his unease to that of a modern man accustomed to leisurely trips in a small airplane who suddenly finds him on a fast trip in a jet. One particular day a letter arrives from Tancredi in which he asks the Prince to ask Angelica's father for her hand in marriage. He uses several arguments to convince the Prince to do so, among them being she will bring money into the family and guarantee that the family will continue to have status in the new kingdom of Italy. The Prince finds himself agreeing with many of Tancredi's points, and takes a little second-hand sensual pleasure in knowing that he'll soon be able to enjoy seeing Angelica more often. The next morning, the Prince, in the company of his usual morning companions, Don Ciccio (the organist) and Bendicò, takes his gun with him on his walk and shoots a rabbit. "The animal had died tortured by anxious hopes of salvation, imagining it could still escape when it was already caught, just like so many human beings." Later, the Prince and Ciccio eat their picnic lunch and settle down for a nap. Meanwhile, Garibaldi and his Redshirts are fighting hard at the Siege of Gaeta, where they feel the same breeze ruffling their hair as well. Instead of sleeping, however, the Prince finds himself contemplating the recent Plebiscite, a vote taken on the question of whether Sicily should politically join with the new Italian Kingdom. The Prince remembers how windy and dusty it was on the day of the vote, and how he couldn't decide which way to mark his ballot. Eventually he voted "yes," and then recalls the celebrations which greeted the result — a unanimous vote in favor. Back in the present, the Prince contemplates what he believes to be the historical significance of the vote and also its deeper meaning. This leads him to ask Ciccio how he voted in the Plebiscite. At first reluctant, Don Ciccio finally admits that, as the son of a Bourbon royal game keeper, he could not bring himself to vote in favor of the revolution. Many others in Donnafugata voted the same way, but Don Calogero rigged the election and announced the results as unanimously in favor of the House of Savoy. The Prince ponders that the new regime, by rigging elections throughout the island, has strangled whatever goodwill they once possessed in Sicily. He finally asks Don Ciccio what the people of Donnafugata really think of Don Calogero. Don Ciccio speaks at angry length of how many people despise Don Calogero in spite of, or perhaps because of, his embodiment of a harsh reality - that "every coin spent in the world must end in someone's pocket." Don Calogero, a peasant moneylender, eloped with Angelica's mother, who was the daughter of a penniless Salina tenant. Don Calogero's father-in-law vowed revenge, but his corpse was later found, shot nine times in the back. Although scandalized by Don Ciccio's stories, the Prince at last asks the question that's really on his mind—what is Angelica truly like? Ciccio speaks rapturously of her beauty, poise, and sophistication, and then speaks about how her parents' vulgarity seems to have not affected her. The Prince bristles, and informs Don Ciccio that from now on, because Angelica and Tancredi are to be married, the Serdàras must be spoken about with appropriate respect. Ciccio, who has believed that Tancredi was attempting seduce Angelica in order to embarrass her father, is horrified. He bursts out that for Tancredi and Angelica to marry will cause the end of the good qualities of the Salina and Falconieri families. The Prince thinks to himself, however, that the marriage will not be the end, but the beginning. As the Prince and Don Ciccio return to Donnafugata, it impossible to tell which of them is Don Quixote and which is Sancho Panza. The Prince takes his time dressing for his meeting with Don Calogero, and when he finally goes downstairs, he has a vision of the two of them as animals. Their conversation is, for the most part, polite, with both men making occasional slips into tactlessness but both ultimately making the truths of the situation quite apparent. For the Prince, that truth involves Tancredi's excellent lineage but extreme poverty, while for Calogero the truth involves his wealth, which is much greater than the Prince ever realized, and the fact that Don Calogero is in final negotiations to purchase the title of Baroness for his daughter. After agreement is reached that the marriage is to proceed, Don Calogero departs to consult with Angelica, who, he is convinced, will agree to the marriage. The Prince goes to bed, passing the room where his daughters are playing. Several of them notice him and smile, but Concetta "was embroidering and, not hearing her father's steps, did not even turn." Narration then describes how, as preparations for the wedding between Tancredi and Angelica progressed, the Prince and Calogero became more like each other - the Prince became more ruthless in his business dealings, while Calogero saw the value of good manners and better grooming. Calogero, narration suggests, began "that process of continual refining which in the course of three generations transforms innocent peasants into defenseless gentry." Narration also describes, in a tone that is at times enraptured and at other times pointedly cynical, Angelica's first visit to the Prince and his family following her betrothal to Tancredi. Dressed beautifully, she makes her entrance with perfect timing, and immediately endears herself to the Prince by embracing him and calling him a nickname given to him by Tancredi. Only Bendico, growling in a corner, seems unhappy to see her. Finally, narration also describes how Angelica, as she's listening, coolly considers the financial and sexual prosperity that awaits them, and comments that, within a few years of the marriage, Angelica will become one of the great political kingmakers of the Italian Kingdom. A week or so later, the family's quiet evening is interrupted by the sudden and unexpected arrival of Tancredi, who has brought a friend with him (Count Carlo). After taking a few minutes to dry off and change, Tancredi and the Count come into the family drawing room, now in their full dress uniforms, which fascinate the Prince's daughters and puzzle the Prince, who says he thought they were still fighting for Garibaldi. Tancredi and the Count react with disgust, saying there was no way they could stay with such a rough outfit when positions with the new king's army were available. Tancredi then produces the ring he has purchased for Angelica with money sent to him by the Prince. A moment later, Angelica rushes in, having been informed by a note that Tancredi is back. The lovers embrace; sensuality fills the air, and narration describes in detail what Tancredi feels at that moment. Narration then describes in complex, poetic detail how love and sensuality fill the subsequent days at Donnafugata. The Count dreamily, and ineffectually, pursues Concetta, while Concetta's younger sisters (Carolina and Caterina) dream romantically of Tancredi and the Count, and Tancredi and Angelica spend their time exploring the palace's many rooms, each of which contains some representation of a leopard, the family insignia. Narration describes how, on several occasions, Tancredi and Angelica are tempted to give in to their mutual sensual desire, but never do... and how this idyllic time of romantic, intimate gaming between them was a happy prelude to the miserable, unsuccessful marriage that followed. One day during this idyllic time, a government representative (Chevalley di Monterzuolo) arrives and tells the Prince that because of his aristocratic background and social influence, the government wants him to sit as a chosen (as opposed to elected) member of the Senate, where he would both advise and monitor the government. At first, the Prince is quite silent, leading Chevalley to attempt to flatter him into accepting the offer (see "Quotes", p. 163) - an attempt that doesn't work. The Prince explains at increasingly intense, often poetic length, why he, like other Sicilians, has no interest in being involved in government. "In Sicily," he says, "it doesn't matter about doing things well or badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is simply that of 'doing' at all." He goes on to describe how Sicily's ways of thinking and being and doing are those of an old tired society that doesn't want to change. "This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything ... all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind." Chevalley makes one more attempt at persuasion, but the Prince tells him that Sicilians think they're gods and don't need to change and/or improve their status. "Their vanity," he says, "is stronger than their misery." The following morning, the Prince accompanies Chevalley to the station. As they walk through the streets of early morning Donnafugata, both of them overwhelmed by the squalor and despair surrounding them, both men think the situation has got to change, but where Chevalley believes it will, the Prince is convinced it won't. As the chapter draws to a close, Chevalley wipes the grime off the carriage's window. "The landscape lurched to and fro, irredeemable." Father Pirrone visits his home village, where he is welcomed with teary embraces and warm, friendly memories. Much in the village has changed since the arrival of the Garibaldi. The land, which was previously owned by a Benedictine monastery, has been seized and sold to a peasant monylender. Many of the villagers complain to Father Pirrone about their new landlord. Although the monks permitted their tenants to gather herbs on their land for free, the new landowner demands payment for the privilege. During a conversation with a childhood friend, Father Pirrone enters a lengthy speech explaining why the Prince and other aristocrats don't really have any reaction one way or the other to the events of the revolution. - They "live in a world of their own ... all they live by has been handled by others". He concludes by saying that the feelings and attitudes that give rise to class consciousness never truly die. His elderly mother comes in, jokes about how he's still talking even though his friend has fallen asleep, and helps him get his visitor home. As he prepares for bed, Pirrone thinks that God is the only being who could have devised a life with so many complications. The next day, Pirrone finds his sister Sarina in tears in the kitchen, and gets her to admit that her daughter Angelina (whom Pirrone mentally compares to the beautiful Angelica and finds wanting) has been impregnated outside of wedlock. The father, she confesses furiously, is the girl's first cousin, Santino, the son of Pirrone and Sarina's paternal uncle. Father Pirrone ponders the long-standing family feud between Pirrone's father and his uncle, a feud which, Pirrone believes, will make coping with this particular situation particularly difficult. He believes, however, that God has brought him home to bring it to an end. After saying Mass, he goes to visit his uncle and manipulates both him and Santino into accepting what he proposes as the terms of marriage. He also arranges for them to come see Angelina and her family that evening. Back home, Father Pirrone persuades Angelina's grudging father into agreeing to the terms of marriage by sacrificing his own inheritance. Santino and his father arrive; the marriage is contracted, and the young people are happy. Later, while travelling back to the Salina Palace, Father Pirrone is certain that Santino and his father planned Angelina's seduction so they could get their hands on property they believed was rightfully theirs, and also realizes that the nobility and the peasants are, at least on one level, far more similar than he once thought. The Prince, the Princess, Concetta and Carolina prepare to attend a ball, one of the most important of the busy Palermo social season. The Prince is both excited and concerned about the evening to come—excited because it will be the first time Angelica and her beauty are to be presented to the public. However, he remains concerned that Don Calogero will make a complete fool of both himself and the Salinas. When Angelica (looking beautiful) and Don Calogero (looking acceptable) arrive shortly after, Angelica, thanks to detailed training in etiquette given to her by Tancredi, makes a huge social success. The Prince, after being satisfied that Angelica has been accepted, wanders through the rooms of the Palazzo Ponteleone where the ball is being held, becoming increasingly gloomy at the callowness of the young men, the boredom in the older men, and the silliness of the girls. The Prince also contemplates the mythological frescoes on the ceiling. "They thought themselves eternal," narration writes, "but a bomb manufactured in Pittsburgh, Penn[sylvania] was to prove the contrary in 1943." When the Prince notices Tancredi and Angelica dancing happily together, oblivious to the other's desperation, ambition, and greed. As he watches, the Prince comes to realize and accept, if only for a moment, that whatever happiness the lovers feel is to be celebrated, no matter what. Therefore, he slips into the library. There the Prince contemplates a painting by Greuze entitled "Death of the Just Man," and considers his own death. His thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of Tancredi and Angelica, who are taking a break from the dancing. As they speak playfully of the painting and of death, and as the Prince smilingly realizes how truly young they are, Angelica asks him to dance with her. Flattered, the Prince agrees. They are a successful couple and dance well, with the Prince's memory flashing back to the days of his youth "when, in that very same ballroom he had danced with [the Princess] before he knew disappointment, boredom, and the rest." As the dance finishes, he realizes the other dancers have stopped and are watching them, his "leonine air" preventing the onlookers from bursting into applause. Angelica asks him to eat with her and Tancredi, and for a flattered moment almost says yes, but then again remembers his youth, recalls how embarrassing it would have been for him to have an old relative eating with him and a lover, and politely excuses himself. "The ball," narration states, "went on until six in the morning..."--well past the time of general fatigue but just late enough for goodbyes that didn't insult the hosts. The Prince sees his family into their carriages, saying he wants to walk home and get some air. As he walks, he is passed by a cart loaded with gut-spilling bulls fresh from the slaughter house and dripping blood onto the road. Further on, he looks at the stars to the west, see Venus there (see "Quotes", p. 219), and wonders when they, and Venus in particular, will reawaken in him a sense of love and joy. For years, the Prince has felt he that he is dying, "as if the vital fluid ... life itself in fact and perhaps even the will to go on living, were ebbing out of him ... as grains of sand cluster and then line up one by one, unhurried, unceasing, before the narrow neck of an hourglass." A last minute visit to a doctor has tired him so much that it is decided that he should not go back to the villa outside Palermo, but shall stay in a hotel inside the city itself. As he settles into the hotel, the Prince contemplates the fates of several of his family members—Tancredi's political success in the new Kingdom of Italy, the deaths of Father Pirrone from old age, of Princess Maria from diabetes, and of Paolo after being thrown by a horse. He also recalls the maturation and dignity of Concetta—who, he realizes, is the true heir of what was noble and enduring of the Salina family. He dismisses Paolo's son and biological heir, Fabrizietto as dissolute, shallow, and aimless. As the Prince receives the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, he considers the joys (sensual, spiritual, political and animal - in particular, the loving and playful Bendicò) and the sorrows (political, sexual, and familial) he's experienced, concluding that out of the seventy-three years he's been alive, he has only fully lived three of them. In his last moments, as his family gathered round, he sees a young woman appear - beautiful, exquisitely dressed, sensitive, and smiling lovingly. Narration describes her in terms identical to those in which it describes a beautiful woman glimpsed at the train station on the way back to Palermo—in other words, death was present in his life even then. As the woman helps him to his feet, he sees her face, and to him she appears "lovelier than she ever had when glimpsed in stellar space." This chapter begins with a reference to "the old Salina ladies," three elderly sisters whose right to have private masses in their home is, as the chapter begins, being investigated by representatives of the Archdiocese of Palermo. That investigation, narration suggests, is being undertaken because the ladies have certain relics in their home that, according to rumor, may not be authentic. Eventually, narration reveals the ladies are the three daughters of the Prince—the authoritarian Concetta, the blunt-spoken Carolina, and the paralyzed Caterina. As the priests enter the chapel, they are surprised to see a sensuously-painted "Madonna" hanging behind the altar, and walls lined with relics. Narration describes how the sisters collected these relics through an intermediary, Donna Rosa, to whom Caterina and Carolina sometimes confessed their dreams of saints and who, sometimes within a week or two of hearing the dreams, miraculously produced a relic of the dreamed-of saint. "Then," narration adds, "Donna Rosa died, and the influx of relics stopped almost completely." When they leave the chapel, the priests speak among themselves about how so many of the relics seem to be of doubtful origin, while the painting appears to be secular and lascivious, and not a painting of the Blessed Virgin as the three sisters claim. After the priests depart, Concetta retires to her bedroom, where she keeps several locked boxes of decaying mementos of her past, including the skin of her father's dog Bendicò, which had been made into a rug and which is now completely moth-eaten. There, because she is the most pragmatic of the three sisters, she foresees what is about to happen—the confiscation of the relics and the painting, the re-consecration of the chapel, the inevitable spreading of stories of the Salinas' humiliation, and the equally inevitable destruction of what's left of the family's reputation and prestige. Her thoughts are interrupted by a footman announcing the arrival of Princess Angelica Falconeri. Concetta steels herself and goes down to meet her. The well-preserved Angelica, widowed after Tancredi's death a few years before and already suffering from the disease which will, "transform her into a wretched specter," meets Concetta in the sitting room. She chattily tells Concetta of her plans for celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Garibaldi invasion and speaks in a denigrating manner of the "clericalists," who still believe that the Risorgimento was not the best thing for the Church or the Sicilian people. Angelica also promises to use her influence with the Cardinal to keep the family's embarrassment from going public. In addition, Angelica informs Concetta that an old friend is coming to call. Senator Tassoni is a veteran of Garibaldi's Redshirts, a close friend and confidant of Tancredi, and former illicit lover of Angelica. Tassoni is shown in, and after speaking flatteringly of how well Tancredi spoke of her, confesses to Concetta that one night Tancredi tearfully confessed to him that he had once told a lie to her, namely the story about the Redshirts' raid on a convent. Tassoni adds that Tancredi had carried the guilt of offending her with him all his life. After Tassoni and Angelica depart, the horrified Concetta sees Tancredi in a radically different light. What she had once believed was a vulgar attempt to seduce Angelica was really a momentary lapse of judgment. Tancredi loved only her and never ceased to regret marrying Angelica. She also realizes that Tancredi's attempt to enter the convent was in reality a subtle marriage proposal directed to her. It was only her angry rejection which caused him to marry another woman. After fifty years, Concetta is at last stripped of the comfort of blaming her father and cousin for her own mistakes. The following day, the Cardinal inspects the palace chapel and orders the sisters to replace the painting behind the altar, stating that it does not depict the Blessed Virgin but a woman reading a letter from her lover. He leaves behind a priestly antiquarian to examine the relics and determine which are genuine. A few hours later the priest emerges with a basket full of forged relics and the news that only the few which remain are genuine. As he departs, Caterina furiously comments that Pope Pius X, "must be a Turk." Carolina, however, is left in a faint. Meanwhile, Concetta returns to her room, and contemplates her possessions there with new perspective. Even the few relics which she once cherished are now only reminders of a life unfulfilled. She also realizes that an unpleasant smell is coming from what remains of the Bendicò rug, and orders it thrown out. "During the flight from the window, its form recomposed itself for an instant; in the air there seemed to be dancing a quadruped with long whiskers, its right foreleg raised in imprecation. Then all found peace in a heap of livid dust." |
The Dalkey Archive | Flann O'Brien | null | The book features a mad scientist, De Selby, who tries to destroy the world by removing all the oxygen from the air. He has also many strange inventions. He exploits the theory of relativity and invents a kind of time travelling machine, which he uses to age his whiskey, creating brews that have been aged for many decades in just a few hours. Saint Augustine and James Joyce both have speaking parts in the novel. James Joyce, after forging his own obituary to escape being drafted to fight in the Second World War, was serving pints in a small pub. Saint Augustine, on the other hand, appeared in a magical underwater cave and held a conversation with De Selby. The mad scientist De Selby leads the two main characters, Hackett and Mick, to the cave, to witness this conversation. Many prominent elements of the book, particularly De Selby himself, the eccentric policemen, and the atomic theory of the bicycle, were taken from O'Brien's much earlier novel The Third Policeman, because he had not been able to find a publisher for it. The latter novel was published posthumously. fr:L'Archiviste de Dublin |
Wonder Boys | Michael Chabon | 1,995 | Pittsburgh professor and author Grady Tripp is working on an unwieldy 2,611 page manuscript that is meant to be the follow-up to his successful, award-winning novel The Land Downstairs, which was published seven years earlier. On the eve of a college-sponsored writers and publishers weekend called WordFest, two monumental things happen to Tripp: his wife walks out on him, and he learns that his mistress, who is also the chancellor of the college, Sara Gaskell, is pregnant with his child. To top it all off, Tripp finds himself involved in a bizarre crime committed by one of his students, an alienated young writer named James Leer. During a party, Leer shoots and kills the chancellor’s dog and steals her husband’s prized Marilyn Monroe collectible: the jacket worn by the actress on the day of her marriage to Joe DiMaggio. |
The Eagle's Conquest | Simon Scarrow | 2,001 | The book opens immediately after the events of Under the Eagle, with the troops relaxing and watching prisoners of war fight to the death in a makeshift arena. Cato is bequeathed an ivory-hilted sword by the chief centurion, who was mortally wounded in the ambush and respected Cato for his tenacity. Meanwhile, the legate of the legion, Vespasian, worries about his wife Flavia back in Rome; she has connections to a group of revolutionaries called ‘The Liberators’, who want the feeble-minded Emperor Claudius out of power. Soon afterwards the Second Legion moves off again, heading to the River Meadway (present-day Medway river, in Kent). As the Britons under Caratacus have heavily fortified the opposite bank, Macro and Cato are ordered to scout ahead, to see if there is a ford upstream. Cato finds one, and the next day the attack goes in. The Ninth Legion, supported by artillery fire from triremes on the river, crosses and assault the enemy ramparts. After sustaining heavy losses, the attack falters, and only the Second Legion’s intervention saves the day. Using the ford upstream, the legionaries are able to surprise the Britons and attack them from behind, overrunning their encampment; Cato is badly burned when he accidentally spills a cauldron of boiling water over himself. While recuperating, he strikes up a friendship with the North African surgeon, a Carthaginian called Nisus. They discover that the slingshot the British have been using comes from the Legionary stores, and is linked to the Liberators. There is a traitor high up in the army’s chain of command. Over the next few days, the British are pushed back to the North Kent marshes, on the banks of the Tamesis (or Thames). Vespasian’s legion is ordered to clear the southern bank in preparation for a crossing, but as twilight approaches, the Second Legion is scattered and lost in the marshes. Macro’s unit, with Cato in tow, are ambushed by a warband; Macro holds the Britons at bay while Cato and a handful of men escape by boat. When the roll-call is held, Macro is declared missing, presumed dead. Cato, in a fit of anguish, volunteers to be in the first wave of the troops crossing the river. It is a suicide mission, and he does not expect to live, but he is able to survive long enough for the second wave of Romans to reach him. Macro reappears, having survived his ordeal in the marshes; he chastises Cato for being a fool. Cato renews his friendship with Nisus the surgeon, who lets slip some of his bitterness at being a Carthaginian in the Roman army. Meanwhile, the army has received orders to halt on the far side of the Thames so that Emperor Claudius can arrive and take command in person for the final assault in the British capital at Camulodunum; this is intended to boost his popularity with the mob in Rome. While waiting for the Emperor to arrive, Vitellius, the evil tribune, is plotting to assassinate him. He enlists Nisus, playing on his Carthaginian patriotism, and uses him as a liaison with the British tribes who resist Rome. Unfortunately, while crossing the lines one night, Nisus is accidentally killed by a sentry, and Cato, who is present, takes a bandage from his body; it is covered in strange markings and Cato thinks these are worth investigating. All thought of it is put out of his mind, however, when Claudius arrives, escorted by the Praetorian Guard and elephants to overawe the Britons. He insists on taking charge in the coming battle; despite the Emperor’s buffoonery, the final battle is won and the legions march into Camulodunum. To celebrate ‘his’ victory, Claudius orders a lavish banquet to be held in his honour. Legate Vespasian finally gets to spend some time with his wife, and Cato renews his relationship with the slave girl Lavinia. Unfortunately, she is allied to Vitellius, having consorted with him previously whilst in the ownership of Tribune Plinius. She agrees to smuggle an ornate dagger into the banquet hall, believing it to be a gift for the Emperor. Before she does this, she decides to break up with Cato, who is aware that she is cheating on him with Vitellius. While she does this, Cato is fiddling with the late Nisus’s bandage, which he has in his pocket. When it is rolled up in a certain way, the markings become a coded message; Cato is only able to discover that it concerns a plot to kill the emperor before he is knocked out by Lavinia, who read on ahead and saw Vitellius’ name. When he is woken by Macro, Lavinia has disappeared. The only hope of saving the emperor is to warn Vespasian, who is at the feast, and hope he believes them. They get there in time to see Vitellius and Lavinia being presented to the emperor; while Claudius is distracted by Lavinia’s charms, a supposedly loyal Briton leaps at the emperor with a dagger. Thanks to Cato’s intervention, the German bodyguards are able to catch the assassin and mortally wound him. Vitellius finishes him off before he can talk, and discretely murders Lavinia as he leaves. A distraught Cato is taken away by Macro before he is recognised as the emperor’s saviour, and Vitellius, as in the last book, gets all the credit. He is given a position on the Emperor’s staff, and leaves with Claudius for Rome, leaving the legions to pacify the last remnants of resistance. Vespasian is tasked with an independent command for the coming months; clearing the south bank of the Thames of resistance. As for Cato, he is distracted by Macro, who promises to introduce him to his latest conquest - a young Briton called Boudicca… |
Brighton Rock | Graham Greene | null | Charles "Fred" Hale comes to Brighton on assignment to anonymously distribute cards for a newspaper competition (this is a variant of "Lobby Lud" in which the name of the person to be spotted is "Kolley Kibber"). The antihero of the novel, Pinkie Brown, is a teenage sociopath and up-and-coming gangster. Hale had betrayed the former leader of the gang Pinkie now controls, by writing an article in the Daily Messenger about a slot machine racket for which the gang were responsible. Ida Arnold, a plump, kind-hearted and decent woman, is drawn into the action by a chance meeting with the terrified Hale after he has been threatened by Pinkie's gang. After being chased through the streets and lanes of Brighton, Hale accidentally meets Ida again on the Palace Pier, but eventually Pinkie murders Hale. Pinkie's subsequent attempts to cover his tracks and remove evidence of Hale's Brighton visit lead to a chain of fresh crimes and to an ill-fated marriage to a waitress called Rose who unknowingly has the power to destroy his alibi. Ida decides to pursue Pinkie relentlessly, because she believes it is the right thing to do, and also to protect Rose from the deeply disturbed boy she has married. Although ostensibly an underworld thriller, the book is also a challenge to Roman Catholic doctrine concerning the nature of sin and the basis of morality. Pinkie and Rose are Catholics, as was Greene, and their beliefs are contrasted with Ida's strong but non-religious moral sensibility. Main characters *Pinkie: The anti-hero of the story, merciless to his victims, simultaneously obsessed with and repulsed by sex and human connection. He is the leader of 'the mob' despite being the youngest at 17. *Dallow: Pinkie's second in command - the only member of the mob Pinkie feels he can confide in. *Cubitt Another mob member who lives at 'Frank's' with Pinkie and Dallow. He leaves the gang when Pinkie reveals that he (Pinkie) killed Spicer. *Spicer: An aging mob member resident at Frank's . From the beginning he expresses discomfort with the gang's increasing violence. Pinkie's mistrust of him leads to him being murdered by Pinkie for fear of him being 'milky' and leaking incriminating information to Ida Arnold or the Police. *Rose: A poor, modest, and naive girl who becomes Pinkie's girlfriend and wife. She is also a Roman Catholic like Pinkie and falls in love with him despite his advances on her being purely to keep her from giving incriminating evidence. Pinkie is usually repulsed by her but later has the occasional feeling of tenderness towards her. *Ida Arnold: Ida takes up the role of the detective, hunting down Pinkie to bring justice to Hale. Although this is her original motive, when she finds out that Pinkie is marrying Rose she does so to save the girl. Ida represents the force of justice in this novel, and in contrast to Pinkie and Rose is on the side of 'Right and Wrong'. She acquires information from Cubitt once he is cast out of the gang which significantly aids her investigation. |
Winter Kills | Richard Condon | 1,974 | Before the main story of the novel begins, U.S. President Timothy Kegan is shot in Philadelphia at Hunt Plaza. The ensuing presidential commission condemns a lone gunman as the killer. The book starts years later, when Kegan's half-brother, Nick, witnesses the death-bed confession of a man claiming to have been part of the 'hit squad'. As the protagonist attempts to find the plotter(s), he encounters numerous groups and persons that could have led or been part of the conspiracy. One person is Lola Camonte, a hostess, lobbyist and fixer. She recounts the story of President Kegan asking her about appointing a member of organized crime to the Court of St. James. The character "Joe Diamond" is the fictional representation of Jack Ruby. Condon's book describes the numerous intertwined threads of the conspiracy, from the Mafia, Cuba, even possible domestic police connections. Only in the final act, in which Nick meets with his vicious and perverse Joseph P. Kennedy-like 'father-figure', is the truth revealed with a twist ending. |
Notes from Underground | Fedor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoïevski | 1,864 | The novel is divided into two parts. It consists of an introduction, three main sections and a conclusion. (i) The short introduction propounds a number of riddles whose meanings will be further developed. (1) Chapters two, three and four deal with suffering and the enjoyment of suffering; (2) chapters five and six with intellectual and moral vacillation and with conscious "inertia"-inaction; (3) chapters seven through nine with theories of reason and logic; (c) the last two chapters are a summary and a transition into Part 2. War is described as people's rebellion against the assumption that everything needs to happen for a purpose, because humans do things without purpose, and this is what determines human history. Secondly, the narrator's desire for happiness is exemplified by his liver pain and toothache. This parallels Raskolnikov's behavior in Dostoyevsky's later novel, Crime and Punishment. He says that, due to the cruelty of society, human beings only moan about pain in order to spread their suffering to others. He builds up his own paranoia to the point he is incapable of looking his co-workers in the eye. The main issue for the Underground Man is that he has reached a point of ennui and inactivity. Unlike most people, who typically act out of revenge because they believe justice is the end, the Underground Man is conscious of his problems, feels the desire for revenge, but he does not find it virtuous; this incongruity leads to spite and spite towards the act itself with its concomitant circumstances. He feels that others like him exist, yet he continuously concentrates on his spitefulness instead of on actions that would avoid the problems he is so concerned with. He even admits at one point that he’d rather be inactive out of laziness. The first part also gives a harsh criticism of determinism and intellectual attempts at dictating human action and behavior by logic, which the Underground Man mentions in terms of a simple math problem two times two makes four (see also necessitarianism). He states that despite humanity’s attempt to create the "Crystal Palace," a reference to a famous symbol of utopianism in Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?, one cannot avoid the simple fact that anyone at any time can decide to act in a way which might not be considered good, and some will do so simply to validate their existence and to protest and confirm that they exist as individuals. For good as a general term is subjective and in the case of the Underground Man the good here he's ridiculing is enlightened self-interest (egoism, selfishness). It is this position being depicted as logical and valid that the novel's protagonist despises. Since his romantic embracing of this ideal, he seems to blame it for his current base unhappiness. This type of rebellion is critical to later works of Dostoyevsky as it is used by adolescents to validate their own existence, uniqueness, and independence (see Dostoyevsky's The Adolescent). Rebellion in the face of the dysfunction and disorder of adult experience that one inherits when reaching adulthood under the understanding of tradition and society. In other works, Dostoyevsky again confronts the concept of free will and constructs a negative argument to validate free will against determinism in the character Kirillov's suicide in his novel The Demons. Notes from Underground marks the starting point of Dostoyevsky's move from psychological and sociological themed novels to novels based on existential and general human experience in crisis. The second part is the actual story and consists of three main segments that lead to a furthering of the Underground Man's consciousness. The first is his obsession with an officer who physically moves him out of the way without a word or warning. He sees the officer on the street and thinks of ways to take revenge, eventually deciding to bump into him, which he does, finding to his surprise that the officer does not seem to even notice it happened. The second segment is a dinner party with some old school friends to wish Zverkov, one of their number, goodbye as he is being transferred out of the city. The underground man hated them when he was younger, but after a random visit to Simonov’s, he decides to meet them at the appointed location. They fail to tell him that the time has been changed to six instead of five, so he arrives early. He gets into an argument with the four after a short time, declaring to all his hatred of society and using them as the symbol of it. At the end, they go off without him to a secret brothel, and, in his rage, the underground man follows them there to confront Zverkov once and for all, regardless if he is beaten or not. He arrives to find Zverkov and company have left, but, it is there that he meets Liza, a young prostitute. The story cuts to Liza and the underground man lying silently in the dark together. The underground man confronts Liza with an image of her future, by which she is unmoved at first, but, she eventually realizes the plight of her position and how she will slowly become useless and will descend more and more, until she is no longer wanted by anyone. The thought of dying such a terribly disgraceful death brings her to realize her position, and she then finds herself enthralled by the underground man’s seemingly poignant grasp of society’s ills. He gives her his address and leaves. After this, he is overcome by the fear of her actually arriving at his dilapidated apartment after appearing such a "hero" to her and, in the middle of an argument with his servant, she arrives. He then curses her and takes back everything he said to her, saying he was, in fact, laughing at her and reiterates the truth of her miserable position. Near the end of his painful rage he wells up in tears after saying that he was only seeking to have power over her and a desire to humiliate her. He begins to criticize himself and states that he is in fact horrified by his own poverty and embarrassed by his situation. Liza realizes how pitiful he is and tenderly embraces him. The underground man cries out “They — they won't let me — I — I can’t be good!” After all this, he still acts terribly towards her, and, before she leaves, he stuffs a five ruble note into her hand, which she throws onto the table. He tries to catch her as she goes out onto the street but cannot find her and never hears from her again. He tries to stop the pain in his heart by "fantasizing", "And isn't it better, won't it be better?...Insult — after all, it's a purification; it's the most caustic, painful consciousness! Only tomorrow I would have defiled her soul and wearied her heart. But now the insult will never ever die within her, and however repulsive the filth that awaits her, the insult will elevate her, it will cleanse her..." He recalls this moment as making him unhappy whenever he thinks of it, yet again proving the fact from the first section that his spite for society and his inability to act like it makes him unable to act better than it. The concluding sentences recall some of the themes explored in the first part, and the work as a whole ends with a note from the author that while there was more to the text, "it seems that we may stop here." |
Now and Then | Joseph Heller | null | Heller describes his early passion for writing and some of the primary school papers that preview his adult fiction. Picking up late in high school, Heller reviews the various jobs he held before enlisting in the Air Force: telegram messenger boy, clerk at an insurance company, and blacksmith's helper in a shipyard. With World War II looming, Heller enlisted in the US Army Air Corps, where he served as a bombardier. Heller describes several of his fellow soldiers and the events that would later become part of Catch-22. Heller completed his required number of missions, was discharged, and was married to his first wife within five months. She accompanied him to college, which Heller attended on the GI Bill, but we learn very little about her. Heller describes his early attempts at writing fiction, which occurred while he worked as an English professor and ad copywriter, and reminds the reader of the many prominent American writers who have been unable to support themselves on their words alone. Heller provides interesting details from his life's story, but doesn't rehash any of his works. Catch-22 and Something Happened receive the most attention, while Picture This, God Knows, and Good as Gold receive brief mentions. The most insight Heller provides into his body of his work is a discussion in the penultimate chapter of his experience with psychoanalysis. Heller revisits his father's death in the chapter, and notes how so many of his works have a prominent, but not central, character's death described in the penultimate chapter (e.g., Snowden in Catch-22). Heller also discusses why the only emotional closeness that appears in his works is between father and son. (e.g., David and Absalom in God Knows) Heller provides an in-depth reason to the insanity that often lurks in people's minds. |
The Bear and the Dragon | Tom Clancy | 2,000 | Sergey Nickolayevich Golovko, the chairman of the SVR and friend of President Ryan, is being chauffeured to Moscow Centre in an armoured white Mercedes when somebody shoots at an identical car with an RPG7, killing the occupants. Due to the quick actions of his driver, a former Spetsnaz soldier, Golovko survives the incident. He is left to ponder whether the RPG was meant for him or not. Meanwhile, a CNN news crew in the People's Republic of China witnesses the murders of the Papal Nuncio to Beijing, Cardinal Benato de Milo, and a Chinese Baptist minister, Yu Fa An, when the two attempt to stop Chinese authorities from performing a forced abortion on one of Yu's followers. In reaction, an international boycott is imposed on China. With its economy already struggling due to recent military expansions, China hastens its planned invasion of Siberia to access newly discovered oil and gold fields. The operation includes an attempt to assassinate the Russian president, Grushavoy, and his top-ranking advisor. President Ryan persuades NATO to admit Russia, and promises assistance against China to President Grushavoy. When the Chinese enter Siberia, the Russians repel their invasion force with help from the United States and its NATO allies, causing heavy casualties on the Chinese side. The U.S. Navy attacks the Chinese mainland's coastal defenses and destroys much of the Chinese navy's aging fleet while it lies in port. Against his advisors' opinions, President Ryan decides to broadcast CNN's coverage of the war, plus direct feeds from U.S. reconnaissance drones, over a CIA website to counter the Chinese government's propaganda about the war's status and purpose. Beijing's increasingly desperate leaders decide to ready their ICBMs for a potential launch. A joint NATO-Russian special operations team led by Rainbow operative John Clark is dispatched to destroy them. The team destroys all but two of the Chinese missiles. Of the two that launch, one is shot down by an AH-64 Apache while the second heads toward Washington, D.C.. Ryan's family is evacuated, but Ryan himself decides at the last minute to stay behind on board a docked naval ship, the USS Gettysburg, which has an experimental anti-missile system. Ryan watches as the ship destroys the ICBM at the last possible moment. Late at night, a group of Chinese students, spurred on by what they have witnessed through the CIA website, march through Tiananmen Square and invade a Politburo meeting, setting the stage for an overthrow of the government. A reformist Politburo member, Fang Gan, takes over and arrests the rest of the Communist leadership, ordering an immediate withdrawal of Chinese forces from Siberia. Fang then holds an open discussion with student leaders that starts China's transition to democracy. The novel also carries a number of subplots, including an old Russian sniper credited with the initial discovery of gold in Siberia, a Russian Army general (who led the defense of the Bright Star facility in The Cardinal of the Kremlin) seeking to fully retrain his forces in time for the Chinese invasion, and a Japanese-American CIA agent who seduces Fang Gan's secretary into installing a computer program that collects sensitive government information. |
The 158-Pound Marriage | John Irving | 1,974 | The narrator (who never identifies himself by name) is a college professor and a relatively unsuccessful author of historical novels. While doing research in Vienna, Austria, he met Utch, an orphaned survivor of the German occupation and the Russian siege at the end of World War II. At the opening of the novel, the narrator and Utch are married with two children and live a relatively placid existence until, at a faculty party, they become acquainted with Severin Winter, a Viennese-born professor of German and coach of the school's wrestling team, and his wife Edith, a WASP from a privileged background (she met her husband in Vienna while on a buying trip for MOMA) who is an aspiring fiction writer. The narrator begins a mentor-protégé relationship with Edith, and soon the couples are sharing dinners and play-dates with their children. As the narrator becomes more attracted to Edith and Utch begins to fall for Severin, the couples begin trading spouses for sexual encounters at the end of their dinner dates. At first the affairs proceed smoothly, with emotional conflict submerged beneath sexual curiosity, but soon enough, obsessive love rears its ugly head, and the narrator begins to discover that the Winters have not been entirely honest with him and his wife about their motives for entering the affair. It is ultimately revealed that sometime prior to the events of the novel Severin had an affair with a teacher at the school, and when Edith discovered this she became furious and depressed. In an attempt to provide her with some emotional leverage against him Severin arranged for Edith to become sexually involved with the narrator, while he himself would sleep with Utch. This foursome soon thereafter fragments; Severin and Edith are able to repair their relationship and forgive each other for the pains they have inflicted on one another. The narrator and Utch, however, are a different story. The narrator had developed genuine feelings for Edith, and while she did seem to reciprocate them, at least to a small degree, he is left despondent after she ends their liaison to salvage her marriage to Severin. For her own part Utch had fallen completely in love with Severin and she is left devastated upon learning that he did not feel the same for her. Utch leaves and takes their children with her, returning to her native Austria to sort out her feelings; she also takes her husband's passport so that he cannot follow her. Edith and Severin likewise move to Austria, though it is revealed through the letters that Utch writes her husband that she and the Winters do not interact with each other. The novel ends with a small bit of hope for the narrator and Utch when she mails him his passport, indicating that she is now ready to mend their relationship. The sport of wrestling features prominently—the novel's title refers to the 158-pound weight class, which Severin Winter considers the most elite competitive weight—and a subplot eventually emerges involving Winter's protégé, a peculiar wrestling prodigy from Iowa who transfers to Winter's college because of its superior biology department and becomes a pawn in the fallout of the two couples' swinging relationship. de:Eine Mittelgewichts-Ehe fr:Un mariage poids moyen lt:Vidutinio svorio santuoka pl:Małżeństwo wagi półśredniej |
X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills | null | null | The story concerns a minister, the Reverend William Stryker, stirring up religious anti-mutant fervor and kidnapping Professor X in an attempt to eradicate all mutants. The heroes do not fight any costumed super-villains in the story; although Magneto is featured in the graphic novel, he is not the X-Men's foe in this story, but rather forms an alliance with them against William Stryker. The X-Men members featured in this story are Professor X, Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Ariel, the team at the time the story was published. Other characters who appear are Colossus' sister, Illyana Rasputin (after she is aged by Belasco, but before she adopts the identity of Magik and/or joins the New Mutants) and the X-Men's civilian ally and friend, Stevie Hunter. |
Entertaining Mr Sloane | Joe Orton | null | Act 1 Mr Sloane is a young man looking for a place to board, who happens by the home of Kath, a middle-aged landlady whose home is on the outskirts of a rubbish dump. Kath is eager to have Mr Sloane as a tenant at her home, which she shares with her nearly blind father. In getting to know Mr Sloane, Kath is open with Mr Sloane about a previous relationship she had, which led to her bearing a child, whom her brother insisted on her giving up for adoption as it was conceived out of wedlock. Mr Sloane reveals he is himself an orphan, though vague about his parents' death, aside from the fact they “passed away together.” Kath’s father has an immediate distrust of Mr Sloane, believing he is the same man who killed his employer some years earlier. After an altercation between Kemp and Sloane, resulting in Sloane being stabbed in the leg, Kath begins to make somewhat subtle advances toward the young man. When Mr Sloane attempts to reciprocate, Kath warns him facetiously not to betray his trust. Kathy’s brother Ed arrives soon after to find the visitor staying with his sister, much to his dismay. Kemp has an estranged relationship with his son as he found him to be "committing some kind of felony in the bedroom" as a teenager. Despite Ed’s initial opposition to Mr Sloane staying with his sister, after speaking with Sloane, Ed eventually relents and even goes so far as to offer him a job as his chauffeur. As Sloane recovers from his injury earlier in the evening, Kath returns wearing a transparent negligee and seemingly seduces Mr Sloane as the lights go down and Act One ends. Act 2 The action resumes 'some months later’ and begins with Mr Sloane recounting an evening in which a young woman gave him her telephone number. Kath ambiguously hints at her jealousy, before ultimately revealing she is pregnant and concerned that her brother will strongly disapprove. Ed arrives soon after and discovers that Mr Sloane had taken his car out joyriding the night before with his friends. Upon finding out that they also had a woman with them, Ed divulges that he feels women are crude, and misleading. Ed advises Sloane to pack his things as he will be on call as his assistant at all hours. When Sloane leaves the room to pack, Kemp mildly attempts to reconcile with his son, and conveys that Kath and Sloane have been sleeping together and believes Kath is now pregnant. When confronted, Sloane confirms he has been sleeping with Kath, but claims she “threw herself” at him. A short time later, Ed departs to buy cigarettes, and Kemp returns to confront Sloane as his employer’s murderer. Sloane eventually attacks Kemp, resulting in his death. Act 3 Upon finding his dead father, Ed is initially insistent that justice be served and Sloane be turned over to the police. However, Sloane persuades Ed to fabricate a story to make the death appear an accident, in exchange for his servitude. When Kath discovers the dead body, she is apprehensive to stray from the truth especially given Sloane’s intention to go and live with her brother. Sloane finds himself in a predicament: if he stays with Kath, Ed will report the murder to the authorities, and vice versa if he choses to leave with Ed. Ultimately, a compromise is reached that will result in the pair ‘sharing’ Mr. Sloane a few months at a time. |
Dilvish, the Damned | Roger Zelazny | 1,982 | Dilvish is the descendant of both elves and humans, a scion of a prominent Elven house and "the Human House that hath been stricken" which lost its peerage for mixing Elven and Human blood. Hundreds of years before the main story, he comes across a dark ritual being performed by the sorcerer Jelerak who is sacrificing a human girl. He attempts to stop the ritual but is turned into stone, with his soul banished to Hell. His body became a statue, and for many decades it resided within the square of a nearby town that he had formerly saved from enemy conquerors. When this town is again in need of a hero, their citizens' plight allows Dilvish the passage he needed to escape from Hell. He returns to the world of the living with his steed, the metal demon horse Black, and a burning desire for revenge against Jelerak, but must first repulse the assault against the endangered town. Dilvish then goes to call upon the Shoredan - a cursed people bound to his family. He searches for Jelerak in the Tower of Ice and finds the sorcerer's apprentice and his sister trapped there. The two of them believe him to be a servant of Jelerak sent to kill them. |
Red Shift | Alan Garner | 1,973 | In Roman times, Macey is an ex-soldier with a group of deserters. He has berserker fits in which he fights like ten men, using an old stone axe. Escaping from a local tribe, the "Cats" at Rudheath, the soldiers find a stockaded Cat village at Barthomley, which they pillage, killing all the inhabitants except for a young girl, whom they take as a slave. They try to "go tribal", pretending to be members of another tribe, the "Mothers", and settle on Mow Cop. This is a sacred site to the Cats, and the girl is their corn goddess. The Cats mine millstones on Mow Cop, and bring food as offerings. The soldiers think they have engineered a truce, but the girl poisons their food and they have hallucinations, killing themselves. Only Macey is spared, as he never touched the girl, who was raped and impregnated by the others. He and the girl leave together, but first he returns to Barthomley where he buries his talisman, the stone axe head, in the burial mound, asking forgiveness for killing so many villagers. The axe head is later found by Thomas Rowley. In the time of the English Civil War, Thomas Rowley lives in Barthomley with his wife Margery. They find a stone axe-head buried in an old mound, and call it a "thunderstone", believing it to have been created by lightning striking the ground. They intend to build it into a chimney to guard against future strikes. The village is besieged by Irish Royalist troops searching for John Fowler, the village head man who has sided with Parliament. The troops eventually kill Fowler and all the other men of the village. Thomas and Margery are rescued by Thomas Venables, a former villager with the Royalists who once desired Margery. He leads them to a shanty town settlement at Rudheath and tells them to go to his family on Mow Cop once Thomas is recovered from his wounds. They take the thunderstone with them and embed it in the chimney of their new home, where it is found by Tom and Jan. In the modern day Tom is a teenager living cooped up in a caravan at Rudheath with his parents. He is sustained by his relationship with his girlfriend Jan, who is leaving to become a student nurse in London. To keep their relationship alive they agree to meet regularly in the railway station at Crewe. One day they follow an ancient path from Crewe to the village of Barthomley. Returning next time on bicycles, they go further to Mow Cop, a hill dominated by a folly tower. Here they find a stone axe-head embedded in an old chimney. They decide to make it a symbol of their love. Tom and Jan have been avoiding sex, but Jan reveals that she had an affair while working as an au pair in Germany. After this, Tom becomes unstable. He insists on having sex with Jan, but having done this he becomes even more self-destructive and unbalanced. He tells Jan that he has donated the axe head to a museum, as it was a valuable Neolithic artifact. Their relationship dissolves and they bid a final farewell as Jan's train leaves again for London. Pieces of the three narratives are alternated in an inconsistent pattern, calling special attention to their similarities beyond the landscape: themes, circumstances, visual descriptions, and even lines of dialogue echo throughout. |
Herzog | Saul Bellow | 1,964 | Herzog is a novel set in 1964, in the United States, and is about the midlife crisis of a Jewish man named Moses E. Herzog. At the age of forty-seven, he is just emerging from his second divorce, this one particularly acrimonious. He has two children, one by each wife, who are growing up without him present. His career as a writer and as an academic has floundered. He is in a relationship with a vibrant woman, Ramona, but finds himself running away from commitment. Herzog's second marriage, to the demanding, manipulative Madeleine, has recently ended in a humiliating fashion. While still actively married, Madeleine convinced Moses to move her and their daughter Junie to Chicago, and to arrange for their best friends, Valentine and Phoebe Gersbach, to move as well, securing a solid job for Valentine. However, the plans were all a ruse, as Madeleine and Valentine were carrying on an affair behind Moses's back, and shortly after arriving in Chicago, Madeleine throws Herzog out, securing a restraining order (of sorts) against him, and attempting to have him committed to an asylum. Herzog spends much of his time mentally writing letters he never sends. These letters are aimed at friends, family members, and famous figures. The recipients may be dead, and Herzog has often never met these people. The one common thread is that Herzog is always expressing disappointment, either his own in the failings of others or their words, or apologizing for the way he has disappointed others. The novel opens with Herzog in his house in Ludeyville, a town in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. He is contemplating returning to New York to see Ramona, but instead flees to Martha's Vineyard to visit some friends. He arrives at their house, but writes a note – this one an actual note – saying that he has to leave: :"Not able to stand kindness at this time. Feeling, heart, everything in strange condition. Unfinished business." He heads to New York to start trying to finish that business, including regaining custody of his daughter, Junie. After spending a night with Ramona, he heads to the courthouse to meet his lawyer to discuss his plans, and ends up witnessing a series of tragicomic court hearings, including one where a woman is charged with beating her three-year-old to death by flinging him against a wall. Moses, already distraught after receiving a letter from Junie's babysitter about an incident where Valentine locked Junie in the car while he and Madeleine argued inside the house, heads to Chicago. He goes to his stepmother's house and picks up an antique pistol with two bullets in it, forming a vague plan of killing Madeleine and Valentine and running off with Junie. The plan goes awry when he sees Valentine giving Junie a bath and realizes that Junie is in no danger. The next day, after taking his daughter to the aquarium, Herzog is in a car accident and ends up charged with possession of a loaded weapon. His brother, the rational Will, picks him up and tries to get him back on his feet. Herzog heads to Ludeyville, where his brother meets him and tries to convince him to check himself into an institution. But Herzog, who had previously considered doing just that, is now coming to terms with his life. Ramona comes up to join him for a night – much to Will's surprise – and Herzog begins making plans to fix up the house, which, like his life, needs repair but is still structurally sound. Herzog closes by saying that he doesn't need to write any more letters. Through the flashbacks that litter the novel, other critical details of Herzog's life come to light, including his marriage to the stable Daisy and the existence of their son, Marco; the life of Herzog's father, a failure at every job he tried; and Herzog's sexual molestation by a stranger on a street in Montreal. |
The Business | Iain Banks | 1,999 | The book starts with a 4:37 a.m. phone call from Mike Daniels to Kathryn (Kate) Telman. He has been drugged, and about half of his teeth randomly and expertly extracted, just before an important meeting in Japan. The Business is a powerful (yet democratic) multinational commercial organisation, secretive (but not too sinisterly so), and very long-lived. It predates the Roman Catholic Church, and descends from a consortium of merchants in the Roman Empire which it even owned for sixty-six days (it hired a man to become emperor, but he lasted less than a month before being assassinated). It is now considering taking over a country in order to gain a seat at the United Nations. The story follows the heroine, Kate Telman, who is 38 and lusts after Stephen Buzetski, who is married. Starting from poverty, she has risen through the Business under the tutelage of her mentor, who adopted her at an early age, and her 'uncle Freddy', the man who invented the portable milk container (named the "chilp"). She is investigating a possible case of someone stealing from the company, starting with strange happenings at a silicon chip manufacturing plant. In Business-speak, they suspect they are being Couffabled, a term explained in chapter four. Although she discovers evidence of wrongdoing at a high level in the Business, she continues to believe in what they are doing as an organisation: "We're not a cover for the CIA. They're the Company, not the Business." She travels the world, at one point being summoned by a weapon-collecting higher-up in Nebraska to talk his nephew out of writing an incendiary anti-Islamic screenplay. A scene of the book takes place on a ship on its way to be broken up at a shipyard in Sonmiani Bay. She has several telephone conversations with her therapy-damaged friend Luce in California, who provides a cynical, suspicious, foul-mouthed counterpoint to Kate's goodheartedness. She is given a DVD of Stephen's wife having extramarital sex in an attempt to influence her. She also becomes involved in the acquisition of the small Himalayan country of Thulahn. Small and underdeveloped, bleak and vulnerable, the football pitch doubles as the airport, "the royal palace is heated by yak dung" and the "national sport is emigration". It resembles an exaggerated version of Bhutan. Under the Business's plan, Thulahn would be utterly changed, if not destroyed, and its people thrust into the modern world. Kate is given the job of negotiating with Thulahn's Crown Prince Suvinder Dzung, who falls in love with her. |
Halo: The Fall of Reach | Eric S. Nylund | 2,001 | The novel opens with the civilian Dr. Catherine Halsey and Lieutenant Jacob Keyes traveling to meet John, a six-year-old boy. Dr. Halsey reveals to Keyes that John is one of 150 children who possess rare genetic markers making them suitable for conscription into the SPARTAN-II program, a secret experiment with the aim of creating super soldiers for the UNSC to quell rebellions. Seventy-five of the children are kidnapped by operatives of the Office of Naval Intelligence and replaced by clones engineered to die of natural causes shortly thereafter. From this point on, the recruits are known only by their first name and a three digit number. John-117 and the rest of the children are drilled and trained by Franklin Mendez; John demonstrates leadership of his fellow Spartans leading to his promotion to squad leader. In 2525, the Spartans undergo a series of surgical enhancements which turn them into highly efficient super soldiers at the cost of crippling or killing more than half of the original seventy-five. The Spartans are also equipped with powerful MJOLNIR battle armor, designed to respond as quickly as the soldier's thoughts. John-117 is given the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer. The Spartans are highly successful, but they experience a priority shift after a collective of alien races known as the Covenant begin obliterating human colonies, declaring humanity's destruction as the will of the gods. Mendez leaves the group to train the next generation of Spartans as John and his comrades first face the Covenant. By 2552, the war against the Covenant is going poorly. The technological superiority of the Covenant means that space battles heavily favor the Covenant, and the UNSC can only win engagements by suffering tremendous losses. To prevent the discovery of Earth or other human colonies, Vice Admiral Cole creates the "Cole Protocol", which forbids direct slipspace jumps to Earth or any other population center and mandates the destruction of a ship before it can be captured by the Covenant. Jacob Keyes, now commander of the destroyer Iroquois, discovers four Covenant ships arriving at the Sigma Octanus System, and single-handedly destroys three of them; his heroics earn Keyes the rank of Captain. The Covenant proceed to overrun Sigma Octanus IV, searching for a mysterious ancient artifact. Despite a costly fight, the humans manage to repel the Covenant, and Keyes intercepts a coded Covenant transmission from the surface before the Covenant retreat. The Iroquois heads to Reach, unwittingly bringing a Covenant tracking device with it. Soon after, Keyes is given the command of the UNSC cruiser Pillar of Autumn for a secret mission; the Spartans are to capture one of the Covenant's religious leaders and barter a truce. Dr. Halsey also introduces John to the artificial intelligence Cortana, who would assist the Spartans by residing in their MJOLNIR armor. Before the mission can begin, however, Reach is attacked by a massive Covenant fleet. John and Cortana reach the Pillar of Autumn, but most of the other Spartans are presumed killed as the Covenant vitrify the surface of Reach, turning the landmasses into glass. Cortana initiates a slipspace course based on the ancient glyphs intercepted by the Covenant at Sigma Octanus, the course takes them to a massive ringworld known as Halo, setting the stage for the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. |
Halo: The Flood | William C. Dietz | null | The novel, like the video game it is based on, begins as the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace, discovering an unexpected massive ringworld hidden by a moon in orbit around a gas giant. In the system are a host of Covenant, who notice the lone ship. A Covenant leader forbids the fleet to fire on the Autumn, for fear of damaging the ring. Instead, they board and capture the ship. Meanwhile, technicians on the Autumn prepare for battle and awaken a single soldier from cryo sleep—a Spartan known as the Master Chief. The Covenant board the Autumn; deprived of defensive options, the Autumn's captain, Jacob Keyes, tells the crew to abandon ship. The Master Chief is entrusted with the artificial intelligence Cortana; given the wealth of tactical information the A.I. contains, Keyes cannot allow Cortana to fall into enemy hands. The Master Chief leaves for the surface of Halo in a lifeboat; other soldiers, including a squad of shock troops led by Antonio Silva and his second-in-command, Melissa McKay, land by special drop pods, and take a strategic bluff from the Covenant to use as a base of operations. Captain Keyes is captured by the Covenant, and taken aboard the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation; the Master Chief and a squad of Marines board the Truth and Reconciliation, rescuing the captain. Keyes has learned that the ringworld they are on has vast significance to the Covenant- they believe that "Halo", as they call the ring, is a weapon of unimaginable power. Escaping from the Covenant cruiser, Keyes gives the Master Chief the mission of finding the Control Room of Halo before the Covenant. The Master Chief and Cortana discover the location of the Control Room, and with the help of some Marines, insert Cortana into Halo's computer network. However, Cortana realizes that the ring is not a weapon as they understood at all- but before the Chief can press her with questions, Cortana tells the Master Chief to find Captain Keyes. Dropped into the swamp where Keyes and his squad disappeared, the Master Chief discovers that the Captain has been captured and both human and Covenant soldiers have been turned into zombie-like creatures by bulbous aliens. One soldier, Private Wallace Jenkins, is left still semi-conscious and painfully aware of his predicament, unable to control his movement or actions as his former friends and he attack McKay's troops. Jenkins intends on ending his life, but is instead captured by McKay for study. The Chief is approached by Halo's resident A.I., 343 Guilty Spark, who informs the Chief that the creatures he has encountered are called the Flood, a virulent parasite that infects hosts and converts them into either forms for combat, or for reproduction. To activate Halo's defenses, Guilty Spark needs the Master Chief's help. In Halo's Control Room, Guilty Spark gives the Master Chief the key to activate Halo, but is stopped by a furious Cortana. Cortana explains that Halo is a weapon, but it doesn't kill the Flood- it kills their food, meaning humans, Covenant, and any other sentient life. Realizing that they have to stop Guilty Spark from activating Halo, Cortana and the Master Chief decide to destroy Halo by detonating the crash-landed Pillar of Autumns fusion reactors. In order to do this, they need Captain Keyes' neural implants. Cortana discovers the Captain is still alive, held prisoner once again aboard the Truth and Reconciliation, now in the hands of the Flood who are trying to escape Halo. The Chief fights Covenant and Flood to the Captain, but finds out he is too late—the Captain has been assimilated into the parasite. The Chief retrieves the implants and leaves the Truth for the Autumn. While the Chief and Cortana head to the Autumn, Alpha Base is evacuated. Silva decides to retake the Truth and Reconciliation and pilot the ship away in order to avoid being on Halo when the Autumn blows. The ship is taken successfully, but McKay realizes that Silva is blinded by the thought of promotion and glory to the danger of the Flood; if even one Flood specimen escaped containment on Earth, the entire planet could fall. Jenkins draws McKay's attention to a vital energy line on the ship, and realizing that the destruction of the Flood is more important than Silva's promotion, cuts the cable, sending the Truth and Reconciliation crashing into Halo, killing all aboard. At the Autumn, the Master Chief is forced to destabilize the fusion reactors manually as 343 Guilty Spark and his robotic drones try to stop them. Once the countdown until detonation has begun, Cortana directs the Chief to a fighter still docked in the Pillar of Autumn hangar. Gunning the engines, the Chief and Cortana escape the ring just as the Autumn explodes, ending the threat of the Flood. Cortana scans for survivors and realizes that they are seemingly the only two who have survived. Cortana tells the Master Chief that the fight is finished, to which the Chief replies, "No. The Covenant is still out there, and Earth is at risk. We're just getting started." |
Halo: First Strike | Eric S. Nylund | null | The novel begins in orbit above planet Reach, as humanity fights the Covenant invasion forces. The last line of defense for the planet is an array of magnetic accelerator cannons (MACs) orbiting the planet. The Master Chief sends a team of Spartans to the surface of Reach to protect the MAC's planet-based power generators. Ultimately, the Covenant are able to destroy the generators and begin glassing the planet, melting its surface to glass. The surviving Spartans flee underground to the hidden headquarters of the Office of Naval Intelligence. There they meet Dr. Halsey who, with help of some of the surviving Spartans, uncovers a strange crystalline shard in a cavern built by the ancient Forerunner. Pursued by the Covenant, the Spartans retrieve the shard and collapse the passage behind them, which saves them from the pursuing Covenant forces, but also traps them deep under the surface of Reach. The book then shifts to events occurring soon after Halo, as the Master Chief and Cortana drift through the ruins of Halo, they discover other survivors including Sergeant Johnson and Corporal Locklear. The group commandeer the Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice and use its slipspace capabilities to return to the Reach system. To prevent the Covenant finding Earth with a tracking device, the humans plan to find a suitably undamaged human ship to take them to Earth. Upon arrival the group receive a radio signal used by the Spartans in their training days. On the surface, they find three Spartans and Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. The Vice Admiral arms a "Nova thermonuclear mine", a weapon that would destroy the planet. The Master Chief and his newly acquired team of Spartans then proceed to rescue Dr. Halsey and the other Spartans that were trapped under the surface of the planet. Meanwhile Cortana, still aboard Ascendant Justice, learns that the Covenant already know the location of Earth and are preparing an invasion fleet. Seeking the Forerunner shard, the Covenant attack, severely damaging Ascendant Justice, but are temporarily defeated. In order to make repairs, the UNSC forge an alliance with human separatists hidden in an asteroid field. Halsey abducts Spartan Kelly-087 and flees in a stolen ship, leaving Corporal Locklear with instructions to stop the crystal from falling into Covenant hands. Locklear decides to destroy the crystal, inadvertently killing himself, but stopping the Covenant from tracking the crystal's radioactive emissions and by extension the Ascendant Justice. With the knowledge that the Covenant are en route to Earth, the Master Chief and his fellow Spartans decide to disrupt the invasion force at their rendezvous point. The Spartans successfully infiltrate the Covenant space station, Unyielding Hierophant, set it to self-destruct and escape in a drop-ship. On board the Ascendant Justice, Whitcomb tricks the Covenant fleet into following the ship closer to the Unyielding Heirophant; when the station explodes the entire Covenant armada is destroyed or damaged. Master Chief and the surviving Spartans take the salvaged UNSC ship, "Gettysburg", back to Earth with Sgt. Johnson and Cortana to warn of the approaching invasion. Meanwhile, the Covenant leadership discuss the fate of the "incompetent one," an Elite who allowed Halo to be destroyed and Ascendant Justice to be captured; setting the stage for Halo 2. |
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man | Marshall McLuhan | 1,964 | In Part One, McLuhan discusses the differences between hot and cool media and the ways that one medium translates the content of another medium. Briefly, "the content of a medium is always another medium." In Part Two, McLuhan analyzes each medium (circa 1964) in a manner that exposes the form, rather than the content of each medium. In order, McLuhan covers The Spoken Word, The Written Word (as in a manuscript or incunabulum), Roads and Paper Routes, Numbers, Clothing, Housing, Money, Clocks, The Print (as in pictorial lithograph or woodcut), Comics, The Printed Word (as in Typography), Wheel, Bicycle and Airplane, The Photograph, The Press, Motorcar, Ads, Games, Telegraph, The Typewriter, The Telephone, The Phonograph, Movies, Radio, Television, Weapons, and Automation. Throughout Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan uses historical quotes and anecdotes to probe the ways in which new forms of media change the perceptions of societies, with specific focus on the effects of each medium as opposed to the content that is transmitted by each medium. McLuhan identified two types of media: "hot" media and "cool" media. This terminology does not refer to the temperature or emotional intensity, nor some kind of classification, but to the degree of participation. Cool media are those that require high participation from users, due to their low definition (the receiver/user must fill in missing information). Since many senses may be used, they foster detachment. Conversely, hot media are low in audience participation due to their high resolution or definition. Film, for example, is defined as a hot medium, since in the context of a dark movie theater, the viewer is completely captivated, and one primary sense -- visual -- is filled in high definition. In contrast, television is a cool medium, since it many other things may be going on and the viewer has to integrate all of the sounds and sights in the context. |
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster | Jon Krakauer | 1,996 | In the book, Jon Krakauer tells events leading up to his eventual decision to participate in an Everest expedition in May 1996, despite having mostly given up mountain climbing years before. The 1996 season expedition recorded world-high 8 deaths, including the guides of Krakauer: Rob Hall and Andy Harris. Initially, Krakauer, a journalist for adventure magazine Outside, stated that his intentions to climb Everest were purely professional. The original magazine story was to have Krakauer climb only to base camp, and report on the commercialization of the mountain. However, the idea of Everest reawakened his childhood desire for climbing the mountain. Krakauer asked his editor to put off the story for a year so that he could train for a climb to the summit. From there, the book chronologically moves between events that take place on the mountain and the unfolding tragedy which takes place during the push to the summit. In the book, Krakauer alleges that essential safety methods adopted over the years by experienced guides on Everest are sometimes compromised by the competition between rival guiding agencies to get their clients (some with little or no mountaineering experience) to the summit. |
Tropic of Cancer | Henry Miller | 1,934 | Set in France (primarily Paris) during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Tropic of Cancer centers around Miller's life as a struggling writer. Late in the novel, Miller explains his artistic approach to writing the book itself, stating: Up to the present, my idea of collaborating with myself has been to get off the gold standard of literature. My idea briefly has been to present a resurrection of the emotions, to depict the conduct of a human being in the stratosphere of ideas, that is, in the grip of delirium." Combining autobiography and fiction, some chapters follow a narrative of some kind and refer to Miller's actual friends, colleagues, and workplaces; others are written as stream-of-consciousness reflections that are occasionally epiphanic. The novel is written in the first person, as are many of Miller's other novels, and does not have a linear organization, but rather fluctuates frequently between the past and present. |
The Naked and the Dead | Norman Mailer | 1,948 | Set on an island in the South Pacific where the American Army under General Cummings is trying to drive out the Japanese, The Naked and the Dead focuses on a single reconnaissance platoon. The novel is split between alternating chapters depicting ongoing action on the island and retrospective chapters focusing on a particular character's personality and past. The Naked and the Dead contains several combat scenes and a great deal of description of Army protocol, as well as detailed descriptions of the many trials and agonies of the enlisted man. The novel deals with the difficulties of the campaign, the danger posed by the Japanese, the conflict between officers and regulars, each man's own internal conflicts and fears, and the aggression between squad members. Everyone, from the General down, has character flaws, and there are few depictions of lasting happy family life or of good male-female relations. Later in the book, a former general's aide, Hearn, becomes the Lieutenant of the squad, to the ire of Croft, the ruthless Sergeant previously in command, who withholds information from Lieutenant Hearn, leading to Hearn's death in combat. The novel questions the competence and motives of high-ranking officers, as well as the integrity of each of the many men depicted. The men suffer physical hardship and even casualties, but there is little mourning or kindness. There is no mercy shown to the Japanese. Occasionally, individual soldiers show sparks of sensitivity or thoughtfulness. The Naked and the Dead was Mailer's first published novel and is still his top ranked novel by sales; it established his reputation as a novelist and brought international recognition. |
The Moviegoer | Walker Percy | 1,961 | The Moviegoer tells the story of Binx Bolling, a young stock-broker in postwar New Orleans. The decline of southern U.S. tradition, the problems of his family and his traumatic experiences in the Korean War have left him alienated from his own life. He day-dreams constantly, has trouble engaging in lasting relationships and finds more meaning and immediacy in movies and books than in his own routine life. The loose plot of the novel follows Binx as he embarks on an undefined "search," wandering around New Orleans, Chicago and the Gulf Coast reflecting philosophically on small episodes and interactions. He is constantly challenged to define himself in relation to friends, family, sweet-hearts and career despite his urge to remain vague and open to possibility. "What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple; at least for a fellow like me. So simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life." The novel is heavily influenced by the existentialist themes of authors like Søren Kierkegaard, whom Percy read extensively. Unlike many dark didactic existentialist novels (including Percy's later work), The Moviegoer has a light poetic tone. It was Percy's first, most famous, and most widely praised novel. |
Death Comes for the Archbishop | Willa Cather | 1,927 | The primary character is a bishop, Jean Marie Latour, who travels with his friend and vicar Joseph Vaillant from Sandusky, Ohio to New Mexico to take charge of the newly established diocese of New Mexico, which has only just become a territory of the United States. The names given to the main proponents reflect their characters. Vaillant, valiant, is fearless in his promulgation of the faith, whereas Latour, the tower, is more intellectual and reserved than his comrade. At the time of his departure, Cincinnati is the end of the railway line west, so Latour must travel by riverboat to the Gulf of Mexico, and thence overland to New Mexico, a journey which takes an entire year. He spends the rest of his life establishing the Roman Catholic church in New Mexico, where he dies in old age. The novel portrays two well-meaning and devout French priests who will encounter a well-entrenched Spanish-Mexican clergy that they are sent to supplant after the United States acquired New Mexico and the dioceses of the new state were remapped by the Vatican. Several of these entrenched priests are depicted in classic manner as examples of greed, avarice and gluttony, while others live simple, abstemious lives among the Native Americans. Cather portrays the Hopi and Navajo sympathetically, and her characters express the near futility of overlaying their religion on a millennia-old native culture. Cather's vivid landscape descriptions are also memorable. A scene where a priest and his Native American guide take cover in an ancient cave during a blizzard is especially memorable for its superb portrayal of the combined forces of nature and culture. |
Of Human Bondage | W. Somerset Maugham | 1,915 | The book begins with the death of the mother of the nine-year-old protagonist, Philip Carey. Philip's father had already died a few months before, and the orphan Philip is sent to live with his aunt and uncle. His uncle is vicar of Blackstable, a small village in Kent. Philip inherits a small fortune but the money is held in custody by his uncle until he is twenty-one, giving his uncle a great deal of power over him until he reaches his maturity. Early chapters relate Philip's experience at the vicarage. His aunt tries to be a mother to Philip, but she is herself childish and unsure of how to behave, whereas his uncle takes a cold disposition towards him. Philip's uncle has an eclectic collection of books, and in reading Philip finds a way to escape his mundane existence and experience fascinating worlds of fiction. Less than a year later, Philip is sent to a boarding school. His uncle and aunt wish for him to eventually attend Oxford in order to study to become a clergyman. Philip's shyness and his club foot make it difficult for him to fit in with the boys at the school, and he does not make many friends. Philip goes through an episode of deep religious belief, and believes that through true faith he can petition God to heal his club foot; but when this does not happen, his belief falters. He becomes close friends with one boy; but the friendship breaks up, and he becomes miserable. Philip shows considerable academic talent and is informed by the school's headmaster that he could have earned a scholarship for Oxford, but instead he becomes determined to leave the school and go to Germany. Philip's uncle and the headmaster oppose Philip's desire to go to Germany, but eventually they give in and allow him to go to Heidelberg for a year. In Heidelberg, Philip lives at a boarding house with other foreigners and studies German, among other subjects. Philip enjoys his stay in Germany. At the boarding house he meets a fellow Englishman, Hayward, who has an interest in literature and who considers himself a poet. Philip also meets an unorthodox American named Weeks, who dislikes Hayward, whom he thinks superficial. Philip is intrigued by his long discourses with Hayward and Weeks and eventually becomes convinced that he need not believe in the Church of England; a radical idea for him as he had been brought up with staunch Christian values. Philip returns to his uncle's house and meets a middle-aged family friend of his aunt and uncle named Miss Wilkinson, who is very flirtatious toward Philip. He is not particularly attracted to her and is uncomfortable about her age; but he likes the idea of having an affair with someone, so he pursues her. She becomes very attached to Philip and declares her love for him, and he pretends to be passionate about her, but he is relieved when she needs to return to Berlin. Miss Wilkinson writes letters to Philip from Berlin, to which he eventually stops responding. Philip's guardians decide to take matters into their own hands and they convince him to move to London to take up an apprenticeship to become a chartered accountant. He does not fare well there as his co-workers resent him because they believe he is above them and is a "gentleman". Philip is desperately lonely in London and is humiliated by his lack of aptitude for the work. He begins thinking about studying art in Paris. He goes on a business trip with one of his managers to Paris and is inspired by this trip. Miss Wilkinson convinces Philip that he draws well enough to become a professional artist, and he moves to Paris to study art. In Paris, Philip attends art classes, makes a few friends among fellow art students and meets Miss Price, a poor talentless art student who does not get along well with people. Miss Price falls in love with Philip, but he is unaware and does not return her feelings. After her funds run out, she commits suicide, leaving Philip to tend to her affairs. Philip realizes that he will never be more than a mediocre artist; at the same time, he receives word that his aunt has died. He returns to his uncle's house, and eventually decides to go to London to pursue medicine, his late father's field. He struggles at medical school and comes across Mildred, a tawdry waitress at a local café. He falls desperately in love with her, although she does not show any emotion for him. Mildred tells Philip she is getting married, leaving him heartbroken; he subsequently enters into an affair with Norah Nesbitt, a kind and sensitive author of penny romance novels. Later, Mildred returns, pregnant, and confesses that the man for whom she had abandoned Philip had never married her. Philip breaks off his relationship with Norah and supports Mildred financially though he can ill afford to do so, but later she falls in love with Harry, a friend of Philip's and disappears. Philip runs into Mildred again when she is so poor she has resorted to prostitution and, feeling sympathy for her, takes her in to do his housework, though he no longer loves her. When he rejects her advances, she becomes angry at him, leaves, and destroys his possessions, causing Philip to abandon that residence and move into cheaper housing. When Philip meets Mildred next, she is ill and prostituting herself again, and the baby has died. While working at the hospital, Philip befriends family man Thorpe Athelny and is invited to his house every Sunday. Athelny has lived in Toledo in Spain, enthusing about the country, and is translating the works of San Juan de la Cruz. Meanwhile, a stockbroker acquaintance of Philip advises him to invest in South African mines, and Philip is left with no money when the stock market crashes due to the vicissitudes of the Boer War. He wanders the streets aimlessly for a few days before the Athelnys take him in and find him a job at a retail store, which he hates. Eventually, his uncle's death leaves him enough money to go back to medical school, and he finishes his studies and becomes qualified. He takes on a temporary placement at a Dorsetshire fishing village with Dr South, an old, rancorous physician whose wife is dead and whose daughter has broken off contact with him. However, he takes a shine to Philip's humour and personableness, eventually making him an outstanding offer of a stake in his medical practice. Although flattered, Philip refuses as he is still eager to travel and returns to London. He soon goes on a small summer vacation with the Athelnys at a village in the Kent countryside. There he finds that one of Athelny's daughters, Sally, likes him. They have an affair, and when she thinks she is pregnant, Philip decides to give up his long-cherished plans to travel to exotic lands, to accept Dr South's offer, and to marry Sally instead. They meet in the National Gallery where, despite learning that it was a false alarm, Philip nonetheless becomes engaged to Sally, his lifelong quest for happiness and self-acceptance culminating in the conclusion that "the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect". |
A High Wind in Jamaica | Richard Hughes | 1,929 | The Bas-Thornton children (John, Emily, Edward, Rachel, and Laura) are raised on a plantation in Jamaica at an unspecified time after the emancipation of slaves in Britain (1837). It is a time of technological transformation, and sailing ships and steamers coexist on the high seas. A hurricane destroys their home, and the parents decide the children must leave the island to return to their original home in England. Accompanied by two creole children from Jamaica, Margaret and Harry Fernandez, they leave on the Clorinda, a merchant ship under the command of Captain Marpole. The Clorinda is seized by pirates shortly after leaving Jamaica. The pirates first pretend they need to seize the ship's cargo and will refund the price of the goods taken, but when the lie becomes obvious, they menace Captain Marpole by threatening to shoot the children if he does not disclose where the Clorinda´s safe is kept. The ship is ransacked, and the children are brought aboard the pirate schooner for dinner. Captain Marpole, thinking that under cover of darkness the children have been murdered, flees the scene, unknowingly abandoning the children to the pirates. Marpole writes a letter to Mr and Mrs Thornton informing them that their children have been murdered by the pirates. The children quickly become part of life aboard the pirate ship and treat it as their new home. They are treated with some indifference, though a few crew members—José the cook and Otto the chief mate—care for them and become fond of them, and Captain Jonsen, the pirate captain himself, becomes very fond of Emily. The pirates stop at their home base of Santa Lucia to sell the seized goods. Captain Jonsen tries unsuccessfully to convince a rich woman to take care of the children. During the night, José takes John, Edward, and Margaret ashore, and John accidentally falls to his death in a warehouse. He is immediately and deliberately forgotten by his own siblings. The pirate captain seems to be the last one to forget him. While drunk, Captain Jonsen approaches Emily romantically. She bites his hand before anything happens, but she is frightened by the look in Jonsen's eye as he reaches for her. The author gives no explicit details for her fright, just a veiled description from Emily's point of view. Emily later suffers an injury to her leg, in an accident caused by Rachel, and is confined to the captain's cabin. Meanwhile Margaret, who has become alienated from the other children, becomes Otto's lover and moves into his cabin. Having made no further captures, the pirates quickly take the first ship they finally see, a Dutch vessel transporting some wild animals. The captain of this ship is tied up and left in the cabin with Emily. Everyone else on the pirate ship boards the Dutch vessel to watch a fight between a lion and a tiger. The Dutch captain does all he can to get Emily to free him but is unable to communicate with her. Finally seeing a knife he rolls towards it. Emily, injured and terrified, screams but no one hears. She pounces at the last second and stabs the captain several times. He soon dies. Margaret, oldest of the children, witnesses this event. When the crew returns to the ship, the pirates mistake Margaret for the murderer and without ceremony throw her overboard, but she is rescued by other pirates heading back to the ship. The crew grows tired and scared of the children. Jonsen arranges for them to transfer to a passing steamer. Disguised as a British merchant vessel, the captain claims that some pirates abandoned the children on the Cuban shore and that he then picked them up to bring them to England. Before sending them on board the steamer, Otto instructs Emily not to disclose the truth about what has happened to them in the past months. He chooses Emily rather than Margaret, as the latter seems to have lost her sanity. Once aboard the steamer, the children are delighted with the boat's luxury and the loving treatment by the passengers, who know of the story of the children told by Captain Jonsen. Despite her fondness for Captain Jonsen and the fact that she promised not to tell about what really happened, Emily quickly tells the truth to a stewardess. The pirate ship is pursued and seized by the British authorities. Back in London, the children are reintegrated into their families. They seem completely unaffected by their traumatic experiences aboard the ship, apart from Margaret who has lost her sanity. (It is hinted that she may also be pregnant.) Emily is only half aware herself of the crime she has committed. The younger children have distorted and contradictory memories of the facts, and after unsuccessfully attempting to extract any information from then, the family solicitor decides that only Emily should testify at the trial against the pirate crew and then only to repeat a statement written by him. Under the pressure of the courtroom, Emily breaks down and cries out that the Dutch captain died as she watched. She does not exactly say who performed the murder, but the trial's outcome is decided. The pirates are executed. The book ends with Emily playing with her schoolmates. She is so similar to them that "only God", but no one else, could tell them apart. |
A House for Mr Biswas | V.S. Naipaul | 1,961 | Mohun Biswas is born in rural Trinidad to parents of Indian origin. His birth is considered inauspicious as he is born "in the wrong way" and with an extra finger. A pandit prophesies that the newly born Mr Biswas "will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well", and that he will "eat up his mother and father". The pundit further advises that the boy be kept "away from trees and water. Particularly water". A few years later, Mohun leads a neighbour's calf, which he is tending, to a stream. The boy, who has never seen water "in its natural form", becomes distracted watching the fish and allows the calf to wander off. Mohun hides in fear of punishment. His father, believing his son to be in the water, drowns in an attempt to save him, thus in part fulfilling the pundit's prophecy. This leads to the dissolution of Mr Biswas's family. His sister is sent to live with a wealthy aunt and uncle, Tara and Ajodha, while Mr Biswas, his mother, and two older brothers go to live with other relatives. Mr Biswas is withdrawn prematurely from school and apprenticed to a pundit, but is cast out on bad terms. Ajodha then puts him in the care of his alcoholic and abusive brother Bhandat which also comes to a bad result. Finally, Mr Biswas now becoming a young man decides to set out to make his own fortune. He encounters a friend from his days of attending school who helps him get into the business of sign-writing. While on the job, Mr Biswas attempts to romance a client's daughter and his advances are misinterpreted as a wedding proposal. He is drawn into a marriage which he does not have the nerve to stop and becomes a member of the Tulsi household. With the Tulsis, Mr Biswas becomes very unhappy with his wife Shama and her overbearing family, which bears a slight resemblance to the Capildeo family into which Naipaul's father married. He is usually at odds with the Tulsis and his struggle for economic independence from the oppressive household drives the plot. The Tulsi family (and the big decaying house they live in) represents the traditional communal world, the way life is lived, not only among the Hindu immigrants of Trinidad but throughout Africa and Asia as well. Mr Biswas is offered a place in it, a subordinate place to be sure, but a place that's guaranteed and from which advancement is possible. But Mr Biswas rejects that. He is, without realizing it or thinking it through but through deep and indelible instinct, a modern man. He wants to BE, to exist as something in his own right, to build something he can call his own. That is something the Tulsis cannot deal with, and that is why their world—though that traditional world, like the old Tulsi house which is its synecdoche, is collapsing—conspires to drag him down. Nevertheless, despite his poor education, Mr Biswas becomes a journalist, has four children with Shama, and attempts (more than once, with varying levels of success) to build a house that he can call his own. He becomes obsessed with the notion of owning his own house, and it becomes a symbol of his independence and merit. |
A Bend in the River | V.S. Naipaul | 1,979 | Set in an unnamed African country after independence, the book is narrated by Salim, an ethnically Indian Muslim and a shopkeeper in a small, growing city in the country's remote interior. Salim observes the rapid changes in Africa with an outsider's distance. Salim, the protagonist, grows up in the Indian community of traders on the east coast of Africa. Feeling insecure about his future in East Africa, he buys a business from Nazruddin in a town at "a bend in the river" in the heart of Africa. When he moves there, he finds the town decrepit, a "ghost town", its former European suburb reclaimed by the bush, and many of its European vestiges ruined in a "rage" by the locals in response to their suppression and humiliation during the colonial times. Old tribal distinctions have become important again. Salim trades in what people in the villages need, pencils and paper, pots and pans, various household utensils. Soon he is joined by his assistant Metty who comes from a family of house slaves his family had maintained in the east. One of his steady customers is Zabeth, a "marchande" from a village and a magician, too. Zabeth has a son, Ferdinand, from a man of another tribe, and asks Salim to help him get educated. Ferdinand attends the local lycée that is run by Father Huismans, a Belgian priest who collects African masks and considered a "lover of Africa". Life in the town is slowly improving. Salim’s decision to move there gets vindicated when he learns that the Indian community on the East coast is getting persecuted. But he feels not secure either. Metty says of the local Africans "… they are malins", "because they lived with the knowledge of men as prey." A local rebellion breaks out, and the Indian merchants live in fear. Soon white mercenaries appear and restore order. After peace has returned Father Huismans goes on a trip. He is killed by unknown assailants and nobody cares. Afterwards, his collection of African masks is denounced as affront to African religion. An American visitor pillages most of it and ships it home –"The richest products of the forest". The town now develops becoming what is always was, a trading center for the region. Government agencies spring up. European salesmen and visitors arrive. Salem’s friends Mahesh and Shoba become successful with their new Bigburger franchise. The new army arrives – "poachers of ivory and thieves of gold" The portrait of the President - "the Big Man" - is displayed everywhere. A new section of town is built, the "State Domain", to showcase the President’s vision of a new Africa. Yet buildings are shoddy, tractors of the agricultural center never go to work, and much of it falls quickly into some disrepair, - Salim calls it a "hoax". The Domain is soon converted into a university and conference center, Ferdinand among its students. Salim is visited by Indar who grew up with him on the East coast, then went to England to study and now has become a lecturer at the new institution. He takes Salim to a party in the Domain to meet Yvette and Raymond. Raymond had been the advisor and mentor of the President. Although in charge of the Domain, he finds himself now outside of the center of power. Loyal to the President, he continues to write for him hoping to be recalled to the capital. Salim whose experience with women has been limited to prostitutes is intrigued by Yvette, Raymond's much younger wife. Later, after Indar departs with the steamer, Salim and Yvette enter an adulterous affair, right under Raymond’s eyes. Eventually, the liaison breaks down, Salim hitting her and spitting on her, between the legs. Raymond’s attempts to please the Big Man are not successful, instead the President publishes "a very small, brief book of thoughts, Maximes, two or three thoughts to each page, each thought about four or five lines long." Like others Salim is forced to buy a stack for distribution. The local youth group displeases the President and is denounced in one of his propaganda speeches. As a result unrest grows, corruption and extortions become more prevalent, and a "Liberation Army" forms in the underground. They reject the President, his cult of the black Madonna, his vision of Africa, and want to return to the "truthful laws" of the ancestors. Salim looks for a way out. He travels to London where he meets Nazruddin. Nazruddin after having sold his business to Salim, had first moved to Uganda, left it because of persecution, moved then to Canada, left it because of its capitalistic rapaciousness, and finally landed in London becoming a landlord. He bemoans the lack of security for honest businessmen, - there is no safe place. Salim becomes engaged to his daughter, but soon leaves returning to his place in Africa. Upon arrival he learns that he has been expropriated, the President’s new program of "Radicalization" has transferred his business to a local. Théotime, a "state trustee", is ignorant and lazy and retains Salim as manager and chauffeur. Salim recognizes that all is lost. He had hidden some ivory on his property, but betrayed by Metty, is found out and put in jail. He is presented to the commissioner, now Ferdinand, who has moved up in the administration after his training in the capital. Ferdinand tells him that there is no safety, no hope, and everybody is in fear of his life. "We’re all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. We’re being killed. Nothing has any meaning." He sets Salim free telling him to leave the country. Salim takes the last steamer before the President arrives at the town to supervise an execution of a yet-to-be-determined victim. During the night, there is a battle on the ship, as rebels try to kidnap it. The attack is repelled, but the attached barge, full of Africans, is snapped loose and drifts down the river. |
Scoop | Evelyn Waugh | 1,938 | William Boot, a young man who lives in genteel poverty far from the iniquities of London, is contributor of nature notes to Lord Copper's Daily Beast, a national newspaper. He is dragooned into becoming a foreign correspondent when the editors mistake him for a novelist who shares his surname, John Courtney Boot. He is sent to the fictional African state of Ishmaelia where a civil war threatens to break out. There, despite his total ineptitude, he accidentally manages to get the "scoop" of the title. When he returns, however, credit is diverted to the other Boot, and he is left to return to his bucolic pursuits, much to his relief. |
The Ginger Man | J. P. Donleavy | null | It follows the often racy misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American living in Dublin with his English wife and infant daughter and studying law at Trinity College. This book may be considered part of the fictionalised roar of the end of the Second World War hiatus, also represented by the colossi of American literature: John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. Dangerfield is an American Protestant of Irish descent, commonly believed to be a thinly fictionalised version of the author, but is more broadly based not only on Donleavy but also some of his contemporaries at Trinity. The hero, Dangerfield, is a portrayal of lifelong bohemian and friend of Donleavy, Gainor Stephen Crist, as told by the author in The History of The Ginger Man. The book gives us the map of the terra incognita of late 1940s sexual encounters in Dublin. Donleavy's later books spell out the aftermath (particularly A Fairy Tale of New York, which later inspired Shane MacGowan's song "Fairytale of New York", recorded by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl). |
Wide Sargasso Sea | Jean Rhys | 1,966 | The opening of the novel is set a short while after the 1833 emancipation of the slaves in British-owned Jamaica. The protagonist Antoinette conveys the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an unnamed Englishman (implied as Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre). As the novel and their relationship progress, Antoinette, whom he renames Bertha, descends into madness. The novel is split into three parts. Part One takes place in Coulibri, Jamaica and is narrated by Antoinette. Describing her childhood experience, she includes several facets of her life, such as her mother's mental instability and her mentally disabled brother's tragic death. Part Two alternates between the points of view of her husband and of Antoinette following their marriage and is set in Granbois, Dominica. One of the likely catalysts for Antoinette's downfall is the suspicion with which they both begin to view each other, fuelled by the machinations of a supposed relative of Antoinette's, Daniel Cosway (Boyd). Antoinette's old nurse Christophine's constant mistrust of the husband and Rochester's unwavering belief in Daniel Cosway further aggravates the situation, added in when he becomes unfaithful to her. This increased sense of paranoia tinged with the disappointment of their failing marriage unbalances Antoinette's already precarious mental state. The shortest part, Part Three, is once again from the perspective of Antoinette, now known as Bertha, as she lives in the Rochester mansion, which she calls the "Great House". It traces her relationship with Grace, the servant who is tasked with 'guarding' her in England. It also traces her even more disintegrating relationship with Rochester as he hides her from the world. Making her empty promises to come see her more, which only become less as he adventures off with relationships with other women, eventually with Jane Eyre. Narrating in a stream of consciousness, Bertha decides to take her own life as she believes it to be her destiny. |
The Magus | John Fowles | null | The story is written from the perspective of young Oxford graduate and aspiring poet Nicholas Urfe, who takes up with Alison Kelly, an Australian girl he meets at a party in London. To get away from an increasingly serious relationship with her, Nicholas accepts a post teaching English at the Lord Byron School in the Greek island of Phraxos. Bored, depressed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island, Nicholas struggles with loneliness and contemplates suicide. Finding himself habitually walking the isle, he stumbles upon the estate, and soon the person of, wealthy Greek recluse Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis' psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first, these various aspects of what the novel terms the "godgame" seem to Nicholas to be a joke but, as they grow more elaborate and intense, Nicholas's ability to determine what is real and what is artifice vanishes. Against his will and knowledge, he becomes a performer in the godgame and realizes that the reenactments of the Nazi occupation, the absurd playlets after de Sade, and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis' life, but his own. |
Tobacco Road | Erskine Caldwell | 1,932 | Lov Bensey, a friend of the Lesters, walks to his home at the train yard coal chute. He has walked seven and a half miles to get a sack of winter turnips for fifty cents; which is half of his daily wage. On his way home he stops by the Lesters to talk to Jeeter about Jeeter's twelve year old daughter Pearl, to whom Lov is married. While Lov is talking to Jeeter, the book introduces the reader to sixteen year-old Dude, the youngest of the Lester boys; Ada, Jeeter’s wife; Grandma Lester; and Ellie May, an eighteen year old girl with a grotesque cleft lip. The entire family, acting in complete desperation, works to steal the turnips from Lov, who then becomes nauseated by the sight and leaves for home. At this point the preacher Bessie enters the scene. Sister Bessie Rice, like Ellie May, also has a deformity of the face. Bessie’s nose contains no bone, and so when looking straight at her face one can see straight into her nostrils, like a pig. Despite this, Jeeter is still attracted to her. She does some preaching and praying for everyone’s sins, and then proposes marriage to Dude. However, Dude is more interested in her offer of letting him drive the new automobile that she anticipates purchasing than in actually getting married to her. Bessie then goes home to her hovel to ask God whether or not she and Dude should get married. Jeeter has lived on the same plot of land since he was born, and even though his standard of living continues to decline until he and his family begin to starve, Jeeter stubbornly refuses to move to the city to make a better life for himself by working in a cotton mill. Such a life, he insists, would be impossible for him to live. Alongside Jeeter’s preoccupation with farming the land is his preoccupation with his own imminent death. Ada as well is fixated on her death, but their morbidity does not take the form of lamentation or self-pity. Ada’s main concern is that she not be buried in her tattered, old, out-of-style calico dress, while Jeeter’s main concern is that his body not be left in the old corn storage shed where it might be eaten by rats. He has had a terrible phobia of rats ever since he saw his dead father’s face half-eaten by a rat the day of his funeral. Neither of these two characters have any doubts that they are going to die sometime soon, and it is not their present life but their lifeless bodies which they care about most. Possibly they realize that their way of life is already dead; thus their primary concern becomes not the preservation of that life but its appearance during burial. When Sister Bessie returns the next day to the Lester house, she exclaims that God has given her his approval for the marriage between Dude and herself. The two then start the long walk to Fuller in order to purchase a new Ford, for the purpose of traveling around the country and preaching. Once they are in the auto showroom, the salesmen take advantage of Bessie's rural naïveté to pull off a quick and profitable sale, while at the same time constantly making fun of her deformed nose. Later, Dude and Bessie go off to get their marriage certificate and are questioned by the county official, who reprimands Bessie for attempting to marry a boy of sixteen years. (Bessie claims she is only 31 years old to the Lesters, but admits to 39 years at the registrar's office.) Finally, they get the marriage license, and the anxious Dude gets to drive the automobile again. Dude incessantly sounds the car horn whenever he gets behind the steering wheel to drive off somewhere. Over the course of the next two days, the automobile slowly gets wrecked more and more. First there is an accident with a wagon in which they end up killing the negro driver, and then Dude drives into a stump. The seats get torn by Jeeter’s blackjack wood, which he attempts to sell in the city of Augusta. The engine also becomes irreparably damaged by being run without enough oil. On top of this, they sell the spare tire and wheel for three dollars in order to pay for gasoline, food, and a night at a disreputable hotel where Bessie willingly gets prostituted from room to room by the manager. Some days later Bessie refuses to let Jeeter ride in her car anymore, which makes him upset to the point of kicking her off the land. When she physically attacks him, Ada and Jeeter proceed to beat Bessie and poke her with sticks until she and Dude take off in the car. While fleeing from Ada and Jeeter’s onslaught, Dude backs the Ford right over Grandma Lester, who then lies with her face mashed into the sand, near dead. Lov runs down to see Jeeter, and asks him if he knows what happened to Pearl, who had run away to Augusta to be free of Lov and the bleak and desperate country life surrounding her. Jeeter notes that more than a few of his daughters have run away to the city. After this discussion about the girls running away, the two notice Grandma’s corpse and drag her into the field to dig her grave and bury her. Lov departs and Caldwell reflects on Jeeter’s position as a tenant farmer in the South. Even though Jeeter, like so many others around him, had the urge to plant a crop during this time of the year, there was nothing he could do. His landlord was an absentee and had abandoned Jeeter and the rest of those who had lived on his land and given him shares of their crop in exchange for credit for seeds and fertilizer. The stores in the city would not grant any more credit to Jeeter or any of the other farmers because it was too risky and there were too many asking for it. Jeeter sets a fire to burn off broom sedge and hopes to somehow find enough credit to farm his land that spring. As Jeeter and Ada sleep, sparks from the fire ignite the shingles of their house, which burns to the ground, killing them in their sleep. As the novel closes, Dude makes his first mention of working: he voices the same thoughts of plowing the Lester land that Jeeter had expressed throughout the story, indicating that the vicious cycle in which poor Southern farmers such as the Lesters are trapped, continues. |
Ragtime | E. L. Doctorow | null | The novel centers on a wealthy white family group living in New Rochelle, New York, simply called "Father," "Mother," "Mother's Younger Brother," and "Grandfather." Their young son is not named at all. The family business is the manufacture of flags and fireworks, evidently an easy source of wealth due to the national enthusiasm for patriotic displays. Father joins the first expedition to the North Pole, and his return sees a change in the sexual politics of his relationship with his wife. Younger Brother is an insecure, unhappy character who chases after love and excitement. Into this secure setup comes first an abandoned black child, then her severely depressed mother Sarah. Coalhouse Walker, apparently the child's father, visits regularly until he wins back Sarah's affections. A professional musician, well dressed and well spoken, gains the family's respect and overcomes their racial prejudice initially by his skill playing ragtime music on their badly-tuned piano. Things go well until he is humiliated by a racist fire chief, and his inflexible pride brings him to seek restitution, violent revenge eventually, rather than pursue the course of love and happiness. Mother unofficially adopts the neglected child after Sarah dies as result of police brutality. Younger Brother becomes drawn into the escalating conflict, as a protagonist, and so does Father as a mediator. In the slums of New York city, unhappy Jewish single father Tateh struggles to support himself and his daughter, Little Girl. The girl's beauty attracts the attention of rich socialite Evelyn Nesbit, who provides support but ultimately drives him to take his daughter away from the city. He appears later in the story, having progressed from the unprofitable business of cutting paper silhouettes on the street, becoming a wealthy pioneer of the moving picture industry. By the end of the novel, surviving members of the three family groups have merged into one in an allegorical representation of the American melting pot, leaving Father financially successful but abandoned and unhappy. |
Lord Jim | Joseph Conrad | null | Jim (his surname is never disclosed), a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed. The other participants evade the judicial court of inquiry, leaving Jim to the court alone. The court strips him of his navigation command certificate for his dereliction of duty. Jim is angry with himself, both for his moment of weakness, and for missing an opportunity to be a 'hero'. At the trial, he meets Charles Marlow, a sea captain, who in spite of his initial misgivings over what he sees as Jim's moral unsoundness, comes to befriend him, for he is "one of us". Marlow later finds Jim work as a ship chandler's clerk. Jim tries to remain incognito, but whenever the opprobrium of the Patna incident catches up with him, he abandons his place and moves further east. At length, Marlow's friend Stein suggests placing Jim as his factor in Patusan, a remote inland settlement with a mixed Malay and Bugis population, where Jim's past can remain hidden. While living on the island he acquires the title 'Tuan' ('Lord'). Here, Jim wins the respect of the people and becomes their leader by relieving them from the predations of the bandit Sherif Ali and protecting them from the corrupt local Malay chief, Rajah Tunku Allang. Jim wins the love of Jewel, a woman of mixed race, and is "satisfied... nearly". The end comes a few years later, when the town is attacked by the marauder "Gentleman" Brown. Although Brown and his gang are driven off, Dain Waris, the son of the leader of the Bugis community, is slain. Jim returns to Doramin, the Bugis leader, and willingly takes a fatal bullet in the chest from him as retribution for the death of his son. Marlow is also the narrator of three of Conrad's other works: Heart of Darkness, Youth, and Chance. |
The Journey of Ibn Fattouma | Naguib Mahfouz | null | Ibn Fattouma, also known by his birth name Qindil Muhammad al-Innabi, is a Muslim man disillusioned by the corruption in his home city. When he asks his teacher, a Sufi, why a land whose people obeys the tenets of Islam suffers so, Ibn Fattouma is told the answer he seeks lies far away from the city. Since travel broadens one's horizons, the teacher encourages Ibn Fattouma to seek the land of Gebel, where such problems have been solved. The teacher tried to travel there himself, but civil war in neighboring lands and the demands of family ultimately prevented him from completing the journey. Also, no documents exist about Gebel and no one is known to have traveled there and come back. Ibn Fattouma says farewell to his mother and proceeds with a camel train out of his home city to the land of Mashriq. In this sexually libertine society (by Ibn Fattouma's standards), the women and men do not marry, they share sexual partners and they share power over their children. Nevertheless, Ibn Fattouma settles in Mashriq with a woman named Arousa and they have five children as husband and wife. Because of Ibn Fattouma's insistence upon teaching his eldest son Islam, he is exiled from Mashriq and prohibited from seeing Arousa or their children again. Ibn Fattouma then travels to the land of Haïra. The invasion of Mashriq by militaristic Haïra further separates Ibn Fattouma from his family, and when the annexation of Mashriq is finished, Arousa is brought to Haïra as a slave. The chamberlain of the god-king of Haïra wants Arousa as his wife and arranges for Ibn Fattouma to be jailed. Twenty years pass in Haïra before the god-king is overthrown, and the chamberlain (who was also jailed) tells Ibn Fattouma to look in the neighboring land of Halba for his wife and son. In Halba, the freedom of the individual is the greatest good. All religions peacefully coexist and openly encourage freedom of inquiry. The Halbans are also aggressive promoters of their philosophy of life in other nations; preparations are underway as Ibn Fattouma arrives for a war with neighboring Aman. Ibn Fattouma is reunited with Arousa, who thought him lost and had since married a Buddhist. There Ibn Fattouma meets and marries Samia, a pediatrician in Halba's hospital. With his wife's reluctant approval, Ibn Fattouma decides to continue his journey before war makes such travel impossible. In the land of Aman, justice is held as the greatest good, and every citizen is encouraged to spy on every other to maintain order. He leaves just as Aman and Halba prepare to fight. His next stop, the land of Ghuroub, finds Ibn Fattouma questioned to the depths of his being. Does he earnestly desire to go to Gebel, and why? Ibn Fattouma states as he has many times before that he seeks to learn Gebel's secret of perfection in life and share it with the people of his homeland. He and the other seekers of Gebel are driven from Ghuroub by an invading army from Aman, and after months of travel, they sight Gebel itself from a mountain peak. As Ibn Fattouma descends to continue his journey, the story ends without the reader learning whether he finds the perfection he seeks. |
Vril | Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton | 1,870 | The novel centers on a young, independently wealthy traveler (the narrator), who accidentally finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who seem to resemble angels and call themselves Vril-ya. The hero soon discovers that the Vril-ya are descendants of an antediluvian civilization who live in networks of subterranean caverns linked by tunnels. It is a technologically supported Utopia, chief among their tools being the "all-permeating fluid" called "Vril", a latent source of energy which its spiritually elevated hosts are able to master through training of their will, to a degree which depends upon their hereditary constitution, giving them access to an extraordinary force that can be controlled at will. The powers of the will include the ability to heal, change, and destroy beings and things; the destructive powers in particular are awesomely powerful, allowing a few young Vril-ya children to wipe out entire cities if necessary. It is also suggested that the Vril-ya are fully telepathic. The narrator states that in time, the Vril-ya will run out of habitable spaces underground and start claiming the surface of the Earth, destroying mankind in the process if necessary. The uses of Vril in the novel amongst the Vril-ya vary from an agent of destruction to a healing substance. According to Zee, the daughter of the narrator's host, Vril can be changed into the mightiest agency over all types of matter, both animate and inanimate. It can destroy like lightning or replenish life, heal, or cure. It is used to rend ways through solid matter. Its light is said to be steadier, softer and healthier than that from any flammable material. It can also be used as a power source for animating mechanisms. Vril can be harnessed by use of the Vril staff or mental concentration. A Vril staff is an object in the shape of a wand or a staff which is used as a channel for Vril. The narrator describes it as hollow with 'stops', 'keys', or 'springs' in which Vril can be altered, modified or directed to either destroy or heal. The staff is about the size of a walking stick but can be lengthened or shortened according to the user's preferences. The appearance and function of the Vril staff differs according to gender, age, etc. Some staves are more potent for destruction, others for healing. The staves of children are said to be much simpler than those of sages; in those of wives and mothers the destructive part is removed while the healing aspects are emphasized. |
The Honourable Schoolboy | John le Carré | 1,977 | In 1974, George Smiley, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (known as "Circus"), is investigating his own organisation in the aftermath of capturing a Soviet mole amongst the service's previous leadership. He seeks clues to the trail of Karla, his KGB counterpart and nemesis. To protect the politically weakened spy service from the Government war hawks, Smiley must launch a successful offensive espionage operation against the enemy. To that effect, he, along with analysts Connie Sachs and Doc di Salis, look into investigations unreasonably suppressed by Bill Haydon, the identified mole. They discover Sam Collins's investigation of a money laundering operation in Vientiane, Laos, which points to involvement from Karla. Collins' investigations prompt Smiley to recall Westerby—The Honourable Gerald "Jerry" Westerby, a former newspaper reporter and occasional SIS operative—and despatch him to Hong Kong. Once there Westerby blackmails a banker for photographs of the account of Drake Ko—destination of the Soviet money transmitted via Vientiane. The photographs reveal to Westerby that it is a "lock-away account", featuring only the name of the founder's trust—"Drake Ko"; moreover, the trust beneficiary is identified only via fingerprint; no money has been withdrawn, and the balance is about half a million American dollars. The parallel investigations in Hong Kong and London identify an 'Elizabeth Worthington' as Ko's blonde girlfriend, "Liese Worth." Elizabeth ('Lizzie') Worthington was previously the girlfriend of bush pilot Tiny Ricardo, a Mexican mercenary in Vientiane; as such, she thought herself a British intelligence agent run by Collins. Sachs and di Salis interview a Mr Hibbert, learning that he is the missionary who named the foundling Ko brothers "Drake" and "Nelson" to honour Britain; and that "Liese" was the name of Hibbert's dead wife. US intelligence reports that Ricardo is alive and that he has approached them with information about an opium cargo he was to fly to Red China. Because the US want to arrest Ko as a drug kingpin, they give Smiley 10 to 12 weeks to pursue Circus interests before intervening. Smiley quickly grasps the implication of Tiu's (Ko's second-in-command) quick trip to Shanghai six weeks before Ricardo's planned opium cargo flight to Red China. It was to meet with Nelson, Drake's brother, to arrange their reunion rendezvous, via which Nelson would escape China in Ricardo's Beechcraft. Smiley thus decides to force Ko to react to being spied upon, thereby advancing Operation Dolphin. Westerby manœuvres Lizzie Worthington to dinner. She calls Tiu to the restaurant; before him, Westerby interviews her about Ricardo, the bush pilot, about the connection between Indocharter Air Transport and the Soviet embassy in Vientiane. Surprised and personally relieved, Westerby perceives her ignorance of the gold seam, of Nelson Ko and of the Soviet connection. On Circus orders, Westerby finds the bush pilot-opium smuggler Charlie Marshall in Battambang, Cambodia, and manages to board a flight Marshall is flying en route to Phnom Penh. Ricardo also is aboard, but Westerby doesn't grasp who he is until Phnom Penh; in evading him, Ricardo shoots at Westerby. That night, Westerby takes Marshall from an opium den and interrogates him, learning that Lizzie was a heroin courier for Collins; that she directly intervened with Drake on Ricardo's behalf; that Tiu offered Marshall $5,000 for a flight, which he turned down; and where, between flights, Ricardo currently hides. Westerby pursues Ricardo, by ferry, across the Mekong River into Thailand; Ricardo tells Westerby that Tiu, on behalf of Ko, hired Ricardo to fly opium into China and pick up a package, paying Ricardo's debts as an advance for the job; instead of completing the job, Ricardo stole the opium and the Beechcraft airplane and went into hiding. Westerby tells Ricardo that Nelson was the package. Ricardo again tries to kill Westerby, with a delayed-action hand grenade in the fuel tank of his hired car; Westerby figures out the ruse, and safely watches the car explode. On 30 April 1975 Westerby arrives at an American air force base in northeast Thailand and cables his report to the Circus; he also learns that the North Vietnamese Army has captured Saigon, winning and ending the Vietnam War (1945-75). In turn, the Circus orders his direct return to London, explicitly ordering him not return to Hong Kong. Disobeying, Westerby goes to Hong Kong. At his flat he finds the corpse of Luke, his photojournalist roommate, who has been shot dead. To ascertain the successful conclusion of Operation Dolphin, Smiley, Guillam, and Fawn (Smiley's factotum-bodyguard), along with the CIA men Martello and Murphy, are in Hong Kong to capture Nelson Ko. Smiley knows that Nelson will escape China (as Drake did in 1951) on a fishing fleet junk, going to the southernmost island of Po Toi. On the run, and spurred on by schoolboy romanticism, Jerry Westerby remains in Hong Kong—to rescue Lizzie Worthington (he takes her from a cocktail party), and to protect Nelson from capture by the Circus, while the CIA spies on Drake. They go to her apartment; Smiley enters unannounced, and Westerby, expecting either Drake or Tiu, assaults him, before realizing it is his boss. In turn, Fawn manhandles Jerry. Smiley orders Fawn and Guillam to put Westerby aboard a flight to London but Westerby escapes, gets Lizzie, and they take a boat to Po Toi. There, she shows him the places special to Drake, helping Westerby to determine where Nelson will land from China. After arranging a next-night rendezvous with Westerby, Lizzie returns to Hong Kong. That night on Po Toi island, Westerby finds Drake and Tiu at the beach, awaiting Nelson. After disarming and disabling Tiu, Westerby tells Drake that he wants Lizzie for himself, in exchange for saving Nelson from the British and the Americans. Drake is sceptical and hesitates. Yet just as Nelson lands, American helicopters appear and load Nelson on a helicopter. As the helicopters pull away, Westerby is shot and killed by Fawn. The CIA, not the British, detain and interrogate Nelson; his interrogators do not include di Salis and Sachs. The success of Operation Dolphin yields top Circus jobs for Enderby and Collins, who becomes (temporary) Chief of the Circus. Smiley and Connie Sachs are retired with pensions, and Peter Guillam is sent to head the scalphunters in Brixton. |
The Canary Trainer | Nicholas Meyer | 1,993 | In 1912, Dr. Watson visits the retired Sherlock Holmes, who is happily cultivating bees on the Sussex Downs. Holmes seems mostly concerned about interesting Watson in his new hobby, but Watson prefers to interrogate Holmes and fill some of the gaps in previous Sherlockian history. For example, Watson says, Holmes's account of how he spent the "Lost Years" (1891 to 1895) was laden with contradictions. Finally, he persuades Holmes to retell one episode of his adventures. The narration switches to Holmes. He describes how, following the events of The Seven Percent Solution, he traveled Europe and slowly realized that the entire world believed him dead. Wandering aimlessly, he finds himself in Paris, where after a short-lived stint as a violin instructor, he obtains a position at the Paris Opéra. From the very beginning, his job has ominous undertones. For example, the vacancy only appeared because the previous violinist ran into the street, swearing that he would never work in the place again. This does not daunt Holmes, who interviews with and favourably impresses the conductor, Maître Gaston Leroux. Holmes gradually becomes accustomed to the Opera's distinctive culture. He learns that all minor mishaps are attributed to the Ghost, a spectral personage who haunts the Opera's labyrinthine passageways, sometimes appearing to ballet dancers wearing an evening suit but without a head. All goes well until the prima donna soprano, La Sorelli, falls ill and is replaced by Irene Adler, a past adversary known for her ability to outwit Holmes. His admiration for her provokes uncertain emotions, largely foreign to his calculating nature—but he soon realizes that torment is secondary, when the opera rehearsals subject him to her incomparably beautiful singing. He suffers in silence until Adler sees his profile in a Degas painting, whereupon she realizes that he is alive, and enlists his help. She has taken the young coloratura Christine Daaé "under her wing", and is fearful that the innocent singer may fall prey to intrigue once Adler has left. Irene Adler blackmails Holmes into assisting her, promising that she will remain silent about his survival. While investigating the intrigues that surround Christine, Holmes appears to run afoul of the Opera Ghost. |
The Dark Half | Stephen King | 1,989 | Thad Beaumont is an author and recovering alcoholic who lives in the town of Ludlow, Maine. Thad's own books – cerebral literary fiction – are not very successful. However, under the pen name "George Stark", he writes highly successful crime novels about a violent killer named Alexis Machine. When Thad's authorship of Stark's novels becomes public knowledge, Thad and his wife, Elizabeth, decide to stage a mock burial for his alter ego at the local cemetery, which is featured in a People magazine article. Stark's epitaph says it all: "Not A Very Nice Guy". Stark, however, emerges from the mock grave as a physical entity and goes on a killing spree, gruesomely murdering everyone he perceives responsible for his "death" – Thad's editor, agent, and the People interviewer, among others. Thad, meanwhile, is plagued by surreal nightmares. Stark's murders are investigated by Alan Pangborn, the sheriff of the neighboring town of Castle Rock, who finds Thad's voice and fingerprints at the crime scenes. This evidence, and Thad's unwillingness to answer his questions, causes Pangborn to believe that Thad – despite having alibis – is responsible for the murders. Thad eventually discovers that he and Stark share a mental bond, and begins to find notes from Stark written in his own handwriting. The notes tell Thad what activity Stark has been engaging in. Observing his son and daughter, Thad notes that twins share a unique bond. They can feel each other's pain and at times appear to read the other's mind. Using this as a keystone to his own situation, he begins to discover the even deeper meaning behind himself and Stark. Pangborn eventually learns that Thad had a twin. The unborn brother was absorbed into Thad in utero and later removed from his brain when the author was a child. He had suffered from severe headaches and it was originally thought to be a tumor causing them. The neurosurgeon who removed it found the following inside: part of a nostril, some fingernails, some teeth, and a malformed human eye. This leads to questions about the true nature of Stark, whether he is a malevolent spirit with its own existence, or Thad himself, manifesting an alternate personality. Thad eventually vanquishes Stark, but the book ends on an unhappy note with Thad's wife having serious doubts about the future of their relationship: she is appalled that Thad not only created Stark (if unintentionally), but that a part of him liked Stark. Sheriff Alan Pangborn goes on to appear two times more in the Castle Rock series. It is revealed that ever since the events of The Dark Half, he is plagued by nightmares and the memory of Thad Beaumont. We are also told of the subsequent death of Pangborn's wife and son, and his own depression, in Needful Things. In the short story The Sun Dog it had mentioned in passing that Liz left Thad, taking the twins with her. It is then revealed in Bag of Bones that Thad committed suicide. This ties up the novel's ambiguous ending regarding Thad's relationship with Liz. Stark is also mentioned in the "Notes" section of King's collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes under the story "The Fifth Quarter". It states only "Bachman again. Or maybe George Stark." |
Sandman: The Dream Hunters | Neil Gaiman | 1,999 | A kitsune (fox) and a tanuki (raccoon dog) make a bet that whichever of them drives a Buddhist priest from his temple, they will claim it as their own. Both of them fail, and the raccoon dog flees in disgrace. The fox, however, has fallen in love with the monk, and in the form of an immensely beautiful woman, she apologizes to him for their behavior; he allows her to stay in the temple, provided that she does not cause him any more trouble. Meanwhile, in a house in Kyoto, a rich onmyoji is consumed by a nameless fear, and consults three hags living at the edge of town. They give him instructions to alleviate this fear; the result is that the aforementioned monk will become trapped inside a dream, and his body will sleep continuously until it dies. The fox overhears this from several demons employed by the onmyōji, and in an attempt to avert this, she travels to the Dreaming, where she meets Morpheus in the shape of an enormous black fox (In the story, he is referred to as the King of All Night's Dreaming). He listens to her plight, and in the ensuing conversation, the fox formulates a plan to capture a baku, and use it to take the monk's place on the third night. The plan is successful, but the monk is distraught at the fox's condition, and leaves his temple so that he may find the means of awakening her. He encounters Binzuru Harada, who offers him physical abuse for abandoning his temple, then instructs him on how to find Morpheus. After a journey through the realm of dreams (during which he encounters what appear to be Japanese counterparts of Fiddler's Green and Cain and Abel from the Sandman comics), he arrives at the palace. A raven, who is the departed spirit of a poet, guides him through it, and he is granted an audience. Morpheus tells him what the fox had done, and that if he rescues her, her efforts will have been in vain, but the monk insists, and goes to meet the fox, where she is trapped inside a mirror in her human form. Initially she is reluctant, but again he insists. The narrative then gives an ambiguous statement on whether they then give formal farewells or make love (possibly Gaiman's way of implying that there are contradictory versions of the story, giving it an extra layer of authenticity), and then he takes her place, giving her the advice, "Seek not revenge, but the Buddha." The fox informs Morpheus of this advice, then tells him she will seek the Buddha after seeking revenge. She awakens, and the monk dies several days later. The fox tracks down the Onmyoji and seduces him in her human form, giving no indication of her true nature, but insists that he cannot touch her because of his affluent position and power. Maddened with lust, he burns down his house and that of the hags, killing them and his family and servants, and meets with the fox. She cajoles him into disrobing, then reverts to her true form and bites out one of his eyes, leaving him with his madness. In the Dreaming, Morpheus and the raven ponder the events and their significance; Morpheus is satisfied that events played out as they should have, and that everyone involved learned an important lesson, particularly the monk. The narration ends by saying that since then, some people have had dreams of the monk and the fox (in either of her forms) walking through a field together. |
The Tale of Peter Rabbit | Beatrix Potter | 1,902 | The story focuses on a family of anthropomorphic rabbits, the widowed mother rabbit cautioning her young against entering a vegetable garden grown by a man named Mr. McGregor, who had baked her deceased husband into a pie. Whereas her three daughters obediently refrain from entering the garden, her rebellious son Peter defies his mother by trespassing into the garden to snack on some vegetables, losing his clothes along the way. While there, Peter is caught by Mr. McGregor and finds difficulties in wriggling beneath the opening in the fence through which he'd managed to slide past earlier to invade the garden, and later finds that his abandoned clothing articles were used to dress Mr. McGregor's scarecrow. After returning home, a sickened Peter is bedridden by his mother whereas his well-behaved sisters receive a sumptuous dinner of milk and berries as opposed to Peter's supper of chamomile tea. |
The Chamber | Enric Tremps | 1,994 | In Greenville, Mississippi, the office of Jewish lawyer, Marvin Kramer, who is active in Civil Rights work, is bombed. He is badly injured but survives. His two young sons are killed. Sam Cayhall is identified, arrested and tried for their murder. His trial is engineered by his Klan-connected lawyer and is declared a mistrial. The second trial finds him not guilty and Sam is a free man. Several years pass and the FBI pressures a suspected associate, Dogan, to testify against him. He does so, and is later killed, almost certainly by the Klan. Sam, an unrepentant racist and Klansman, is convicted of murder and sentenced to death by gas chamber, 20 years after the bombing. He is sent to the Mississippi State Penitentiary, and placed on Death Row. Now without a lawyer, he becomes a pro bono case for several anti-death penalty lawyers; ironically from Krawitz and Bane, a largely Jewish law firm in Chicago. Sam's son, Eddie, has fled to California, where his son Alan grew up under the name of Adam Hall. After his father's suicide, Adam starts to learn something of the violent Cayall history. Now working as a lawyer at Krawitz and Bane, he persuades them (with difficulty) to allow him to represent Sam, even though Sam has managed to terminate the representation. He journeys south from Chicago to the Memphis office to represent Sam in the final month before the date of execution. Despite his lack of death-penalty experience, Adam is determined to argue a stay for his grandfather. Despite Sam's violent past, he is one of the few living links to Adam's history. Sam's daughter, Lee Cayhall Booth (Adam's aunt), an alcoholic who has worked hard to conceal her past, slowly reveals the sad, brutal history of their family. Initially uncooperative, Sam eventually opens up to Adam and reveals a remarkable depth of hard-won legal knowledge, regularly preparing his own briefs and court motions. Adam interviews the FBI agent who worked the original case, and it becomes apparent that Sam almost certainly did not commit the actual crime for which he has been found guilty, although he was present. Nevertheless, he has a long and largely secret history of Klan-related crime and has killed several times. One of his associates (Dogan) is now dead, and Sam will not reveal if another associate exists, thus not violating his Klan oath of loyalty. Adam desperately files motion after motion and argues some of them before judges. He seeks to persuade the state Governor to grant a reprive, knowing full well that such a move is politically impossible. And Sam has forbidden such a move, as he suspects the Governor of using him for politcal gain. All appeals are finally exhausted. Sam is now repentant, but does not want Adam as a witness to the execution. The sentence is carried out. With Sam and Dogan dead, no-one knows that Roland, the third man, who prepared and set off the bomb, is still free and living nearby, under a false identity and observing the progress of the case. Adam, sickened but fascinated by the experience, quits the law firm to accept a poorer-paid position with an group of anti-death penalty lawyers. |
The Reality Dysfunction | Peter F. Hamilton | 1,996 | The Reality Dysfunction opens in the year 2581 with a war raging between two worlds, Omuta and Garissa, over three hundred and eighty seven mineral-rich asteroids known as the Dorados. The war escalates in a matter of months and it is rumoured that Garissa has developed an ultimate weapon of mass destruction known only as 'The Alchemist'. The Alchemist deployment mission, on the starship Beezling and its two escorts, is intercepted by blackhawk mercenaries. Two of the ships survive, although they are crippled and stranded far from the nearest system. Dr. Alkad Mzu, creator of the Alchemist, survives the attack. Shortly after, the Omutans drop fifteen antimatter planet-busters on Garissa, rendering the planet uninhabitable and killing the majority of the ninety-five million inhabitants. The Confederation imposes a 30-year blockade around Omuta, and executes its government. Many millions of years earlier, the extremely rare conditions on a moon orbiting a gas giant in a remote galaxy allow for the creation of a lifeform able to 'transcend' to a purely energy-based (later known as energistic) state, the Ly-cilph. The Ly-cilph become explorers of the universe, determined to know all that can be known about space and time. Over the course of aeons, they explore the universe and, presently, one arrives in the Milky Way galaxy. An Edenist voidhawk named Iasius returns home to Saturn to die. As is traditional, a mating flight is called, with many voidhawks and even a blackhawk, Udat, joining Iasius on its final voyage into Saturn's atmosphere. As it descends, the other ships energise its bitek eggs, which are taken to nest in Saturn's rings. After several months, when the eggs are large enough, the infant children of Iasius captain, Athene, are placed within them, so ship and captain experience infancy together, forming an unbreakable bond of love. The ship that grows from the egg energised by Udat, Oenone, becomes the most notable of the new brood of voidhawks, and its captain, Syrinx, the most wilful. As with many Edenists, Syrinx and Oenone volunteer to serve a tour of duty with the Confederation Navy, but the destruction of their fellow ship Graeae (commanded by Syrinx's brother, Thetis) by an Adamist starship (called the Dymasio) using antimatter causes Syrinx to take a dim view of Adamists in general from that point on. She finishes her service with the Navy and then goes into cargo shipping. A group of colonists arrive on the frontier world of Lalonde from Earth. Grossly overpopulated, with tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of people crammed into domed cities called arcologies, many people on Earth dream of escaping to virgin worlds with open skies above their heads. However, Lalonde is a typical stage-one colony world, dirty and corrupt with a ridiculously low level of technology. The latest colonists, mostly from Earth's European arcologies, vow to create a peaceful, safe society. They are taken by steamboat up the mighty Juliffe River to found their new township, which they name Aberdale. Among the colonists are the Skibbow family, whose patriarch, Gerald, is excited about the prospect of living as a farmer. His teenage daughter, Marie, is less impressed and vows to escape back to Earth at the first opportunity. Also among the colonists are Father Horst Elwes, a Christian priest, and a large number of 'Ivets' (Involuntary Transportees), petty criminals from Earth sentenced to work on the colony worlds to repay their debt to society. Unbeknown to the authorities, one of the Ivets, Quinn Dexter, is a member of the Light Brother sect (devil worshippers) and is armed with highly advanced information implants which have escaped detection. Dexter soon exerts his command over all the other Ivets through the use of satanic rituals, whilst simultaneously ingratiating himself with the colonists. His act does not fool Powel Manani, the town's assigned settlement supervisor. Around this time the Ly-cilph arrives on Lalonde and studies Aberdale. Its curiosity is piqued when Father Elwes manages to see it, since few species are capable of perceiving it. Joshua Calvert is a resident of Tranquillity, an independent bitek habitat (one of only five such habitats) orbiting the gas giant Mirchusko. Tranquillity was founded to study the Ruin Ring, the remains of some forty thousand alien habitats which apparently self-destructed two thousand years ago. It was created by the strictly Christian Kulu Kingdom, but when its founder Prince Michael Saldana chose to also accept affinity gene implants and have them inherited by his children, Tranquillity was excommunicated by the Kingdom and its leaders disinherited. Since then it has flourished as a tax haven, a trustworthy base for blackhawk mating flights, and an exclusive business locale in its area of the Confederation. Calvert has inherited a trader starship, the Lady MacBeth, from his late father, but the ship was heavily damaged in an unknown incident (Calvert makes up several stories during the course of the novel to explain this incident, all false. The incident is later explained in the short story 'Escape Route' in the short story collection A Second Chance at Eden) and is no longer operational. Calvert dreams of making a big find in the Ruin Ring to finance repairs. Much to his surprise, Calvert indeed strikes lucky, finding a virtually intact memory core with the first-ever images of the reason for the Laymil racial suicide. However, decoding the information will take some time. Calvert sells his find for nearly seven million six hundred thousand fuesodollars, fixes up the Lady MacBeth and begins his life as a trader captain. He also starts a relationship with Ione Saldana, the current ruler of Tranquillity. Also on Tranquillity is Dr. Alkad Mzu, who has been imprisoned on the habitat for nearly thirty years. How she escaped the situation at the start of the novel is not explained. Mzu is kept under the watchful eye of half a dozen major Confederation intelligence agencies to ensure that her knowledge of the Alchemist is not revealed to anyone else. From time to time, Mzu asks ship captains for passage off the habitat, knowing that such requests will be vetoed by Ione Saldana. She asks both Calvert and Meyer, the captain of the Udat, for aid but both times they refuse to help after Saldana intervenes. On Lalonde Dexter encounters a group of people hiding in the jungle, led by the authoritative Laton. Laton is a 'Serpent', an Edenist who has rejected his society and, for lack of a better term, 'gone bad'. More than thirty-five years ago Laton tried to stage a coup to seize control of a habitat called Jantrit, using a proteanic virus to threaten it with destruction. In the resulting chaos the habitat was destroyed (the only Edenist habitat ever lost) with more than a million deaths. The Confederation Navy believed it had killed Laton, but Laton had evaded capture and fled into obscurity in the wilds of Lalonde. Laton, impressed with Dexter's resourcefulness (but disgusted by his religion), offers him a place in his organisation, whose goal is the discovery of true immortality. Dexter pretends to agree, knowing refusal will mean death. Realising that Dexter is faking his interest, Laton arranges for the villagers to discover that the Ivets are satanists. In the resulting chaos most of Dexter's followers are killed. The remaining few take Powel Manani prisoner and sacrifice him in a grisly ceremony. At this moment, the observing Ly-cilph detects a strange energy current streaming from Manani through a quantum fracture in the space-time continuum. The Ly-cilph attempts to investigate by following the energy current, only to find it flooding into an energistic vacuum. Unable to extricate itself, the Ly-cilph goes into hibernation whilst still halfway between the two dimensions. This allows the strange energy forms in the dimension beyond to cross back into our universe. The result is utter mayhem. Several of the strange entities seize control of Dexter and his followers, in effect 'possessing' them. Able to call upon powers from the other realm, such as the ability to control and alter matter and hurl powerful white fireballs around, they then seize control of Aberdale and Laton's compound, forcing the inhabitants to accept possession or death. Father Elwes escapes onto the savannah with most of Aberdale's children, but not before one of the possessed reveals a terrible secret: the possessing entities are the souls of humans who have died and been trapped, some of them for millennia, in an absolute void where the only way to pass the time is to parasitically feed on the memories and experiences of others. And there are billions of them in the darkness still screaming for escape. At the moment Laton is possessed, he manages to generate a tremendously powerful affinity SOS. This reaches the only two Edenists on the planet, a pair of agents from the Edenist Intelligence agency. They travel upriver to investigate, but are neutralised by the possessed. They manage to alert Ralph Hiltch (the Kulu External Security Agency's Lalonde head of station) and Kelven Solanki (from Confederation Navy Intelligence) to the threat, although not its nature. With the subversion spreading across the planet, the governor authorises the recruitment of mercenaries to put down what he perceives as an 'Ivet uprising'. Unbeknown to the governor, several possessed have already infiltrated the capital, Durringham, and taken passage on ships bound for other worlds. One of these ships is the Lady MacBeth. Calvert has hit on the idea of transporting Lalonde's legendarily tough wood (called Mayope) to the pastoral planet of Norfolk, which has banned all high technology. The idea sounds crazy, but it gets around Norfolk's ban on high-tech items and gives Calvert access to the planet's lucrative market in 'Norfolk Tears', the most desired alcoholic beverage in the galaxy. Calvert also begins a relationship with Louise Kavanagh, the young and naive daughter of Joshua's business partner, Grant. Although Calvert treats the relationship as a bit of fun, Louise falls in love with Joshua and, due to her planet's lack of chemical contraceptive, falls pregnant shortly after he leaves. Unfortunately for Norfolk, Calvert's passenger on the flight from Lalonde was a man called Quinn Dexter. Syrinx and Oenone arrive at Atlantis, the only planet colonised by Edenists (and unsurprisingly, entirely covered in a vast planet-ranging ocean), to purchase seafood to transport to Norfolk to trade for their Tears. During the stay at Pernik Island, Syrinx develops a relationship with an Edenist by the name of Mosul, the son of the family patriarch and guardian of the family fishing business. Mosul and Syrinx develop a contract which includes Syrinx's return to distribute ten percent of Syrinx's stock to the inhabitants of Pernik Island. However, the possessed have infiltrated Atlantis, led by the possessed Laton. They have taken control of Pernik Island and plan to possess Syrinx in the hope of possessing Oenone as well. Syrinx is captured and tortured as a prelude to possession. The plot backfires when Laton, having taken the time to study his possessing soul, manages to gain access to Pernik Island. He saves Syrinx, allows the crew of Oenone to rescue her (and gives them a message to take to Jupiter), and then causes the island to self-destruct, killing all of the possessed on it. Laton's departure from Lalonde was observed by a reporter. Within days half the Confederation knows that the most infamous Serpent of them all has returned, and a Confederation-wide quarantine to prevent the spread of Laton and his proteanic virus. On Tranquillity data from the Laymil information stack reveals that their homeworld in the Mirchusko system (which does not seem to exist any more) was taken over by a 'reality dysfunction', triggered by the 'Galheith research death essence tragedy'. The data shows the Laymil homeworld being overrun by a red cloud of unknown origin. On Lalonde the possessed close to within a few hundred kilometres of Durringham. As they advance, a strange red cloud starts forming above centres of possessed activity. Ralph Hiltch and Kelven Solanki evacuate their respective personnel from the planet. Hiltch's team manage to capture a possessed before they leave (this possessed is controlling the body of Gerald Skibbow of Aberdale) Solanki's report reaches the Confederation Navy, which swiftly organises a fleet to quarantine Lalonde. On Norfolk Quinn Dexter manages to reassert control of his body, by feeding his possessor images of his depraved activities as a satanist to the point where the possessor starts behaving like Dexter and then retreats into a catatonic state. Enhanced with his ex-possessor's energistic power, Dexter swiftly organises the possessed and they rapidly start taking over the planet. Several more possessed reach the independent bitek habitat Valisk in the Srinagar system and begin possessing several inhabitants as a prelude to taking over the entire habitat. They are led by Kiera, who has possessed the body of Marie Skibbow from Aberdale. Dariat, one of the children of Rubra, the eccentric genius who founded Valisk and then transferred his personality into it upon his death, becomes aware of their activities and volunteers to help them, so he can revenge himself upon the manipulative Rubra. His knowledge of the habitat's surveillance techniques and how to evade them proves invaluable to the possessed. They kill him, and then guide his soul into a new body to give him the same powers they possess. The Kulu embassy staff reach Ombey, the nearest Kulu colony world to Lalonde. However, when they bring their possessed prisoner out of zero-tau (a form of suspension which reduces energy movements to zero, effectively freezing time), they find the possessing spirit has fled, leaving the traumatised, broken form of Gerald Skibbow within. Princess Kirsten Saldana, the Saldana family member responsible for Ombey, is rapidly forced to declare a state of emergency when it is revealed that three personnel from the embassy staff were possessed and have begun spreading across the planet. Ralph Hiltch is brought in to advise. The Lady MacBeth reaches Tranquillity at the same time that representatives of the Lalonde government are forming a mercenary fleet and army to save the planet. Keen to protect his investment, Calvert volunteers to accompany the fleet. They reach Lalonde (of which a sizeable portion is covered by a strange red cloud) and begin landing mercenaries on the surface, but many of the landing teams are rapidly possessed and return to the orbiting ships. A full-scale space battle erupts when the Confederation Navy squadron arrives to blockade the planet and the possessed ships start firing on them. The mercenary team from the Lady MacBeth evades possession and manage to take a prisoner whose possessor is called Shaun Wallace, who tells them that the red cloud will hide Lalonde from the universe. He reveals that the possessed can hear the cries for help from the possessed still in 'the beyond' and they desperately need to escape them. Once the cloud encircles Lalonde completely, the combined will of the possessed can physically move the planet onto another plane of existence where the cries of the possessed will not reach them. The mercenary team evacuates to a nearby settlement belonging to the alien Tyrathca. The xenocs are extremely agitated by the human's newly-revealed ability to become 'elemental' as they call it. They have built a statue to their 'Sleeping God', which 'sees the universe' and they believe will save them. A reporter accompanying the mission, Kelly Tirrel, takes images of the statue and notes that there is no record of the Tyrathca having a god due to their highly unimaginative nature. They move on and discover Father Elwes and the children from Aberdale in hiding on the savannah. They manage to arrange a pick-up from the Lady MacBeth. The mercenary team sacrifices itself against an attack by possessed masquerading as the stereotypical knights in shining armour to give the children, Elwes and Kelly time to evacuate. A message hidden in the request for aid given by Alkad Mzu to Captain Meyer of the Udat is revealed, offering him a vast sum of money for his help in aiding her escape. Meyer agrees and has Udat make a wormhole jump into the interior of Tranquillity. Mzu arranges to be in place for a pick-up, but underestimates the ability and sheer power of Tranquillity to enforce its will through affinity. Udat is compelled to jump back out with Mzu perilously hanging onto a rope ladder trailing from the blackhawk. The story continues in The Neutronium Alchemist. |
Cocaine Nights | J. G. Ballard | null | The story's protagonist, Charles Prentice, ventures to Estrella de Mar in order to rescue his jailed brother, Frank. Upon arriving and talking with his sibling, Charles finds to his horror that his brother has confessed to everything, and has no interest in trying to escape his plea. In a matter of days, Charles becomes immersed in the strange world of Estrella de Mar, learning more of her dark secrets, and spending less time worrying about his brother. Constantly being manipulated while he thinks he's finding the truth, Charles soon finds himself out of control and at the nexus of certain disaster, at which point he finally begins to understand just what happened to his brother. |
The Crystal World | J. G. Ballard | 1,966 | The main character is Edward Sanders, an English medical doctor, who arrives to the river port of Port Matarre, in Gabon. From here he tries to reach a leprosy treatment facility where his friends, Max and Suzanne Clair, live. Soon, however, he starts to recognize that a mysterious phenomenon is crystallizing the jungle along with its living creatures. The same phenomenon is reported to be present also in the Florida everglades and in the Pripyat Marshes (Soviet Union) as well. Scientific explanations of the phenomenon are provided within the book: however, Ballard offers mostly an interior and psychological perspective about it, directly through Sanders' experiences. Several facts, furthermore, remains unexplained: for example, the ability of jewels to liquefy the crystals. The crystals also have the property to keep objects and beings in a suspended state of existence. Many passages deal with this characteristic, pointing out its capability to stop time and life. In his route towards the deep of the forest, Sanders gets involved in a personal feud between Ventress, a Belgian architect, and Thorensen, the director of a diamond mine. In one of the most striking episodes of the novel, Sanders discovers the reason of the deadly rivalry to be Ventress' former wife, Serena, who is terminally ill with tuberculosis. After a final confrontation, Thorensen decides to remain in his house within the jungle, in spite of the encroaching crystallization process. Two of the other characters met by Sanders in his voyage spontaneously make the same decision: Balthus, an apostate priest, and Suzanne. The latter, nearly gone mad and sporting the first symptoms of leprosy, is portrayed towards the end of the novel as the leader of a band of lepers who set for the interior of the crystallizing forest, clearly to never come back. After having barely escaped from the now quickly spreading crystallization, Sanders reaches Port Matarre. Here, however, he makes the same decision as Balthus and Suzanne. In the final pages, Sanders goes back to river to face the same fate as Suzanne. |
Concrete Island | J. G. Ballard | null | A twisted adaptation of Robinson Crusoe, the story's protagonist, Robert Maitland, a wealthy architect, finds himself stranded in a manmade 'island' (a section of fenced-off wasteland in the middle of a motorway intersection) between the Westway and an imagined spur of the M4 Motorway in west London, and is forced to survive on only what is in his crashed Jaguar and what he is able to find. |
A Burnt-Out Case | Graham Greene | 1,960 | Querry, a famous architect who is fed up with his celebrity, no longer finds meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper colony overseen by Catholic missionaries, he is diagnosed - by Dr Colin, the resident doctor - as the mental equivalent of a 'burnt-out case': a leper who has gone through a stage of mutilation. However, as Querry loses himself in working for the lepers, his disease of mind slowly approaches a cure. Querry meets Rycker, a palm-oil plantation owner, and a man of strong Catholic faith who does not accept his own nothingness and tries to amplify the relevance of Querry's presence in that country. Rycker's wife, a young and uneducated woman, is absolutely bored with his prudishness and her own lack of freedom. It is revealed that Querry is a famous architect, known throughout the world for his design and construction of Churches - which he himself believes have been defiled by the religious occupants. Querry begins the task of designing and overseeing the building of a Hospital for the Leproserie. An English journalist called Parkinson arrives at the village with the intention of writing a series of articles, to be syndicated in many European and North American newspapers, on the subject of Querry's perceived 'saintly' activities in the village, including a story of Querry pursuing his servant - an African mutilated by Leprosy-, who became lost in the jungle. However Parkinson also brings up Querry's past not only as an architect but also as a womanizer. It is revealed that Querry's former lover committed suicide, thus prompting his journey to the village (however his journey was not the result of feelings of guilt or grief, but rather the incident acted to magnify his growing loss of faith and vocation.) When the first article is published and received at the village, Querry becomes angered by his portrayal, not only by Parksinson, but by Rycker whom Parksinon interviewed for the story. Querry travels to Luc and on the way calls in to confront Rycker. Querry learns that Rycker's wife fears that she is pregnant and that her husband does not want a child (despite having refused contraception and having effectively forced her into sex numerous times). She tells Querry to ask Rycker for permission to travel to the capital Luc to see a doctor. Following a confrontation between Querry and Rycker, Querry leaves for Luc and takes with him Mrs. Rycker so she may visit the doctor, however neither of the two inform Rycker of her departure. Querry never becomes physically intimate with her. In Luc, Querry and Mrs. Rycker take rooms at the hotel. However before going to sleep, Querry suspects that Mrs. Rycker is crying in the next room. When he investigates she informs him that she was actually laughing at the novel she is reading - one that would be banned at her home with the pious Rycker - and the two share a bottle of Whisky. As Mrs. Rycker is going to sleep, Querry tells her a story which closely parallels his story: a man losing both faith and vocation. The following morning Parksinson informs Querry that Rycker has arrived in Luc in pursuit of his wife and, upon discovering his wife's diary with an entry stating "Spent the night with Q", Rycker accuses Querry of having an affair. Querry, after briefly meeting Mrs. Rycker and learning that she is pregnant with Rycker's child, leaves Luc and returns to the village, where the construction of the Hospital is nearing completion. Days later Mrs. Rycker arrives at the convent near the village. She tells the sisters and priests that she has been having an affair with Querry and that she is pregnant with his child. When Querry visits her she claims that she thought of Querry whilst having sex with Rycker in an attempt to endure the man, and thus she became pregnant with what she views as Querry's child (despite being Ryckers). Father Thomas, the temporary supervisor of the village, becomes angry at Querry for bringing shame and sin upon the village (as well as damaging his image as saintly - despite strong objections to having such an image from Querry himself). Rycker arrives at the village and demands to see Querry, who has gone to stay in Dr. Colin's room for the night. Rycker begins to walk to Dr. Colin's stating that a jury would never convict him, which troubles the priests - one of whom pursues Rycker in order to prevent him shooting Querry. Enraged, Rycker confronts Querry. While being accused of adultery, Querry laughs at the absurdity of the accusations. Rycker misinterprets the laugh and becomes angry and shoots Querry, who then dies. Querry is buried in the village, which fulfills his wish to never return to his old life. |
Dune: House Harkonnen | Kevin J. Anderson | 2,000 | Eighteen years have passed since Shaddam Corrino IV succeeded his father as Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe. However, his rule is precarious as his wife Anirul has been instructed by her Bene Gesserit sisterhood to bear him only daughters. Shaddam's authority is also challenged by the powerful House Harkonnen, whose illegal stock-piling of melange is of great concern to the Emperor. In order to monopolize the spice, Shaddam and his trusted advisor and friend, Hasimir Fenring, plan to synthesize the substance with the help of Hidar Fen Ajidica, a Tleilaxu Master Researcher. Ajidica sets up laboratories to accomplish this purpose on the newly conquered planet of Ix, formerly the home of House Vernius. By the end of the novel, Ajidica tells Fenring that the manufacture of synthetic spice has been a success, although the validity of his claim is highly dubious. Meanwhile, on Caladan, Duke Leto Atreides bids Duncan Idaho farewell. Duncan is headed for Ginaz, where he will study to become a swordmaster. Leto and his friends, Kailea and Rhombur Vernius, are still struggling to liberate the siblings' former homeworld, but they have made little progress so far. Kailea becomes Leto's concubine, though he refuses to marry her for obvious political reasons. Rhombur seeks out a companion from the Bene Gesserit order and is matched with a young woman named Tessia who gives him a new sense of drive and purpose. After receiving a plea for help from C'tair Pilru, an Ixian rebel, Rhombur begins supplying the Ixian resistance with limited aid, though his attempts are greatly hindered by the Emperor's Sardaukar. Kailea soon gives birth to Leto's son, Victor. After the child's birth, she becomes increasingly dissatisfied with her role as Leto's concubine, wanting the Duke to marry her so that their son can succeed his father someday. Kailea's lady-in-waiting, Chiara, is actually a Harkonnen agent sent to poison Kailea's mind against Leto. Matters are complicated further with the arrival of Jessica, a Bene Gesserit and the secret daughter of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam and Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (though Jessica herself is unaware of her parentage). Jessica is presented to Leto as a gift from the Bene Gesserit, although the sisterhood has the ulterior motive of using the pair in their breeding program. At first, Leto refuses to have much to do with Jessica and tries to remain faithful to Kailea. However, as he and Kailea grow farther apart, he begins to seek out Jessica's company. Finally, Kailea is driven to make an attempt on Leto's life by having an explosive device planted on his skyclipper. At the last minute, Leto decides to take Victor and Rhombur along with him, and the boy dies instead. Leto is relatively unharmed, but Rhombur is reduced to little more than a charred lump of flesh. Fearing that Leto will guess that she is responsible for the death of their son and driven by guilt, Kailea kills her lady-in-waiting and then commits suicide by jumping out a window. The Tleilaxu offer to grow a ghola of Leto's deceased son in exchange for the barely alive body of Rhombur Vernius. Leto ultimately refuses, after much soul-searching, knowing that the Tleilaxu intend only harm towards House Vernius. Instead, Leto hires Dr. Wellington Yueh, an expert in the field of cybernetics, to fashion a cybernetic replacement body for Rhombur. Leto and Jessica fall deeply in love, leading Jessica to decide to conceive a son for Leto's sake, directly disobeying the Bene Gesserit's order that she have a daughter. On the Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime, the Baron Harkonnen grows weaker and more corpulent due to a strange disease which, unbeknownst to him, was inflicted upon him by a vengeful Mohiam. After killing a slew of doctors who fail to diagnose or alleviate his condition, he hires Dr. Yueh for a massive price. Yueh reveals to the Baron that Mohiam is responsible for his ailment. In response, the Baron attempts to take revenge against the Bene Gesserit, but fails miserably. Meanwhile, the Baron's brother, Abulurd, uncovers an illegal stockpile of spice on Lankiveil. Rather than turn his brother in to the Emperor, Abulurd, a benevolent ruler and the polar opposite of his brother Vladimir, uses the stockpile to benefit his people. Upon discovery of this, Glossu Rabban, Abulurd's firstborn son, strangles his father to death, an act which earns him the nickname of "Beast." Baron Harkonnen also kidnaps Abulurd's other son, Feyd-Rautha, and tries to raise him as his own. Young Liet Kynes comes of age and continues the realization of his father Pardot Kynes's dream of taming the hostile conditions on Arrakis. Also on Arrakis, the Lady Margot Fenring seeks out the Fremen in order to explain the disappearance of several other members of the Bene Gesserit order, including the Reverend Mother Ramallo. She finds that the Bene Gesserit have already integrated themselves into Fremen society and implanted the myths of the Missionaria Protectiva into Fremen culture. Gurney Halleck, a farm laborer on Giedi Prime, witnesses the capture of his sister Bheth at the hands of Harkonnen agents. Halleck fights for his sister's release and is savagely beaten by the Harkonnen. After four years of searching for Bheth, Gurney receives a note from her that tells him she is still alive. A Harkonnen census taker tells Gurney that Bheth paid him to smuggle Gurney's family the note. The man gives Gurney information that leads him to a pleasure house near Mount Ebony. He infiltrates the pleasure house and finds his sister tied to a bed, entwined with two Harkonnen soldiers. Bheth's larynx has been cut out so that she cannot speak. Gurney is again beaten to a pulp by the soldiers, and when he regains consciousness he is in a Harkonnen slave pit, where he is forced to mine and polish obsidian ore. The Harkonnen overseers repeatedly try to break Gurney's spirit through a variety of means: forcing him to watch while his sister is raped and finally murdered, drugging him, and beating him. Gurney finally manages to escape by stowing himself away in a shipment of the ore, which happens to be a gift from Leto Atreides to his concubine Kailea. Gurney leaves the shipment before it arrives at his final destination and joins the renegade Earl Dominic Vernius. After the Earl is killed on Dune, Gurney travels to Caladan to find the Vernius heirs, and swears his loyalty to House Atreides. |
Dune: House Corrino | Kevin J. Anderson | 2,001 | One year after the War of Assassins, Duke Leto Atreides sponsors an assault on Ix to reclaim the planet for House Vernius, while his concubine Jessica is pregnant with his son. Emperor Shaddam IV commences his Great Spice War to create a dependency on his soon-to-be-released synthetic melange, ajidamal. The Bene Gesserit eagerly await the birth of the Kwisatz Haderach's mother by Jessica; little do they know that things are not going to turn out exactly how they intend. |
The Summons | John Grisham | 2,002 | The main character, Ray Atlee, is a law professor with a good salary at the University of Virginia. He has a brother, Forrest, and a father, known to many as Judge Reuben V. Atlee. Ray is sent to his father's house in Clanton, Mississippi, to discuss issues regarding the old man's will and estate. To do this, Ray has to go to fictional Ford County (Mississippi), the setting for two of John Grisham's other books including A Time To Kill. When he finds his father dead in the study, Ray discovers a sum of over three million dollars in the house, money which is not part of Judge Atlee's will. Ray immediately thinks the money is "dirty" because his father could not possibly have made so much money in his career. Assuming that he is the only one who knows about the money, Ray decides to take it without making it officially part of the estate, and does not tell anyone about it: he knows that if he made it a part of the estate, taxes would take most of the money. But later reality proves otherwise. Ray is being followed; someone else knows about the money. After his own investigations into the roots of the money and the identity of his shadow—including trips to casinos and shady meetings with prominent southern lawyers—he eventually discovers that Forrest has the money. He finds Forrest in a drug rehab compound and confronts him. At the end both part, with Forrest telling Ray that he will contact him in a year. de:Der Richter (Roman) it:La convocazione pl:Wezwanie (powieść) |
Needful Things | Stephen King | 1,991 | A new shop named "Needful Things" opens in the town of Castle Rock, Maine, sparking the curiosity of its citizens. The proprietor, Leland Gaunt, is a charming elderly gentleman who always seems to have an item in stock that is perfectly suited to any customer who comes through his door. The prices are surprisingly low, considering the merchandise - such as a rare Sandy Koufax baseball card, a carnival glass lampshade, and a fragment of wood believed to be from Noah's Ark - but he expects each customer to also play a little prank on someone else in Castle Rock. Gaunt knows about the long-standing private grudges, arguments, and feuds between the various townspeople, and the pranks are his means of forcing them to escalate until the whole town is eventually caught up in madness and violence. The novel ends as it begins, with a first-person narrative indicating that a new and mysterious shop is about to open in a small Iowa town - an implication that Gaunt is ready to begin his business cycle all over again. |
The Stingray Shuffle | Tim Dorsey | null | Sales of The Stingray Shuffle, a good novel by good novelist Ralph Krunkleton, have soared recently. The book's publishers, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, mount a publicity blitz culminating in a train journey with the author from New York to Miami. What they do not realize is that no one is reading the book; dealers are using a bookstore as a front, hollowing out copies of Shuffle to hide drugs. Meanwhile, Serge A. Storms and pothead pal Lenny Lipowicz resume their pursuit of $5 million worth of insurance fraud payout. Thrown into the mix are Johnny Vegas the accidental virgin, Paul the passive-aggressive private eye, Ernest Hemingway lookalike Jethro Maddox, and the world's least competent drug cartel. Most of these characters find their way onto the Stingray Shuffle, the temporarily-rechristened train to Miami. The Stingray Shuffle ties up a three-book plot arc that began with Florida Roadkill, continued with Hammerhead Ranch Motel, and was then shelved for two years while Dorsey wrote the only slightly relative Triggerfish Twist and Orange Crush. It is ultimately revealed that Serge's plan for the money is to buy a trip into space (and a monogrammed spacesuit) from the Russians. |
Portrait of Lozana: The Lusty Andalusian Woman | Francisco Delicado | null | The book begins in Cordoba where the sexually precocious Aldonza lives with her mother. After her mother's death, she moves to her aunt's house from where she escapes with Diomedes, a sea merchant. After travelling to many cities of the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East and changing her name to Lozana, they come to Marseille to meet the father of Diomedes, who, disgusted with his son, sends him to prison and pays a sailor to make Lozana disappear. However, the sailor disobeys the order given and takes Lozana to Livorno, where she continues her journey up to Rome. Without money, Lozana goes to the Spanish downtown in Rome to request help; there, the women see her abilities in cooking, medicine and her beauty (although her face is a little bit disfigured by syphilis). After a Neapolitan woman gives her a servant called Rampin, Lozana makes an agreement with him so that he becomes, for a time, her servant and lover. Following the advice of a post man, and with the aid of a Jew called Trigos who installs her in a house he owns, she begins her new life as a prostitute. After few years, she becomes the madame of a brothel, then Lozana and Rampin move to Lipari; the book ends with a little narration about the sack of Rome. |
La Celestina | Fernando de Rojas | 1,499 | Upon meeting Melibea, Calisto falls madly in love with her. Melibea rejects Calisto immediately at his open pledge of his love for her, as is the custom in courtly love. Calisto becomes depressed and lovesick, so his servant, Sempronio, tells Calisto about Celestina, a procuress who owns a brothel with prostitutes, two of whom are Elicia and Areusa. Calisto accepts and asks Celestina for help, and Celestina and Sempronio plot to get as much money out of Calisto as possible. Another servant, Pármeno attempts to warn Calisto of Celestina's dishonorable reputation, but Calisto rejects him. Celestina convinces Pármeno not to warn him any longer, using Areusa, and to instead join with her and Sempronio in taking advantage of Calisto. Celestina meets with Melibea and gives her a magic thread while telling her of the suffering of a man she knows whose only cure is the word and girdle of Melibea. They talk but when Celestina names Calisto, Melibea gets angry and tells Celestina to leave. Celestina is crafty though, and she finally manages to get Melibea to give up her girdle for Calisto. Melibea changes her mind and asks Celestina to come back and meet her secretly. Melibea suddenly finds herself madly in love with Calisto, and begs Celestina to arrange a meeting between her and her lover. Once this is done, Celestina informs Calisto and Calisto gives Celestina a gold chain. Celestina doesn't say anything to Sempronio and Pármeno, her partners in crime. When they go to Celestina's brothel and find out that Celestina has no intention of sharing her payment, they kill her. Afraid of being caught, they jump out the window, but one of the prostitutes, Sempronio's lover Elicia, sees them killing Celestina, and their broken bodies are executed. Calisto gets to the gate in Melibea's house with his other two servants Sosia and Tristan. Elicia and Areusa, who were lovers of Sempronio and Pármeno, send two thugs; while Calisto is getting to Melibea's balcony with a ladder he hears Sosia and Tristan shouting. He runs to help them, but falls off the ladder and dies. Melibea sees Calisto dead, runs to the highest tower of her house and throws herself off after confessing her affair to her father. |
Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | 1,996 | The plot partially revolves around the missing master copy of a film cartridge, titled Infinite Jest and referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat". The film is so entertaining to its viewers that they become lifeless, losing all interest in anything other than viewing the film. The video cartridge was the final work of film by James O. Incandenza before his microwave suicide, completed during a stint of sobriety that was requested by the lead actress, Joelle. Quebec separatists are interested in acquiring a master, redistributable copy of the work to aid in acts of terrorism against the United States. The United States Office of Unspecified Services (USOUS) is seeking to intercept the master copy of the film in order to prevent mass dissemination and the destabilization of the Organization of North American Nations. Joelle and later Hal seek treatment for substance abuse problems at The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, and Marathe visits the rehabilitation center to pursue a lead on the master copy of the Entertainment, tying the characters and plots together. |
Magic, Inc. | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,950 | Archie Fraser is a building contractor whose business is thriving. Despite the common use of magic in other professions, Archie has relatively little use for it, since so much of his work involves "cold iron", which defies magic. However he does have a sideline in instant temporary structures, such as bleachers and tents, all made of wood with no iron in them, which can be reconstituted from a fragment of an original structure. The work is done by magicians operating as independent contractors. Occasionally mistakes are made - at one point a fragment of a house is used by mistake. Archie creatively puts a sign outside the out-of-place structure saying "Display model! Now open!" One day Archie is the subject of a shakedown by a sleazy character who seems to be operating a protection racket based on magic. After scaring the criminal off by exploiting his obvious superstitions (helped by the display of a conveniently concealed handgun), Archie goes to see his friend Jedson, who uses magic to operate a clothing business. Jedson's specialty is "one season" clothing which is not intended to be hard-wearing. As Archie arrives, he is auditioning a teenage medium who can produce clothing from ectoplasm. He is disappointed to find that the result is simply a copy of an existing design owned by somebody else, so he cannot use it. Jedson is always ready to help a friend. He and Archie are able to grab the would-be gangster as he lurks near Archie's storefront and hustle him inside. There Jedson draws a "magic circle" around the miscreant, imprisoning him. He then makes a voodoo doll and uses it to strike fear into the criminal, at one point burning its face with a cigarette, whereupon his prisoner cries in pain and blisters form on his face. He breaks down and babbles some information, most of it useless in finding out who runs the racket. They kick him out of the store, believing him to be just a small-time hood. Archie protests Jedson's tactics, but Jedson replies that he didn't really do anything. The circle and the doll were just symbolic. It was the man's own misguided beliefs which caused his body to react as if he really were being imprisoned and tortured. At that point there is a scream outside. They discover the man's body, ripped from shoulder to groin as if by the talons of a huge bird, the gouges being filled with a stinking ichor. Slowly Archie's business begins to suffer. There are mysterious accidents and problems with his workers who are scared by hex symbols which appear around the business. Then one morning the entire business is destroyed, apparently by elementals of fire, earth and water. Jedson initially helps Archie consult a prestigious magician, Biddle, who sets up a tent (Archie notes "he worked with his clothes on") on site, then after some activity in the tent, announces he can do nothing and that they owe him $500 as a "survey fee". Jedson politely tells him to forget it, as no such fee was mentioned before, and magicians, like lawyers, work on a "contingency fee" basis. Biddle disappears in a huff. At that point a young magician by the name of Bodie, who had been watching the performance, tells then they should have used an old witch he knows, a Mrs. Jennings. They consult her in her small, well-ordered home. After a reading of tea-leaves, her usual line of work, she announces that she knows what they need and they all move to Archie's business. There, with Archie and Jedson in the tent, she draws a pentacle and calls the elementals to her. These are a gnome, an undine, and a fire salamander. The undine is a repulsive sluglike creature, while the salamander is a naive, benign creature of flame which sees no wrong in burning, though it regrets causing harm. By force and persuasion, she instructs them to reverse what they did. There is a huge rushing noise and Archie's business is restored. Strange events continue, this time directed at Archie himself. A few times he is saved from danger, apparently by the distant intervention of Mrs. Jennings herself. Jedson consults an anthropologist, who is also a "witch smeller". A large, handsome African impeccably dressed in an expensive business suit, holding a string of degrees from prestigious institutions, Dr. Royce Worthington can find and neutralize black magic. Dressing for his work in a leopard skin, he assumes the persona of a dog and sniffs around Archie's home and office. He eventually announces that he has found a lot of unusual magic, but that he will leave his grandfather behind to watch over things. Grandfather is a shrunken head. Archie wonders what the cleaners will make of this, but Royce assures him that Grandfather is only seen when he wants to be. Meanwhile, Biddle's organization, a body of "professional magicians", nominally intended to assure high standards, keeps dunning Archie over Biddle's fee. There is also a new "one stop shopping" company calling itself "Magic, Inc." which hires magicians and finds them work. It is an open secret that the two organizations are the same. The nominal head of Magic Inc. is a man called Ditworth. Jedson discovers that a bill in the State Legislature, intended to regulate magicians, would give Ditworth monopoly power. They go to the State Capitol to try to head off this law, but are outwitted by Ditworth, who manages to get the bill attached to a major public works project, making its passage unstoppable. However Ditworth makes the mistake of passing by a large mirror in the Capitol building. He is seen to cast no reflection, showing that he is actually a demon. Once the law begins to bite, magicians who work for Magic Inc. are able to find work, even if they barely get by, while those who refuse to join Magic Inc. have their licenses revoked. Meanwhile customers such as Archie are charged ever higher rates for magic services. Jedson discovers that Ditworth has been at work in all other states, and there is nowhere for them to go to get away from his schemes. Royce, Jedson, Bodie and Archie meet at Mrs Jennings house from time to time. There they hatch a plan to enter the Half World, the realm of demons and Old Nick himself, to challenge Ditworth. This requires preparation, including transfiguration of those making the trip. Bodie stays behind to guard the portal in Mrs. Jennings' fireplace, while Jedson (transformed into an ugly half-bestial form), Royce (in his work costume), and Archie (in his normal form) travel with Mrs. Jennings, who to Archie's surprise and delight, has transformed herself into Amanda Jennings, the young, beautiful redhead she once was. In the Half World, custom reigns supreme and natural laws are negotiable. They go before Old Nick and demand to inspect his demons, as custom allows. Faced with seemingly endless legions of horrific creatures, Royce and Archie, helped by Mrs. Jennings' cat, travel up and down the rows. Jedson and Amanda have to remain behind as hostages. After what seems years they identify and tackle Ditworth. Being a demon, Ditworth can kill them, but another demon breaks ranks and subdues their enemy. At this point their helper reveals himself to be an FBI agent. Archie faints. Again citing custom, they demand that Ditworth face their champion, who is of course the white witch Amanda. Ditworth is afraid to do this, and has to face Old Nick's sentence for being defeated by white magic. He is imprisoned for "a thousand thousand years", a fairly light sentence, which is enough to stop his scheming on Earth. Old Nick announces that the FBI man has to stay behind for his special attention, but after a challenge from Amanda, who seems capable of taking on him and all his legions, he thinks better of it. They all return to the house. The FBI man tells them he was working Ditworth's scams from another angle and had become trapped in the Half World. As they emerge from the fireplace, Bodie recognizes him as an old friend. The FBI man, now in human form with a snappy suit and fedora hat, bids them a quick goodbye as he leaves to report back to the Bureau. Archie, overpowered by Amanda's beauty, hangs around her like a lovesick puppy, but she is firmly unreceptive. She sets him down for a nap to recover from his ordeal, and when he awakes, she is Mrs. Jennings again. Archie's business recovers, as all Ditworth's schemes fall apart. |
Artemis Fowl | Eoin Colfer | 2,001 | Artemis Fowl II is the twelve-year-old son of an Irish crime lord, Artemis Fowl I. After significant research, Artemis believes that he has confirmed the existence of fairies. He tracks down an alcoholic sprite posing as a healer in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and travels there with his bodyguard Butler to obtain from her The Book of the People—the Fairy holy book that is written in Gnommish. Meanwhile, Captain Holly Short of the Lower Elements Police is tracking a rogue troll that has managed to reach the surface of the Earth from the fairy city, deep underground. Assisted by a technically minded centaur called Foaly and LEPrecon commander Julius Root, she incapacitates the troll. However, this uses the last of her magic, and Commander Root demands that she complete the magic restoring ritual. Artemis decodes the Book using translating software, and in the process, learns the specifics of the ritual: taking an acorn from an ancient oak tree near a bend in a river under the full moon and planting it elsewhere. Artemis and Butler track down over 100 possible locations for the ritual and start a stakeout; after nearly four months, they discover Holly performing the ritual. Butler tranquillises Holly with a hypodermic syringe. A LEP retrieval team is sent to scout Fowl Manor. Using their 'shielding' ability, which allows them to vibrate faster than the human eye can follow, the team enters the manor grounds. Artemis had anticipated this, however, and installed a camera with a high frames-per-second rate, allowing him to detect the threat by freezing the image. After Butler incapacitates the intruders, Root decides to lay siege to Fowl Manor using a time-stop and enter negotiations. Artemis reveals the ransom demand: one metric ton of 24-carat gold. Artemis also reveals his knowledge of the time-stop and claims that he can escape it. An analysis by LEP behaviour experts determines that Artemis is telling the truth, or thinks he is. The attempts to gain entry to the manor continue as the LEP recruit an infamous criminal, the kleptomaniac dwarf Mulch Diggums to break in. Fairies are forbidden from entering human dwellings without permission, but Mulch has already broken this rule and is immune to the adverse consequences. He tunnels underground to reach the house while Foaly feeds a loop to the manor surveillance system, allowing Mulch to freely explore. Mulch locates a safe containing a copy of the Book, finally revealing to the fairies the source of Artemis' knowledge. The Fairy Council, deciding that nothing is working, promotes a lieutenant called Briar Cudgeon to Acting Commander, temporarily usurping Julius Root. Meanwhile, Holly Short cracks through the concrete of her cell using her bed and completes the ritual with a smuggled acorn. Having regained her magic, she escapes into the main house. Cudgeon decides to release the troll Holly captured earlier into the mansion to force Artemis to allow the fairies to enter and subdue the troll. This backfires, as Butler, aided by Holly's healing powers, defeats the troll. The Fairy Council subsequently strips Cudgeon of his post. Artemis is finally granted the ransom. The gold is sent in, and Artemis asks Holly for a wish: to cure his mother's insanity — she has been living in her bedroom, driven mad by the loss of her husband. Holly grants the wish at the cost of half the gold. The LEP decides to send in a 'blue rinse' – a biological bomb that kills all organic life — to eliminate Artemis and allow for the retrieval of the gold, but this fails when Artemis escapes the time-stop by drugging himself and his comrades with sleeping pills. Having survived until the end of the time stop, the LEP is bound by law and leaves the remaining gold and departs. At the end, Artemis finds his mother has fully recovered from her insanity thanks to Holly's magic. |
Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident | Eoin Colfer | 2,002 | Artemis Fowl II is the thirteen-year-old son of an Irish crime lord, Artemis Fowl I, and the fairy underworld considers him dangerous. After being falsely accused of supplying contraband to a goblin smuggling ring, Artemis and his bodyguard, Butler, defeat the culprit. In return, the fairies Captain Holly Short and Commander Julius Root of the Lower Elements Police assist the pair in rescuing Artemis' father, whom the Russian Mafia has held hostage. A goblin hit squad ambushes the rescue group, and the group shelters underneath an overhang. Realising that it is a trap, Butler pushes Holly and Artemis out as the overhang collapses. The rubble knocks Butler unconscious and traps him and Commander Root. Holly and Artemis free Root and Butler. Holly questions Artemis about his father and how he came to be so ruthless in the events of the previous book, and, in a rare moment of sincerity, Artemis admits he made a mistake, a sign of his moral development that continues through the series. Meanwhile, Briar Cudgeon ambushes and locks Foaly in the Operations Booth and disables LEP weapons, framing him as the mastermind behind the rebellion against the LEP and leaving the rescue group powerless to stop the goblins as they begin their attack. Foaly sends a text message to the rescue group, revealing that all weapons and communications are controlled by Opal Koboi. Artemis decides to take over Koboi Laboratories and return all weapons to the LEP, interrupting the rescue mission. Holly reveals that Foaly had a hunch that Mulch Diggums, the criminal and kleptomaniac dwarf who had been presumed dead after the Fowl Manor siege, was still alive and in Los Angeles. Knowing that he had broken into Koboi Laboratories before, they go to apprehend him once again. They then break into Koboi Laboratories through a hollow titanium foundation rod. Artemis manages to turn both the goblins and Koboi against Cudgeon. Cudgeon is killed when he is thrown into the open DNA cannon plasma feed which simultaneously blacks out Opal Koboi. The restored power activates DNA cannons in Police Plaza, neutralising all goblins there. However, Foaly is still trapped in the Operations Booth, as the LEP outside, commanded by Captain Trouble Kelp, still thinks he is to blame for the revolt. The rescuers then go to Murmansk and rescue Artemis Fowl I. |
Papillon | Henri Charrière | 1,969 | The book is an account of a 14-year period in Papillon's life (October 26, 1931 to October 18, 1945) starting from when he was wrongly convicted of murder in France and sentenced to a life of hard labor at the Devil's Island penal colony. He escaped from Devil's Island, to ultimately settle in Venezuela, where he lived and prospered, free from French justice. Papillon endured a brief stay at a prison in Caen. As soon as he boarded a vessel bound for South America, he learned about the brutal life that prisoners had to endure at the prison colony. Murders were not uncommon among convicts, and men were cut with makeshift knives for their charger (a hollow metal cylinder containing money, lodged in the rectum; it has also been called a plan). Papillon befriended a former banker convicted of counterfeiting named Louis Dega. He agreed to protect Dega from those seeking to murder him for his charger. Upon arriving at the penal colony, Papillon claimed to be ill and was sent to the infirmary. There he collaborated with two men named Clousiot and André Maturette to escape from the prison using a sailboat which they acquired with the assistance of the penal settlement's leper colony at Pigeon Island. They let the current of the Maroni River take them to the Atlantic Ocean, where they began to sail to the northwest. In Trinidad the trio were joined by three other escapees and were helped on their journey by a British family, the Dutch bishop of Curaçao and several others. Nearing the Colombian coastline, the escapees were sighted; they were unable to escape for lack of wind and were captured and imprisoned. In Colombian prison, Papillon joined with another prisoner to escape. Some distance from the prison, the two went their separate ways. Papillon entered the Guajira peninsula, a region dominated by Native Americans. He was assimilated into a coastal village whose specialty was pearl diving, married two teenage sisters and made them pregnant. After spending several months in relative paradise, Papillon became motivated to seek vengeance against those who had wronged him. Soon after leaving the village, Papillon was imprisoned at Santa Marta, then transferred to Barranquilla. There, he was reunited with Clousiot and Maturette. Papillon made numerous escape attempts from this prison, all of which failed. He was eventually extradited back to French Guiana. As punishment, Papillon was sentenced to two years of solitary confinement on Île Saint-Joseph (an island in the Îles du Salut group, 11 kilometers from the French Guiana coast). Clousiot and Maturette were given the same sentence. Upon his release, Papillon was transferred to Royal Island (also an island in the Îles du Salut group). An escape attempt there was foiled by an informant (whom Papillon stabbed to death) and Papillon was again sent to solitary confinement, this time for nineteen months. The original sentence of eight years was reduced after Papillon risked his life to save the life of a girl caught in shark-infested waters. After French Guiana officials decided to support the pro-Nazi Vichy Regime, the penalty for any escape attempt became capital punishment. Realizing this, Papillon decided to feign insanity and be sent to the insane asylum on Royal Island. His reasoning was that insane prisoners could not be sentenced to death for any reason and the asylum was not as heavily guarded. He collaborated with another prisoner on an escape attempt but this attempt failed: while they were attempting to sail away, their boat was dashed against the rocks and destroyed, the other prisoner drowning and Papillon himself nearly dashed against the rocks. Papillon returned to the regular prisoner population on Royal Island after being "cured" of his mental illness. He requested that he be transferred to Devil's Island, the smallest and most "inescapable" island in the Îles de Salut group. Studying the waters around the island, Papillon discovered a rocky inlet surrounded by a high cliff. He noticed that every seventh wave was large enough to carry a floating object far enough out into the sea that it would drift towards the mainland. He experimented by throwing sacks of coconuts into the inlet. He found another prisoner to accompany him on this escape attempt, a pirate named Sylvain who had previously sailed along southeast Asia, and who was infamous for raiding ships in the Far East, killing everyone aboard. They threw themselves into the inlet using sacks of coconuts for flotation. The seventh wave duly carried them out into the ocean. After days of drifting under the relentless sun, surviving only on coconut pulp, they made landfall at the mainland, but Sylvain abandoned his coconut sack prematurely and was devoured by quicksand. Papillon navigated the mainland to find a Chinese man named Cuic Cuic, the brother of Chang. Cuic Cuic protected himself by making a hut on an "island" of solid ground surrounded by quicksand, using a pig that was adept at finding a navigable route over the quicksand. The men and the pig made their way to Georgetown, British Guiana, by boat. Though he could have lived there as a free man, Papillon decided to continue to the northwest in the company of five other escapees. Reaching Venezuela, the men were captured and imprisoned at mobile detention camps in the vicinity of El Dorado, a small mining town near the Gran Sabana region. Surviving horrible conditions there, and even finding diamonds, Papillon was eventually released, obtaining Venezuelan citizenship and celebrity status a few years later. |
Kate Vaiden | Reynolds Price | 1,986 | Kate Vaiden is the first person narrator of the novel. When she sets out to tell the story of her life she is a 57-year-old single woman. Having been diagnosed with cervical cancer seems to have changed her attitude to the family she left when she was seventeen without so much as writing them a letter—ever. Accordingly, she does not even know whether her son Lee, who must now be approaching 40, is still alive or not. In the final part of the book, which is set in 1984, she meets one of the last surviving members of her family, her cousin Swift, in a local nursing home. Swift eventually informs Kate that her son is alive and well but abroad with the US Navy. Kate is born in 1927 and grows up as an only child in Greensboro, North Carolina with her young parents Dan and Frances Vaiden. Her happy childhood is suddenly interrupted when, in 1938, for reasons she can never quite fathom, her father shoots her mother and then himself, leaving her to be raised by her aunt and uncle, Caroline and Holt Porter. The Porters, whose grown-up sons no longer live at home, reside in Macon, and Kate takes some time to get used to living in a small village. As they are not farmers, Kate does not have to work for them after school or during the holidays. Over the years, Noony Patrick, the Porters' African American household help, becomes her only friend and confidante. Kate has her first sexual encounter surprisingly early in life—at the age of twelve, without having had any sex education. One summer afternoon down by the Roanoke River, Gaston Stegall, the neighbours' boy, shows her his erection, and she gives him a handjob, without really knowing what she is doing. Gaston said "He hurts me."I said "How did you figure out it's a boy?" I stepped back a little.But he said "Oh don't. You can help me out."With all its faults, my family were not known for turning down pleas that deep from the heart. I moved back closer than I'd been before and said "Show me how."[…]In maybe twenty seconds the job was over. I'd brought a bandanna and cleaned myself, though I liked the smell and imagined it for days. By then he had got his legs still again, but his eyes were closed. I knew the answer but I said "Did it help?" When she tells Noony, the sheer extent of Kate's ignorance becomes clear: "You didn't get it on you? -- nowhere on your body."I said "My hand. You said you could tell."Noony said "On your privates. Keep it way off them; one drop of that stuff is good as a carload.""For what?""Babies, fool." But she said it kindly.I'd suspected as much and, as I've said, heard rumors at school; so I let Noony tell me all she knew. At 13, Kate finally has sexual intercourse with Gaston. ("When Gaston said he didn't have a rubber, I swear I wondered what he needed to erase.") The lovers enjoy each other's company undisturbed by the outside world for a few years, but when the United States enters World War II Gaston enlists in the army and is killed in a Marines camp before he can actually go to war. At 16, Kate escapes her surroundings and everything that might remind her of Gaston by stealing off to Norfolk, Virginia, where her cousin, Walter Porter, is living with his orphaned "friend," Douglas Lee, from back home. Having been ostracised from Macon, the two friends—whether they are actually a homosexual couple or not does not become clear—have never returned to their home town. However, Walter, who has a good job, promised Kate on the death of her parents that, whatever happens, she would always be welcome at his place. Now Kate takes him up on his word and is glad to see she is in no way regarded as an intruder. Walter also takes care of Kate's education and sends her to a Catholic school for girls—even though she is a Methodist. The trio get on very well with each other, but, with Walter frequently away on business trips, Kate starts a secret affair with Douglas—without being truly in love with him. When she gets pregnant—while abortion is never a serious option for her—she starts wondering what her future life will be like but in fact is unable to decide on any course of action. While Walter is making plans for her to stay, Kate and Douglas secretly plan to move to Raleigh, North Carolina and live there as a family. They actually get on a train to Raleigh, but when it stops at Macon while Douglas is at the toilet, Kate gets out without saying good-bye to him. On the spur of the moment, she decides to spend the last months of her pregnancy at her aunt and uncle's without the father of the child. In 1944, everyone has to get used to a young woman expecting an illegitimate child, but then Lee Vaiden is born and, as he is a strong, healthy boy, everything seems to be turning out fine. However, Kate's maternal instinct fails her soon after she has given birth: Considering how I was soon to behave, I have to wonder if I ever really loved him. I'd shown most other human instincts till then. Why did mothering fail me? In the months I knew him, I can honestly say I enjoyed his company. Nobody gets a long-term kick out of dirty diapers and spit-up milk, but Lee Vaiden more than made up for his faults.I'd tend him all day, bathe, feed him, enjoy him. Then about sundown I'd start feeling like he was Caroline's and Holt's -- and Noony's. They were glad to take over, in perfect silence. Also, it occurs to Kate that a life without a man is not the right thing for her: With Gaston and Douglas I'd used my body more ways than any white girl my age I'd read about or known. And for all the harm I'd caused the world, nothing convinced me my body was wrong and ought to be curbed. […] I couldn't just maim that much of myself by bolting doors on the wide green world and camping-down forever in a house with no man near me under sixty years old. One day, Kate decides to join Douglas in Raleigh and to leave her son in her aunt's care. In Raleigh, unable to find Douglas, she makes the acquaintance of a young blind man called Whitfield Eller, who works as a piano tuner. Realizing that sooner or later she will have to take a job, Kate teams up with Eller, driving the blind man's car to get him safely and on time to his customers. All the time, her plans to fetch the baby are somewhere at the back of her mind. Without ever seeing his son, Douglas, who used to be Eller's driver before Kate, commits suicide in Eller's bathroom, obviously because of the high debts he has run up. When Eller proposes to Kate, the latter, who has turned out to be a quitter, once again leaves everything behind her and moves on—this time to Greensboro, where she joins her former teacher, Miss Limer. It is now that she finally abandons her son. She starts working in a library, becomes involved with Jay Mabry, a war veteran, but again backs out when he wants to get married. She spends the next decades as a single woman working in a lawyer's office, never more than a two hour drive away from her old home and, accordingly, easy to track down. We never learn why exactly it is that she is never contacted. |
Phaedrus | Plato | null | The dialogue consists of a series of three speeches on the topic of love that serve as a metaphor for the discussion of the proper use of rhetoric. They encompass discussions of the soul, madness, divine inspiration, and the practice and mastery of an art. As they walk out into the countryside, Socrates tries to convince Phaedrus to repeat the speech of Lysias which he has just heard. Phaedrus makes several excuses, but Socrates suspects strongly that Phaedrus has a copy of the speech with him. Saying that while Lysias is present, he would never allow himself to be used as a training partner for Phaedrus to practice his own speech making on, he asks Phaedrus to expose what he is holding under his cloak. Phaedrus gives in and agrees to perform Lysias' speech. Phaedrus and Socrates walk through a stream and find a seat in the shade, and Phaedrus commences to repeat Lysias' speech. Beginning with "You understand, then, my situation: I've told you how good it would be for us in my opinion, if this worked out", the speech proceeds to explain all the reasons why it is better to give your favor to a non-lover rather than a true lover. Friendship with a non-lover, he says, demonstrates objectivity and prudence; it doesn't create gossip when you are seen together; it doesn't involve jealousy; and it allows for a much larger pool of possible partners. You will not be giving your favor to someone who is "more sick than sound in the head" and is not thinking straight, overcome by love. He explains that it is best to give your favor to one who can best return it, rather than one who needs it most. He concludes by stating that he thinks the speech is long enough, and the listener is welcome to ask any questions if something has been left out. Socrates, attempting to flatter Phaedrus, responds that he is in ecstasy and that it is all Phaedrus' doing. Socrates comments that as the speech seemed to make Phaedrus radiant, he is sure that Phaedrus understands these things better than he does himself, and that he cannot help follow Phaedrus' lead into his Bacchic frenzy. Phaedrus picks up on Socrates' subtle sarcasm and asks Socrates not to joke. Socrates retorts that he is still in awe, and claims to be able to make an even better speech than Lysias on the same subject. Phaedrus and Socrates both note how anyone would consider Socrates a foreigner in the countryside, and Socrates attributes this fault to his love of learning which "trees and open country won't teach," while "men in the town" will. Socrates then proceeds to give Phaedrus credit for leading him out of his native land: "Yet you seem to have discovered a drug for getting me out (dokei moi tes emes exocou to pharmakon heurekenai). A hungry animal can be driven by dangling a carrot or a bit of greenstuff in front of it; similarly if you proffer me speeches bound in books (en biblios) I don't doubt you can cart me all around Attica, and anywhere else you please." When Phaedrus begs to hear it however, Socrates refuses to give the speech. Phaedrus warns him that he is younger and stronger, and Socrates should "take his meaning" and "stop playing hard to get". Finally, after Phaedrus swears on the plane tree that he will never recite another speech for Socrates if Socrates refuses, Socrates, covering his head, consents. Socrates, rather than simply listing reasons as Lysias had done, begins by explaining that while all men desire beauty, some are in love and some are not. We are all ruled, he says, by two principles: one is our inborn desire for pleasure, and the other is our acquired judgment that pursues what is best (237d). Following your judgment is "being in your right mind", while following desire towards pleasure without reason is "outrage" (hybris). Following different desires leads to different things; one who follows his desire for food is a glutton, and so on. The desire to take pleasure in beauty, reinforced by the kindred beauty in human bodies, is called Eros. Remarking that he is in the grip of something divine, and may soon be overtaken by the madness of the nymphs in this place, he goes on. The problem, he explains, is that one overcome with this desire will want to turn his boy into whatever is most pleasing to himself, rather than what is best for the boy. The boy's intellectual progress will be stifled, his physical condition will suffer, the lover will not wish the boy to mature and take a family, all because the lover is shaping him out of desire for pleasure rather than what is best. At some point, "right-minded reason" will take the place of "the madness of love", and the lover's oaths and promises to his boy will be broken. Phaedrus believes that one of the greatest goods given is the relationship between lover and boy. This relationship brings guidance and love into the boy’s life. Because the boy has a lover as such a valuable role model, he is on his best behavior to not get caught in something shameful. To get caught in something shameful would be like letting down his lover, therefore the boy is consistently acting his best. With the absence of shame makes room for a sense of pride to come in; pride from the wealthy feeling of impressing one's own lover. Impressing one's own lover brings more learning and guidance into the boy's life. The non-lover, he concludes, will do none of this, always ruled by judgment rather than desire for pleasure. Socrates, fearing that the nymphs will take complete control of him if he continues, states that he is going to leave before Phaedrus makes him "do something even worse". However, just before Socrates is about to leave, he is stopped by the "familiar divine sign", his daemon, which occurs always and only just before Socrates is about to do something he should not. A voice "from this very spot" forbids Socrates to leave before he makes atonement for some offense to the gods. Socrates then admits that he thought both of the preceding speeches were terrible, saying Lysias' repeated itself numerous times, seemed uninterested in its subject, and seemed to be showing off. Socrates states that he is a "seer". While he is not very good at it, he is good enough for his purposes, and he recognizes what his offense has been: if love is a god or something divine, as he and Phaedrus both agree he is, he cannot be bad, as the previous speeches have portrayed him. Socrates, baring his head, vows to undergo a rite of purification as a follower of the Muses, and proceeds to give a speech praising the lover. Socrates begins by discussing madness. If madness is all bad, then the preceding speeches would have been correct, but in actuality, madness given as a gift of the gods provides us with some of the best things we have.There are, in fact, several kinds of divine madness, of which he cites four examples: #From Apollo, the gift of prophecy; #From Dionysus, the mystic rites and relief from present hardship; #From the Muses, poetry; #From Aphrodite, love. As they must show that the madness of love is, indeed, sent by a god to benefit the lover and beloved in order to disprove the preceding speeches, Socrates embarks on a proof of the divine origin of this fourth sort of madness. It is a proof, he says, that will convince "the wise if not the clever". He begins by briefly proving the immortality of the soul. A soul is always in motion and as a self-mover has no beginning. A self-mover is itself the source of everything else that moves. So, by the same token, it cannot be destroyed. Bodily objects moved from the outside have no soul, while those that move from within have a soul. Moving from within, all souls are self-movers, and hence their immortality is necessary. Then begins the famous Chariot allegory, called by R. Hackworth the centrepiece of Phaedrus, and the famous and moving account of the vision, fall and incarnation of the soul. A soul, says Socrates, is like the "natural union of a team of winged horses and their charioteer". While the gods have two good horses, everyone else has a mixture: one is beautiful and good, while the other is neither. As souls are immortal, those lacking bodies patrol all of heaven so long as their wings are in perfect condition. When a soul sheds its wings, it comes to earth and takes on an earthly body which then seems to move itself.These wings lift up heavy things to where the gods dwell, and are nourished and grow in the presence of the wisdom, goodness, and beauty of the divine. However, foulness and ugliness make the wings shrink and disappear. In heaven, he explains, there is a procession led by Zeus, who looks after everything and puts things in order. All of the gods, with the exception of Hestia, follow Zeus in this procession. While the chariots of the gods are balanced and easier to control, other charioteers must struggle with their bad horse, which will drag them down to earth if it has not been properly trained. As the procession works its way upward, it eventually makes it up to the high ridge of heaven, where the gods take their stands, are taken in a circular motion and gaze at all that is beyond heaven. What is outside of heaven, says Socrates, is quite difficult to describe, lacking color, shape, or solidity, as it is the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence. The gods delight in these things and are nourished. Feeling wonderful, they are taken around until they make a complete circle. On the way they are able to see Justice, Self-Control, Knowledge, and other things as they are in themselves, unchanging. When they have seen all things and feasted on them, coming all the way around, they sink back down inside heaven. The immortal souls that follow the gods most closely are able to just barely raise their chariots up to the rim and look out on Reality. They see some things and miss others, having to deal with their horses; they rise and fall at varying times. Other souls, while straining to keep up, are unable to rise, and in noisy, sweaty discord they leave uninitiated, not having seen reality. Where they go after is then dependent on their own opinions, rather than the truth. Any soul that catches sight of any one true thing is granted another circuit where it can see more; eventually, all souls fall back to earth. Those that have been initiated are put into varying human incarnations, depending on how much they have seen; those made into philosophers have seen the most, while kings, statesmen, doctors, prophets, poets, manual laborers, sophists, and tyrants follow respectively. Souls then begin cycles of reincarnation. It generally takes 10,000 years for a soul to grow its wings and return to where it came, but philosophers, after having chosen such a life three times in a row, grow their wings and return after only 3,000 years. This is because they have seen the most and always keep its memory as close as possible, and philosophers maintain the highest level of initiation. They ignore human concerns and are drawn towards the divine. While ordinary people rebuke them for this, they are unaware that the lover of wisdom is possessed by a god. This is the fourth sort of madness, that of love. One comes to manifest this sort of love after seeing beauty here on earth and being reminded of true beauty as it was seen beyond heaven. When reminded, the wings begin to grow back, but as they are not yet able to rise, the afflicted gaze aloft and pay no attention to what goes on below, bringing on the charge of madness. This is the best form that possession by a god can take, for all those connected to it. When one is reminded of true beauty by the sight of a beautiful boy, he is called a lover. While all have seen reality, as they must have to be human, not all are so easily reminded of it. Those that can remember are startled when they see a reminder, and are overcome with the memory of beauty. Beauty, he states, was among the most radiant things to see beyond heaven, and on earth it sparkles through vision, the clearest of our senses. Some have not been recently initiated, and mistake this reminder for beauty itself and pursue pleasure and procreating. This pursuit of pleasure, then, even when manifested in the love of beautiful bodies, is not "divine" madness, but rather just having lost one's head. The recent initiates, on the other hand, are overcome when they see a bodily form that has captured true Beauty well, and their wings begin to grow. When this soul looks upon the beautiful boy it experiences the utmost joy; when separated from the boy, intense pain and longing occur, and the wings begin to harden. Caught between these two feelings, the lover is in utmost anguish, with the boy the only doctor for the pain. Socrates then returns to the myth of the chariot. The charioteer is filled with warmth and desire as he gazes into the eyes of the one he loves. The good horse is controlled by its sense of shame, but the bad horse, overcome with desire, does everything it can to go up to the boy and suggest to it the pleasures of sex. The bad horse eventually wears out its charioteer and partner, and drags them towards the boy; yet when the charioteer looks into the boy's face, his memory is carried back to the sight of the forms of Beauty and Self-control he had with the gods, and pulls back violently on the reins. As this occurs over and over, the bad horse eventually becomes obedient and finally dies of fright when seeing the boy's face, allowing the lover's soul to follow the boy in reverence and awe. The lover now pursues the boy. As he gets closer to his quarry, and the love is reciprocated, the opportunity for sexual contact again presents itself. If the lover and beloved surpass this desire they have won the "true Olympic Contests"; it is the perfect combination of human self-control and divine madness, and after death, their souls return to heaven.Those who give in do not become weightless, but they are spared any punishment after their death, and will eventually grow wings together when the time comes. A lover's friendship is divine, Socrates concludes, while that of a non-lover offers only cheap, human dividends, and tosses the soul about on earth for 9,000 years. He apologizes to the gods for the previous speeches, and Phaedrus joins him in the prayer. After Phaedrus concedes that this speech was certainly better than any Lysias could compose, they begin a discussion of the nature and uses of rhetoric itself. After showing that speech making itself isn't something reproachful, and that what is truly shameful is to engage in speaking or writing shamefully or badly, Socrates asks what distinguishes good from bad writing, and they take this up. Phaedrus claims that to be a good speechmaker, one does not need to know the truth of what he is speaking on, but rather how to properly persuade, persuasion being the purpose of speechmaking and oration. Socrates first objects that an orator who does not know bad from good will, in Phaedrus's words, harvest "a crop of really poor quality".Yet Socrates does not dismiss the art of speechmaking. Rather, he says, it may be that even one who knew the truth could not produce conviction without knowing the art of persuasion;on the other hand, "As the Spartan said, there is no genuine art of speaking without a grasp of the truth, and there never will be". To acquire the art of rhetoric, then, one must make systematic divisions between two different kinds of things: one sort, like "iron" and "silver", suggests the same to all listeners; the other sort, such as "good" or "justice", lead people in different directions. Lysias failed to make this distinction, and accordingly, failed to even define what "love" itself is in the beginning; the rest of his speech appears thrown together at random, and is, on the whole, very poorly constructed.Socrates then goes on to say, :Every speech must be put together like a living creature, with a body of its own; it must be neither without head nor without legs; and it must have a middle and extremities that are fitting both to one another and to the whole work. Socrates's speech, on the other hand, starts with a thesis and proceeds to make divisions accordingly, finding divine love, and setting it out as the greatest of goods. And yet, they agree, the art of making these divisions is dialectic, not rhetoric, and it must be seen what part of rhetoric may have been left out. When Socrates and Phaedrus proceed to recount the various tools of speechmaking as written down by the great orators of the past, starting with the "Preamble" and the "Statement Facts" and concluding with the "Recapitulation", Socrates states that the fabric seems a little threadbare.He goes on to compare one with only knowledge of these tools to a doctor who knows how to raise and lower a body's temperature but does not know when it is good or bad to do so, stating that one who has simply read a book or came across some potions knows nothing of the art.One who knows how to compose the longest passages on trivial topics or the briefest passages on topics of great importance is similar, when he claims that to teach this is to impart the knowledge of composing tragedies; if one were to claim to have mastered harmony after learning the lowest and highest notes on the lyre, a musician would say that this knowledge is what one must learn before one masters harmony, but it is not the knowledge of harmony itself.This, then, is what must be said to those who attempt to teach the art of rhetoric through "Preambles" and "Recapitulations"; they are ignorant of dialectic, and teach only what is necessary to learn as preliminaries. They go on to discuss what is good or bad in writing. Socrates tells a brief legend, critically commenting on the gift of writing from the Egyptian god Theuth to King Thamus, who was to disperse Theuth's gifts to the people of Egypt. After Theuth remarks on his discovery of writing as a remedy for the memory, Thamus responds that its true effects are likely to be the opposite; it is a remedy for reminding, not remembering, he says, with the appearance but not the reality of wisdom. Future generations will hear much without being properly taught, and will appear wise but not be so, making them difficult to get along with. No written instructions for an art can yield results clear or certain, Socrates states, but rather can only remind those that already know what writing is about. Furthermore, writings are silent; they cannot speak, answer questions, or come to their own defense. Accordingly, the legitimate sister of this is, in fact, dialectic; it is the living, breathing discourse of one who knows, of which the written word can only be called an image.The one who knows uses the art of dialectic rather than writing: :The dialectician chooses a proper soul and plants and sows within it discourse accompanied by knowledge- discourse capable of helping itself as well as the man who planted it, which is not barren but produces a seed from which more discourse grows in the character of others. Such discourse makes the seed forever immortal and renders the man who has it happy as any human being can be. |
Hayduke Lives | Edward Abbey | null | Hayduke Lives! picks up after the (literal) cliffhanger at the end of the previous book and chronicles George Washington Hayduke's escape from Federal agents and his return to the deserts of southern Utah and northern Arizona. It also reunites Hayduke with the outlaw-heroes from The Monkey Wrench Gang as they battle the world's biggest walking dragline and a Mormon preacher in another attempt to save the American Southwest. Both books have been reprinted numerous times due to their popularity. |
When Worlds Collide | Philip Gordon Wylie | 1,933 | Sven Bronson, a South African astronomer, discovers that a pair of rogue planets, Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta, will soon enter the solar system. The larger one, Alpha, will pass close enough to cause catastrophic damage. Eight months later, after swinging around the Sun, Alpha will return to pulverize the Earth and leave. It is believed that Bronson Beta will remain and assume a stable orbit. Scientists led by Cole Hendron work desperately to build ships to transport enough people, animals and equipment to Bronson Beta in an attempt to save the human race. Governments are skeptical, but the scientists persist and develop the technology necessary for the spacecraft, which are built in various countries. Nations including the United States evacuate their coastal regions in preparation for the Bronson bodies' first pass. Tidal waves reach heights of hundreds of meters, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes take their deadly toll, and the weather runs wild for more than two days. As a token of things to come, Bronson Alpha's first pass takes out the Moon. The isolated Hendron camp manages to build two ships which take off together with all of the survivors of the camp (after beating off an attack from refugees desperate to escape). One ship makes a successful landing, but without radio contact with any other ships, the crew members assume that only they made it across. They find that Beta is habitable and that there are traces of a native civilization wiped out when, millions of years before, the planet was torn away from its sun. The sequel, After Worlds Collide, follows the fate of the survivors on Bronson Beta. |
Love You Forever | Robert Munsch | 1,986 | As the story begins, a son has just been born. The story then continues through the life of the boy until he is a grown man. The mother continues to rock her son to sleep singing "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be." Later, the role is reversed and he holds his elderly mother and says "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my Mommy you'll be." At the very end of the story, the mother passes away and her son is the father of a little girl, rocking her to sleep; singing the same song that his mother used to sing to him. |
Island of the Blue Dolphins | Scott O'Dell | 1,960 | The main character is a girl named Karana, and that is her secret name. Wonapalei is her common name (everyone in the village has a secret name). Her people live in a village called Ghalas-at, gathering roots and fishing to supply the tribe. One day, a ship of Aleuts, led by a Russian named Captain Orlov, arrive and persuade the natives into letting them hunt sea otter in return for other goods. However, the Aleuts attempt to swindle the islanders and leave without paying. When they are confronted by Chief Chowig, Karana's father, a battle breaks out, and lives are lost on both sides. The tribe is anhilated by the battle and the Aleuts leave the island, leaving little payment for the otters they hunted. Karana's father and many other men in the tribe die after the battle. Later, the "replacement chief", Chief Kimki, leaves the island for new land in the east. Eventually, he is able to send a ship to bring his people to the mainland, even though he himself does not return. The white men came to Karana's village and told them to pack their goods and go to the ship. Karana's brother, Ramo left the ship to retrieve his fishing spear. Although Karana urges the captain to wait for her brother Ramo to return, the ship must leave before a storm approaches. Karana jumps off the ship and swims to shore, and the ship departs without them. The siblings live alone on the island,hoping the ship will return. Ramo is eventually killed by a pack of feral dogs (some of the dogs joined the feral pack after the Aleuts killed their owners). Alone on the island, Karana must now take on traditionally male tasks, such as hunting, making spears, or building canoes, in order to survive. She vows to avenge her brother's death and kills several of the dogs, but has a change of heart when she encounters the leader of the pack. She tames him and names him Rontu, meaning "fox eyes" in her language. Over time, Karana makes a life for herself. She builds a home made of whale bones and even stocks a cave with provisions in case the Aleuts ever come back, so she can hide from them. As she explores her island, Karana discovers ancient artifacts and a large squid (which she calls a devilfish). As time passes, she decides to hunt the devilfish. She also tames some birds and an otter; she feels a close kinship to the animals, the only inhabitants of the island beside herself. One summer, the Aleuts return, and Karana takes refuge in the cave. She observes the Aleuts closely, and soon realizes that there is a girl, Tutok, among the Aleuts who takes care of the domestic duties, including getting water from the pool near Karana's cave. Despite Karana's precautions, she and the young Aleut woman meet and befriend each other. They exchange presents with each other when possible. Karana realizes how lonely she has been without other people. Later the Aleuts leave, with Tutok; the men are none the wiser of Karana's presence, but their departure also deprives her of her newfound friend. More time goes by, and Rontu dies. She soon finds a young dog that looks like Rontu and takes him in, naming him Rontu-Aru ("Son of Rontu"). One day, Karana sees the sails of a ship. It docks at the shore, but it then leaves. Two years later, in the spring, the boat comes back, so she dresses in her finest attire and goes to the shore to meet the boat. Her rescuers realize her attire will not be appropriate for the mainland, and they have a dress made for her. Although she does not like the dress, Karana realizes that this is part of her new life. The ship sails away, and takes Karana and Rontu-Aru to the mission in Santa Barbara, California. |
The Cherry Orchard | Anton Chekhov | null | Opens in the early morning hours of a cool day in May in the nursery of Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya's ancestral estate somewhere in the provinces of Russia just after the turn of the 20th Century. Ranevskaya has been away for five years, since the death by drowning of her young son, living in France with her unnamed lover. After news that she had tried to kill herself Ranevskaya's 17-year-old daughter Anya and Anya's governess Charlotta Ivanovna have gone to fetch Ranevskaya to bring her home to Russia. They are also accompanied by Yasha, Ranevskaya's valet who was with her in France. Upon returning the group is met, in addition to Lopakhin and Dunyasha, by Varya, Ranevskaya's adopted daughter and housekeeper who has overseen the estate in her absence; Leonid Andreyevich Gayev, Mme. Ranevskaya's brother; Boris Borisovich Simeonov-Pishchik, a neighbor who is constantly asking for loans; Semyon Yepikhodov, a clumsy clerk in the Ranevskaya household; and the aged footman, Firs, who has worked for the Ranevskaya family since before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and regrets the emancipation as a great loss of societal structure. Lopakhin has come to remind Ranevskaya and Gayev that their estate, including the cherry orchard, is due to go to auction in August to pay off the family's debts. He offers a plan to save the estate if only they will allow part of it to be developed into summer cottages. However, this will incur the destruction of their famous cherry orchard which is nationally known for its size. While Ranevskaya enjoys the view of the orchard as day breaks, she is surprised by Peter Trofimov, a young student and the former tutor of Ranevskaya's son, Grisha, whose death prompted Ranevskaya to leave Russia five years ago. Ranevskaya is grief-stricken at the reminder of this tragedy, despite Trofimov's insistence on seeing her upon her return (much to the consternation of Varya.) After Ranevskaya retires for the evening, Anya confesses to Varya that their mother is heavily in debt. They all go to bed with a renewed hope that the estate will be saved and the cherry orchard preserved. Trofimov stares after the departing Anya and mutters "My sunshine, my spring" in adoration. Act II takes place outdoors on the family estate nearby to the cherry orchard in mid-summer. The act opens with Yepikhodov and Yasha vying for the affection of Dunyasha, while Charlotta soliloquizes about her life as she cleans a rifle. In Act I it was revealed that Yepikhodov proposed to Dunyasha around Easter time, however she has since become infatuated with the more "cultured" Yasha. Charlotta leaves so that Dunyasha and Yasha might have some time alone, but that too is interrupted when they hear their employer coming. Yasha shoos Dunyasha away so they won't be caught and Ranevskaya, Gayev, and Lopakhin appear, once more discussing the uncertain fate of the cherry orchard. Shortly Anya, Varya, and Trofimov arrive as well. Lopakhin teases Trofimov for his being a perpetual student and Trofimov espouses his philosophy of work and useful purpose to the delight and humour of everyone around. During their conversations, a drunken and disheveled vagrant passes by and begs for money; Ranevskaya thoughtlessly gives him all of her money, despite the protestations of Varya. Shaken by the disturbance, the family departs for dinner, with Lopakhin futilely insisting that the cherry orchard be sold to pay down the debt. Anya stays behind to talk with Trofimov, who disapproves of Varya's constant hawk-like eyes, reassuring Anya that they are "above love". To impress Trofimov and win his affection, Anya vows to leave the past behind her and start a new life. The two depart for the river as Varya calls scoldingly in the background. It is the end of August, and the evening of Ranevskaya's party has come. Offstage the musicians play as the family and their guests drink, carouse, and entertain themselves. It is also the day of the auction for the estate and the cherry orchard; Gayev has received a paltry amount of money from his and Ranevskaya's stingy aunt in Yaroslavl, and the family members, despite the general merriment about them, are both anxious and distracted while they wait for word of their fates. Varya worries about paying the musicians and scolds their neighbour Pishchik for drinking, Dunyasha for dancing and Yepikhodov for playing billiards. Charlotta entertains the group by performing several magic tricks. Ranevskaya scolds Trofimov for his constant teasing of Varya, whom he refers to as "Madame Lopakhin". She then urges Varya to marry Lopakhin, but Varya demurs, reminding her that it is Lopakhin's duty to ask for her hand in marriage, not the other way around. She says that if she had money she would move as far away from him as possible. Left alone with Ranevskaya, Trofimov insists that she finally face the truth that the house and the cherry orchard will be sold at auction. Ranevskaya shows him a telegram she has received from Paris and reveals that her former lover is ill again and has begged for her to return to his aid. She also reveals that she is seriously considering joining him, despite his cruel behaviour to her in the past. Trofimov is stunned at this news and the two argue about the nature of love and their respective experiences. Trofimov leaves in a huff but offstage falls down the stairs and is carried in by the others. Ranevskaya laughs and forgives him for his folly and the two quickly reconcile. Anya enters declaring a rumour that the cherry orchard has been sold. Lopakhin arrives with Gayev, both of whom are exhausted from the trip and the day's events. Gayev is distant, virtually catatonic and goes to bed without saying a word of the outcome of the auction. When Ranevskaya asks who bought the estate, Lopakhin reveals that he himself is the purchaser and intends to chop down the orchard with his axe. Ranevskaya, distraught, clings to Anya, who tries to calm her and reassure her that the future will be better now that the cherry orchard has been sold. It is several weeks later, once again in the nursery (as in Act I), only this time the room is being packed and taken apart as the family prepares to leave the estate forever. Trofimov enters in search of his galoshes, and he and Lopakhin exchange opposing world views. Anya enters and reprimands Lopakhin for ordering his workers to begin chopping down the cherry orchard while the family is still in the house. Lopakhin apologizes and rushes out to stop them for the time being in the hopes that he will be somehow reconciled with them. Charlotta enters, lost and in a daze, and insists that the family find her a new position. Ranevskaya tearfully bids her old life goodbye and leaves as the house is shut up forever. In the darkness Firs wanders into the room and discovers that they have left without him and boarded him inside the abandoned house to die. He lies down on the couch and resigns himself to his fate (apparently dying on the spot), as offstage we hear the axes as they cut down the cherry orchard. |
Present Laughter | Noël Coward | null | All three acts of the play are set in Garry Essendine's London flat. Daphne Stillington, a young admirer of the actor Garry Essendine, has inveigled herself into the flat and has spent the night there. Garry is still asleep, and while waiting for him to wake, Daphne encounters in turn three employees of Garry, housekeeper (Miss Erikson), valet (Fred), and secretary (Monica). None of them displays any surprise at her presence. Garry finally wakes and with practised smoothness ushers Daphne out. Liz Essendine, who left Garry years ago, nevertheless remains part of his tightly-knit 'family' along with Monica and his manager, Morris Dixon, and producer, Henry Lyppiatt. Liz tells Garry that she suspects that Morris is having an affair with Henry's glamorous wife Joanna, and is concerned that this might break up the family. Their discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Roland Maule, an aspiring young playwright from Uckfield, whose play Garry has rashly agreed to critique. Liz leaves, and Roland rapidly becomes obsessively fascinated by Garry, who gets him off the premises as quickly as he can. Morris and Henry arrive and discuss theatrical business with Garry. Henry leaves for a business trip abroad, and Garry privately interrogates Morris, who denies that he is having an affair with Joanna. Garry telephones Liz to reassure her. ;Scene 1, midnight, three days later. Garry, alone in the flat, answers the doorbell to find Joanna. She claims (like Daphne in Act I) to have forgotten her own doorkey and asks Garry to accommodate her in his spare room. He correctly suspects her motives, but after much skirmishing allows himself to be seduced. ;Scene 2, the next morning. Joanna emerges from the spare room wearing Garry's pyjamas just as Daphne did in Act I. She too encounters Miss Erikson, Fred, and then Monica, who is horrified at her presence in such compromising circumstances. Liz arrives and puts pressure on Joanna by threatening to tell Morris that Joanna has spent the night with Garry. Joanna retreats to the spare room when the doorbell rings, but the caller is not Morris but Roland Maule, who says he has an appointment with Garry. Monica leads him to an adjacent room to wait for Garry. Frantic comings and goings follow, with the flustered arrivals and departures of Morris and Henry, Roland's pursuit of Garry, and the arrival of a Lady Saltburn, whose niece Garry has promised an audition. The niece turns out to be Daphne Stillington, who recites the same Shelley poem with which he bade her farewell in Act I. Joanna flounces out from the spare room, Daphne faints with horror, Roland is entranced, and Garry is apoplectic. A week later, on the eve of Garry's departure on tour in Africa, he is once more alone in the flat. The doorbell rings and Daphne enters saying she has a ticket to sail with him to Africa. The doorbell rings again, and Daphne retreats to an adjoining room. The new caller is Roland, who announces that he too has a ticket for the voyage to Africa. Garry tries to get him to leave, but as the doorbell rings a third time Roland bolts into the spare room and locks the door. The third caller is Joanna, who has also bought a ticket for the Africa voyage and has written a letter to Henry and Morris telling them everything. Liz arrives and saves the tottering situation, announcing that she too is travelling to Africa. Henry and Morris arrive and berate Garry for his night with Joanna. Garry fights back by revealing the details of Morris and Joanna's affair, and Henry's extramarital adventures. Joanna angrily slaps Garry's face and leaves for good. Her departure goes unnoticed because Garry, Henry and Morris have become embroiled in what for them is a much more serious row when it emerges that Henry and Morris have committed Garry to appear at what he considers a shockingly unsuitable theatre. Garry objects: "I will not play a light French comedy to an auditorium that looks like a Gothic edition of Wembley Stadium." When that row has blown itself out, it is business as usual and Henry and Morris leave in good humour. Liz pours Garry a brandy and tells him she is not only going to Africa with him but is coming back to him for good. Garry suddenly remembers Daphne and Roland lurking in the adjoining rooms and tells Liz: "You're not coming back to me... I'm coming back to you", and they tiptoe out. |
Kiln People | David Brin | 2,002 | Albert Morris is a private detective who uses dittos extensively. His dittos are usually imprinted faithfully; indeed, his dittos have a fidelity rate rarely seen in the novel's world. The book opens with a green ditto being chased across the city by ditto thugs of Beta, a criminal figure engaged in copyright violation by kidnapping desirable dittos and duplicating them. Albert's green makes it to safety, allowing Albert to inload his memories and bust Beta's latest scheme. The next morning, Albert makes three dittos (two grays and a green) and sends them off to do his business. After four hours of sleep, he imprints an ebony to help him work on a case. One gray meets with Ritu Maharal, the daughter of Yosil Maharal (named after the rabbi of the legendary original golems), one of the founders of Universal Kilns (UK) who has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Yosil is later discovered dead, and Albert's gray meets the surviving Maharal ditto (or ghost, a ditto that survives after the original has died). ditMaharal runs away, and when the gray follows, he is captured by the ditto. The second gray gets involved in a plan to infiltrate Universal Kilns to see if they are illegally withholding technical advancements to the duplicating process. He is a dupe of unknown forces, and is actually carrying a bomb into the UK factory, but he realizes just in time and manages to minimize the damage done when he blows up. The green comes out of the kiln and starts doing the chores he was made to do, but soon displays a lack of motivation to complete his assigned tasks and instead heads off to the beach. Once there, he decides that he is an imperfect copy of Albert, or a "frankie" (a fictional slang word derived from Frankenstein's monster). This is an unprecedented occurrence for Albert due to his unusual ditto-making prowess. The green decides not to continue doing chores, and claims independence. Though an imperfect copy of Albert, the green figures prominently in the plot. Meanwhile, real Albert disguises himself as a gray ditto and meets with Ritu, who is also disguised as a gray. On the way to investigate Yosil's cabin, where the eccentric scientist spent much of his time, they both are made aware of an attack on Albert's home. Shortly after, Albert and Ritu end up stranded in the desert after an attempt on their lives. They eventually make it to ditMaharal's secret lab where the first gray is being held. The green frankie makes it there as well, soon to expire. ditMaharal has constructed an apparatus that he plans to use to elevate himself to godhood, using two of Albert's dittos to amplify himself and the deaths of over a million people to fuel his elevation. The green and the real Albert join forces to destroy the apparatus and disable the bioweapons that would have been used in an attack on a nearby city. However, the real Albert's mind winds up elevating, leaving his body in a comotose-like state. As the book ends, Albert and the green frankie agree to upload the green's memories into Albert's body, effectively replacing Albert's personality and memories with the frankie's: Albert will attempt to ascend to the higher plane of existence, and the frankie gets to lead the own life he wanted with Clara in Albert's body. |
The Poisonwood Bible | Barbara Kingsolver | 1,998 | Orleanna Price narrates the introductory chapter in five of the novel's seven sections. The narrative then alternates among the four daughters, with a slight preference for the voice of the most outspoken one, Leah. The four girls increasingly mature, as each adapts differently to African village life, to the misogyny of their father Nathan, and the political turmoil that overtakes The Congo in the 1960s. Since the Congolese villagers are seen through the eyes of the growing daughters, the view changes. At first, they appear as ridiculous savages. But as the girls mature, the villagers become fully fleshed-out human beings, immersed in a complex and sophisticated culture. Nathan's lack of responsiveness to this culture wears out his family's welcome, but he refuses to leave. Only after a series of misfortunes—culminating in the death of one of the daughters—do the women leave Nathan Price to his folly. The survivors take different paths into their futures, the novel ending at the time of Mobutu Sese Seko's death in the 1990s. Rachel, the eldest, marries Axelroot at seventeen, and after two more marriages is the owner of a luxury hotel close to what is now Brazzaville. Leah marries Anatole, has a large family of four boys, and remains in the impoverished Congo. Adah returns to the United States with their mother Orleanna, attending college and later, medical school. She undergoes a lengthy experimental treatment that restores full use of her legs and she begins to speak. Orleanna herself returns to spending life on the Georgian coast, enjoying Adah's occasional visits. |
Angle of Repose | Wallace Stegner | 1,971 | Lyman Ward narrates a century after the fact. Lyman interprets the story at times and leaves gaps that he points out at other times. Some of the disappointments of his life, including his divorce, color his interpretation of his grandparents' story. Toward the end of the novel, he gives up on his original ambition of writing a complete biography of his grandmother. Stegner's use of Mary Hallock Foote's historical letters gives the novel's locations—Leadville, New Almaden, Idaho, and Mexico—an authentic feel; the letters also add vividness to the Wards' struggles with the environment, shady businessmen, and politicians. Lyman's position in the contemporary culture of the late sixties provides another historical dimension to the story. Foils for this plot line include Lyman's adult son, a Berkeley-trained sociologist who sees little value in history, and a neighbor's daughter who helps transcribe Lyman's tape-recorded notes while she is home on summer break from UC Berkeley, where she has been active in the "hippie" counterculture movement. |
The Death of the Heart | Elizabeth Bowen | 1,938 | At the beginning of the novel, Portia moves in with Anna and Thomas Quayne after her mother dies. Portia is Thomas's half sister. Mr. Quayne (Thomas's father) had an extramarital affair with Irene (Portia's mother) while married to Thomas's mother. When Irene became pregnant, and Mrs. Quayne learned of it, she was adamant that he do what was the right thing: so, at his own wife's unyielding insistence, Mr. Quayne divorced Thomas's mother and married Irene. Mr. Quayne, Irene, and Portia then left England and traveled through Europe as exiles from society and from the Quayne family, living in the cheapest of lodgings. Irene and Portia continued to live in this fashion until, when Portia was 16, Irene died. Portia was sent to live with Thomas and Anna after Irene's death. The plan is that she is to stay with them for one year at which time Portia will leave and move in with Irene's sister (Portia's aunt). Portia is a naturally awkward girl, and this aspect of her personality has been intensified by her strange childhood which was one of constant travel, change, and strangers, while at the same time being incredibly isolating. She is uniquely innocent in her observations of people, and is baffled by inconsistencies between what they say and what they do, and wonders why people say things they do not mean. She keeps a diary detailing the lives of those around her, particularly Anna, trying to understand the key to people she thinks she is missing. Anna finds and reads Portia's diary; she is incensed by the idea of the girl observing her every move, and rages about the girl to her friend St. Quentin, a writer and frequent visitor to the Quaynes's home. It becomes clear over the course of the novel that Anna dislikes Portia because she is strange. Anna and Thomas are generally uncomfortable with Portia in their home but try to make do. They send her to classes where she makes friends with a girl named Lilian. Portia's love interest, if she can be said to have one, is a man named Eddie. Eddie works at Thomas's advertising agency. He also has a flirtatious relationship with Anna prior to Portia's arrival. Eddie does not truly love Portia. Partway through the novel, Anna and Thomas go on vacation to Italy and send Portia to live with Anna's former governess, Mrs. Heccomb, for the duration of the trip. The climax of the novel occurs when St. Quentin, a friend of Anna's, tells Portia that Anna has been reading her diary. As a result of this Portia runs away. She first goes to Eddie who becomes overwhelmed by her and sends her away telling her that he is Anna's lover (which is not true). Portia then takes refuge with an acquaintance of Anna's named Major Brutt. Portia goes to Major Brutt's hotel and begs him to run away with her and to marry her. Major Brutt then calls Thomas and Anna to tell them where Portia is. The novel ends with Thomas and Anna sending their maid, Matchett, to Major Brutt's hotel in order to fetch Portia. |
The House of Mirth | Edith Wharton | 1,905 | The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, a woman who is torn between her desire for luxurious living and a relationship based on mutual respect and love. She sabotages all her possible chances for a wealthy marriage, loses the esteem of her social circle, and dies young, poor, and alone. Lily is initially of good social standing and rejects several offers of advantageous marriage. Lily's social standing erodes when her friend Judy Trenor's husband Gus gives Lily a large sum of money. Lily innocently accepts the money, believing that it is the return on investments he supposedly made for her. The rumors of this transaction, and of her mysterious visit to Gus in his city residence crack her social standing further. To escape the rumors and gossip, she accepts an invitation from Bertha Dorset to join her and her husband, George, on a cruise of Europe aboard their yacht the Sabrina. Unfortunately, while aboard the yacht, Bertha accuses Lily of adultery with George in order to shift societal attention from Bertha's own infidelity with poet Ned Silverton. The ensuing scandal ruins Lily, leading her friends to abandon her and Aunt Peniston to disinherit her. Lily descends the social strata, working as a personal secretary until Bertha sabotages her position by turning her employers against her. Lily then takes a job as social secretary for a disreputable woman, but resigns after a friend of hers, Lawrence Selden, comes to rescue her from complete infamy. She then works in a millinery, but produces poorly and is let go at the end of the season. Simon Rosedale, the Jewish suitor who had proposed marriage to her when she was higher on the social scale tries to rescue her, but she is unwilling to meet his terms: to use love letters she bought which prove the affair Bertha Dorset and Selden had years earlier. Lily refrains for sake of Selden's reputation, and secretly burns the letters when she visits Selden for one last time. Eventually Lily receives her $10,000 inheritance, which she uses to pay her debt to Trenor. Lily dies from an overdose, possibly accidental, of the sleeping draught to which she had become addicted. Hours later Selden comes to propose to her, but finds she has died. Only then is he able to be close to her in a way he never was able to when she was living and admit his true love for her. |
Bel Ami | Guy de Maupassant | 1,885 | The novel is set in Paris in the upper-middle class environment of the leading journalists of the newspaper La Vie Française and their friends. It tells the story of Georges Duroy, who has spent three years of military service in Algeria. After six months working as a clerk in Paris, an encounter with his former comrade, Forestier, enables him to start a career as a journalist. From a reporter of minor events and soft news, he gradually climbs his way up to chief editor. Duroy initially owes his success to Forestier’s wife, Madeleine, who helps him write his first articles and, when he later starts writing lead articles, she adds an edge and poignancy to them. At the same time, she uses her connections among leading politicians to provide him with behind the scenes information which allows him to become actively involved in politics. Duroy is also introduced to many politicians in Madame Forestier’s drawing-room. Duroy becomes the lover of Forestiers' friend Mme de Marelle, another influential woman. Duroy later tries to seduce Madeleine Forestier to get even with her husband, but she repulses Duroy’s sexual advances and offers that they become true friends without ulterior motives instead. In a few months, Charles Forestier’s health deteriorates and he travels to the south of France to regain it. Soon afterwards, Duroy receives a letter from Madeleine imploring him to come to join her and help her bear the last moments of her husband’s life. As Forestier dies, Duroy asks Madeleine to marry him. After a few weeks to consider, she agrees. Georges now signs his articles Du Roy (an aristocratic style of French name) in order to add prestige to his name. The married couple travels to Normandy, the region of Georges’s childhood, and meet his peasant parents. Finding the reality different than her romantic expectations, Madeleine feels very uncomfortable with his parents and so their stay with them is short. In the newspaper office, Duroy is ridiculed for having his articles written by his wife, just as the late Forestier had his articles written by her. His newspaper colleagues call him ‘Forestier’, which drives Georges mad and he suddenly becomes heavily jealous of Madeleine, insisting that she admit having been unfaithful to Forestier, but she never does. In order to suppress the stings of jealousy, Duroy starts an affair with Mme Walter, the wife of the owner of the newspaper. He especially enjoys the conquest as he is her first extramarital lover. Later on, however, he regrets the decision, for he cannot get rid of her when he does not want her. Duroy’s relations with his wife become chillier, and at one point he takes a police superintendent to a flat in which his wife is meeting a minister. They catch the two in the act of adultery, which was then a crime punishable under the law. In the last two chapters Duroy's ascent to power continues. Duroy, now a single man, makes use of his chief’s daughter's infatuation with him, and arranges an elopement with her. The parents then have no other choice but to grant their assent to the marriage. The last chapter shows Duroy savouring his success at the wedding ceremony at which 'all those who figured prominently in society' were present. His thoughts, however, chiefly belong to Mme de Marelle who, when wishing him all the best, indicates that she has forgiven him for his new marriage and that their intimate meetings can be taken up again. |
Bachelor of Arts | R. K. Narayan | 1,937 | The story explores the transition of an adolescent mind into adulthood. It revolves around a young man named Chandran, who resembles an Indian upper middle class youth of the pre-independence era. First, Chandran's college life in late colonial times is described. After graduation, he falls in love with a girl, but will be rejected by the bride's parents, since his horoscope describes him as a manglik, a condition in which a manglik can only marry another manglik and if not, the non-manglik will die. Frustrated and desperate, he embarks on a journey as Sanyasi. On his journey he meets many people and he is also misunderstood as a great sage by some villagers. Due to the compunctions and the realizations, he decides to return home. He takes up a job as a newsagent and decides to marry, in order to please his parents, thinking of the discomfort he had caused them earlier. The story portrays the heartbreak which a youth faces. After Malti, the girl with whom Chandran falls in love with after graduating from college, is married to someone else, Chandran is absolutely heartbroken to the extent that he goes to Madras and starts living on streets.Famished,delusioned and full of self pittance, he ends up wandering from one place to another like a sanyasi. After 8 months, he thinks of what mess he has become and thinks about his parents and decides to go back home. Even after returning home, he is still unable to take Malti out of his head completely and though he tries hard, the pictures and memories of her keep on haunting him for a long time. After a long time, his father comes to him with a proposal for marrying another girl Sushila. Chandran is still skeptical about love, marriage and initially refuses but later decides to see the girl. When he goes on to see the girl, he ends up falling in love with her. The novel is great because it explores how we human beings are delusioned by love. And it also teaches us that till the time you do not meet someone else,letting go of the memories is a very difficulty task. Once you meet someone new, those haunting memories start fading and you start seeing that how foolish you have been in the past to cling to one person and waste your life by doing that. hi:द बेचलर ऑफ़ आर्टस pa:ਦ ਬੇਚਲਰ ਆਫ ਆਰਟਸ |
Lilith | George MacDonald | null | Mr. Vane, the protagonist of Lilith, owns a library that seems to be haunted by the former librarian, who looks much like a raven from the brief glimpses he catches of the wraith. After finally encountering the supposed ghost, the mysterious Mr. Raven, Vane learns that Raven had known his father; indeed, Vane's father had visited the strange parallel universe from which Raven comes and goes and now resides therein. Vane follows Raven into the world through a mirror (this symbolistic realm is described as "the region of the seven dimensions", a term taken from Jacob Boehme). Inside the world, Vane learns of a house of beds where the dreamers sleep until the end of the world in death: a good death, in which life is found. Vane's grandfather refused to sleep there and is, instead, forced to do battle with skeletons in a haunted wood. After a treacherous journey through a valley (where the moon is the only thing to keep him safe), Mr. Vane meets the Little Ones, children who never grow up, only get bigger and dumber, turning into "bags" or bad giants. After conversing with Lona, the eldest of the children, Mr. Vane decides to help them, and sets off to gather more information, although the Raven (who is also Adam) has warned Mr. Vane that he needs to sleep along with the dreamers before he can really help them. While on his journey, he meets Lilith, the princess of Bulika. Vane, although nearly blinded by Lilith's beauty and charms, eventually leads the Little Ones in a battle against Bulika. Lona, Vane's love, turns out to be Lilith's daughter, and is killed by her own mother. Lilith, however, is captured and brought to Adam and Eve at the house of death, where they struggle to make her open her hand, fused shut, in which she holds the water the Little Ones need to grow. Only when she gives it up can Lilith join the sleepers in blissful dreams, free of sin. After a long struggle Lilith bids Adam cut her hand from her body; it is done, Lilith sleeps, and Vane is sent to bury the hand; water flows from the hole and washes the land over. Vane is then allowed to join the Little Ones, already asleep, in their dreaming. He takes his bed, next to Lona's, and finds true life in death. |
A Grief Observed | C. S. Lewis | 1,961 | A Grief Observed is an exploration of Lewis’s thoughts and questions brought about by the grief at the passing of his wife. The book is written sporadically, suggesting short bursts of thought, in a stream of consciousness style of writing. Some trains of thought are constantly revisited while others seem to be more fleeting. He begins by reflecting on the sensations of grief. He speaks of a restless nervousness that makes grief feel like fear. Grief can fog up the mind, Lewis finds, as if there is a barrier between himself and the world. It is a feeling not unlike being intoxicated or concussed, making it difficult to understand or take interest in what is going on outside himself. Quickly, Lewis moves into the larger question of his grief: where is God in all of this? As Lewis states: “When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence” Personally not considering atheism as a real possibility, Lewis instead worries that he will only be able to believe in a “Cosmic Sadist,” in an evil God. Lewis wrestles with this question throughout the book. Another question that he brings up is the reality of the Christian belief in life after death and what form this life will take. Lewis asserts that the popular notion of meeting our loved ones on the other shore cannot be true. He says that reality is not repeated and no matter how much one might like to relive the good things of this life, any afterlife that exists, is not a repetition of this life. As Lewis declares: "Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand." Despite his firm Christian faith, Lewis doubts the continuation of life after death for his wife. He asserts that believing in life after death is easy until it really matters. As he delineates: “Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. Apparently the faith — I thought it faith — which enables me to pray for the other dead has seemed strong only because I have never really cared, not desperately, whether they existed or not” Grief is not overcome in the course of the book but Lewis acknowledges that grief is a process and not a state. He also ceases to look at God as a sadist and sees purpose in the suffering. He feels the presence of God and of his wife in a renewed way and it brings him some measure of peace. Towards the end of the book, in reference to his wife’s death he says: “It has so many ways to hurt me that I discover them only one by one”. But he goes on to say: “Still, there are two enormous gains...Turned to God, my mind no longer meets that locked door; turned to H., it no longer meets that vacuum… My jottings show something of the process, but not so much as I’d hoped. Perhaps both changes were really not observable. There was no sudden striking and emotional transition. Like the warming of a room of the coming of daylight. When you first notice them they have already been going for some time". |
The Charterhouse of Parma | Stendhal | 1,839 | The Charterhouse of Parma tells the story of the young Italian nobleman Fabrice del Dongo and his adventures from his birth in 1798 to his death. Fabrice’s early years are spent in his family’s castle on Lake Como, while most of the novel is set in a fictionalized Parma (both in modern-day Italy). The book begins with the French army sweeping into Milan and stirring up the sleepy region of Lombardy, allied with Austria. Fabrice grows up in the context of the intrigues and alliances for and against the French—his father the Marchese comically fancies himself a spy for the Viennese. The novel's early section describes Fabrice's rather quixotic effort to join Napoleon when the latter returns to France in March 1815 (the Hundred Days). Fabrice at seventeen is idealistic, rather naive, and speaks poor French. However he won't be stopped, and he leaves his home on Lake Como and travels north under false papers. He wanders through France, losing money and horses at a fast rate. He is imprisoned as a spy, he escapes, dons the uniform of a dead French hussar, and in his excitement to play the role of a French soldier, wanders onto the field of battle at the Battle of Waterloo. Stendhal, a veteran of several Napoleonic campaigns (he was one of the survivors of the retreat from Russia in 1812), describes this famous battle as a chaotic affair with soldiers who gallop one way, then another, while bullets plow the fields around them. Fabrice briefly joins the guard of Field Marshal Ney, shoots one Prussian cavalryman while he and his regiment flee, and is lucky to survive the fighting with a serious wound to his leg (given to him by one of the retreating French cavalrymen). He makes his way back to his family's castle, injured, broke, and still wondering "was I really in the battle?" Towards the end of the novel his efforts, such as they are, lead people to say that he was one of Napoleon's bravest captains or colonels. Fabrice having returned to Lake Como, the novel now divides its attention between him and his aunt (his father's sister), Gina. Gina meets and befriends the Prime Minister of Parma, Count Mosca. Count Mosca proposes that Gina marry a wealthy old man, who will be out of the country for many years as an ambassador, so she and Count Mosca can be lovers while living under the social rules of the time. Gina's response is: "But you realize that what you are suggesting is utterly immoral?" She agrees, and so a few months later, Gina is the new social eminence in Parma's rather small aristocratic elite. Ever since Fabrice returned from Waterloo, Gina has had very warm feelings for her nephew, and she and Count Mosca try to plan out a successful life for the young man. Count Mosca's plan has Fabrice go to seminary school in Naples, with the idea that when he graduates he will come to Parma and be installed as a senior figure in the religious hierarchy, soon to be the Archbishop, as the current office holder is old. The fact that Fabrice has no interest in religion (or celibacy) matters not to this plan. Fabrice agrees to the plan and leaves for Naples. The book then describes in great detail how Gina and Count Mosca live and operate in the court of the Prince of Parma (named Ranuce-Erneste IV). Stendhal, who spent decades as a professional diplomat in northern Italy, gives a lively and interesting account of the court, though all of what he describes is entirely fictional, as Parma was ruled by Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma during the time of the novel. So much attention is given to Gina and Count Mosca that some have suggested that these two are the true heroes of the novel. After several years in Naples, during which he has many affairs with local women, Fabrice returns to Parma and shortly gets involved with a young actress whose manager/lover takes offense and tries to kill Fabrice. In the resulting fight Fabrice kills the man and then flees Parma, fearing, rightly, that he will not be treated justly by the courts. However, his efforts to avoid capture are unsuccessful, and he is brought back to Parma and imprisoned in the Farnese Tower, the tallest tower in the city. His aunt, Gina, in great distress at what she feels will lead to Fabrice's certain death, goes to plead the Prince for his life. The Prince is alienated by Gina's dignity and refusal to yield. He seems to agree to free Fabrice - signing a written note from which Mosca, in an effort to be diplomatic, has omitted the possibly crucial phrase unjust procedure. The following morning, he arranges for Fabrice to be condemned to a very long prison term. For the next nine months Gina schemes to have Fabrice freed and manages to get secret messages relayed to him in the tower, in part by means of an improvised semaphore line. The Prince keeps hinting that Fabrice is going to be executed (or poisoned) as a way to put pressure on Gina. Meanwhile, Fabrice is oblivious to his danger and is living happily because he has fallen in love with the commandant's daughter, Clélia Conti, who he can see from his prison window as she tends her caged birds. They fall in love, and after some time he persuades her to communicate with him by means of letters of the alphabet printed on sheets ripped from a book. Gina finally helps Fabrice escape from the Tower by having Clélia smuggle three long ropes to him. The only thing that concerns Fabrice is whether he will be able to meet Clélia after he escapes. But Clélia - who has feelings of guilt because the plot involved laudanum to her father, which she perceived as poison - promises the Virgin that she shall never see Fabrice again and will do anything her father says. Gina leaves Parma and puts in motion a plan to have the Prince of Parma assassinated. Count Mosca stays in Parma, and when the Prince does die (poisoned, it is strongly implied, by Gina's poet/bandit/assassin) he puts down an attempted revolt by some local revolutionaries and gets the son of the Prince installed on the throne. Fabrice voluntarily returns to the Farnese Tower to see Clélia and is almost poisoned there. To save him, Gina promises to give herself to the new Prince. She keeps her promise but immediately leaves Parma afterwards. Gina never returns to Parma, but she marries Count Mosca. Clélia, to help her father who was disgraced by Fabrice's escape, marries the wealthy man her father has chosen for her, and so she and Fabrice live unhappily because of the promise she made to never see him again. Once he is acquitted of murdering the actress's manager/lover, Fabrice assumes his duties as a powerful man of the Catholic Church and a preacher whose sermons become the talk of the town. The only reason he gives these sermons, Fabrice says, is in the hope that Clélia will come to one and he can see her and speak to her. After 14 months of suffering for both, she agrees to meet with him every night, but only on the condition that it is in darkness, lest she break her vow to the Madonna to never see him again and they both be punished for her sin. A year later she bears Fabrice's child. When the boy is two years old, Fabrice insists that he should take care of him in the future, because he is feeling lonely and suffers that his own child won't love him. The plan he and Clélia devise is to fake the child's illness and death and then establish him secretly in a large house nearby, where Fabrice and Clélia can come to see him each day. As it turns out, after several months the child actually does die, and Clélia dies a few months after that. After her death, Fabrice retires to the Charterhouse of Parma, which gives the book its title, where he spends less than a year before he also dies. Gina, the Countess Mosca, who had always loved Fabrice, dies a short time after that. |
In Search of the Castaways | Jules Verne | null | The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland contact Mary and Robert, the young daughter and son of Captain Grant, through an announcement in a newspaper. Moved by the children's condition, Lord and Lady Glenarvan decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known; thus, the expedition would have to circumnavigate the 37th parallel south. Remaining clues consist of a few words in three languages. They are re-interpreted several times throughout the novel to make various destinations seem likely. Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht, the Duncan, they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel (he missed his steamer to India by accidentally boarding on the Duncan) joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, and Australia (a pretext to describe the flora, fauna, and geography of numerous places to the targeted audience). There, they find a former quarter-master of the Britannia, Ayrton, who proposes to lead them to the site of the wreckage. However, Ayrton is a traitor, who was not present during the loss of the Britannia, but was abandoned in Australia after a failed attempt to seize control of the ship to practice piracy. He tries to take control of the Duncan, but out of sheer luck, this attempt also fails. However the Glenarvans, the Grant children, Paganel and some sailors are left in Australia, and mistakenly believing that the Duncan is lost, they sail to Auckland, New Zealand, from where they want to come back to Europe. When their ship is wrecked south of Auckland on the New Zealand coast, they are captured by a Māori tribe, but luckily manage to escape and board a ship that they discover, with their greatest surprise, to be the Duncan. Ayrton, made a prisoner, offers to trade his knowledge of Captain Grant in exchange for being abandoned on a desert island instead of being surrendered to the British authorities. The Duncan sets sail for the Tabor Island, which, out of sheer luck, turns out to be Captain Grant's shelter. They leave Ayrton in his place to live among the beasts and regain his humanity. Ayrton reappears in Verne's later novel, L'Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island, 1874). |
Triggerfish Twist | Tim Dorsey | 2,002 | Jim Davenport is transferred to his company's branch in Tampa, Florida. Though initially excited by the move, the job quickly proves to be disappointing, Jim's neighbors are a strange bunch of eccentrics and crime is much worse than he had thought. Serge Storms, Sharon Rhodes and Coleman move in down the street. Serge seems pleasant enough, but there is definitely something odd about him. Sharon is a spiteful coke-headed hooker. Coleman is a brain-dead stoner who is constantly under the influence of something, from alcohol to illegal drugs. The story becomes surreal from that point onward. |
Florida Roadkill | Tim Dorsey | 1,999 | Roadkill is set in 1997, against the backdrop of that year's World Series in which the Florida Marlins won a stunning upset in Miami. Intelligent but sociopathic criminal Serge Storms meets up with heartless stripper Sharon Rhodes and brainless drug addict Seymore "Coleman" Bunsen, who become his travelling companions and partners in crime. Serge hatches a plan to steal an enormous fraudulent insurance settlement from an oversexed dentist, but the money proves surprisingly elusive. Storms and company pursue the metal briefcase containing the cash until the two companions meet untimely ends; Serge suffocates Sharon by spraying "Fix-A-Flat" into her lungs, and Coleman is later shot to death. The book has two meandering subplots which eventually tie in with the main plot. The first involves a pair of longtime buddies who are participating in their annual unsuccessful fishing trip. They spend a great deal of time reminiscing, and their stories lend an odd thoughtfulness to Dorsey's trigger-happy writing style (a thoughtfulness which would later apparently be shelved until Orange Crush). Without their knowledge, the briefcase of money is hidden in the trunk of their car. The second, slightly more comic, subplot deals with three bikeless bikers — Stinky, Ringworm and Cheese-Dick — who have been rejected from every biker group they have encountered and are on the down and out. They find an odd sort of niche as hired muscle in a retirement community, but are ultimately forced out by the community staff who want the seniors as miserable as possible. They spend the rest of the time yachting in a boat on loan from the retirement community's manager until they meet up with a deranged pervert who kills two of them (Cheese-Dick having died when accidentally shot with a flare gun). A number of minor characters (such as Bradley Xeno, the boat captain, and McJagger, the retirement community operator) make minor appearances in the following book, Hammerhead Ranch Motel. |
The Passion of New Eve | Angela Carter | 1,977 | At the start of the novel, Evelyn, a male English professor is taking up a new post in a university in New York. His tribute to Tristessa de St Ange, the American silent movie star, on his last night in England is to be given fellatio by a girl he takes to see one of her films. He arrives in a dystopian New York, a city in its last stages of rotting death, overrun by huge rats and human emotions distilled to their most primeval. He becomes fascinated with Leilah, an exotic young African American night club dancer, and while they have a short relationship he makes no emotional link, seeing her only in terms of sex. He becomes repelled by her when she falls pregnant and abandons her to an abortion. Evelyn seeks out the clean, clear desert and is captured by a woman from the subterranean female city of Beulah and dragged across the sandscape to encounter Mother, a cruel mother goddess figure who fashioned herself with the surgeon's knife. She changes Evelyn into Eve, ironically the woman who he has always lusted after, and aims to impregnate him with a new Messiah, using his own sperm (harvested from him before the operation). The transformation from male to female, seems to be absolute as despite the fact that Eve struggles to learn to become the woman that her body is, from this point on she is referred to only in female pronouns. Eve, escapes but is enslaved by Zero, a cruel male cult leader and "poet" with only one eye and one leg—a half man who celebrates his degraded self. His harem are all passive, slavish "wives" who he whips unless they talk in grunts and honour their bedfellows, the pigs. Zero rapes Eve and makes her his newest wife. He then leads Eve on a search for the silent film star Tristessa, an embodiment of beauty, sorrow, and loneliness, whom he hates obsessively, because he believes Tristessa has made him infertile. Tristessa was Evelyn's first object of desire in his boyhood, and Eve has his own obsession with this figure. Zero leads his dungaree-clad harem to the glass palace of Tristessa and invades and decimates the beautiful, gothic pile, discovering Tristessa herself laid out in a room surrounded by waxwork effigies in coffins. However she is alive and only when Zero tracks her down to the top of one of the towers and cuts her thong do the gang discover that Tristessa is male. Upon discovering this, Zero and his wives create a mock-up wedding ceremony and marry the two, forcing Tristessa to rape Eve. Eve and Tristessa escape and spin the Zero and his harem to death in Tristessa's spinning glass palace and escape back into the desert where they imbibe each other's newly discovered sexuality, they fall in love through their realisation that they are Tiresias until Tristessa is shot by a passing band of desert, mafia, teenage boys. Their Colonel is 14 years old and scared of the dark. They "rescue" Eve, but she escapes and encounters Leila in a new guise of Lilith, vagabond rebel leader. Lilith takes Eve to the coast to meet with Mother again, here they see a crazy old lady on a beach—a manifestation of ageing superficiality: dirty, caked in make-up, with piled high golden locks, singing old musical songs and living on vodka and cold tinned food and defecating in the bushes behind her deck chair. Eve realises that Leilah never objectively existed but was only a manifestation of his own lusts and corruption. Lilith tells Eve she must go and meet The Mother and pushes her into a cleft in the rocks that metamorphoses into the uterus of time. Eve progresses through the increasingly deep and warm subterranean rock pools to her rebirth. The amber Eve discovers in one of the caves and holds in her hands liquifies into ancient pine forests and primeval species. Eve is then symbolically reborn, guided by Leilah, and rejects her chauvinistic male past. Eve emerges onto a beach by Lilith, (name taken from the apocryphal story of Adam's first wife) who leaves her to go back and fight with her rebels, saying Eve cannot join her because she is pregnant. Eve swaps the gold alchemical on a neck chain that Lilith has given her for the purple skiff belonging to the crazed old woman and launches herself into the ocean. |
Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides | 2,002 | The novel starts with a narration by its protagonist, Cal (his masculine identity), also known as Calliope (feminine): He recounts how 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, a recessive condition, causes him to be born with female characteristics. The book continues with accounts of his family's history, starting with his paternal grandparents in their home village and ending with his father's funeral. These accounts cover the conception of Cal, his teenage years, and the discovery of his intersex condition. Throughout the book, Cal weaves his opinion of the events in hindsight and of his life after his father's funeral. Eugenides sets Middlesex in the 20th century and interjects historical elements, such as the Balkan Wars, the Nation of Islam, the Watergate scandal, and the 1967 Detroit riot in the story. The accounts of Cal's family history start from 1922. His grandfather, Eleutherios "Lefty" Stephanides, lives in Bithynios, a village in Asia Minor. Eugenides places the village high on the slope of Mount Olympos, above the city of Bursa, and describes incestuous marriages between cousins as a quietly accepted custom among the villagers. Lefty makes a living selling silkworm cocoons harvested by his sister, Desdemona. The siblings are orphans; their parents are victims of the ongoing Greco-Turkish War. As the war progresses, Lefty and Desdemona develop a romantic relationship. Fleeing the chaos brought by the war, they board a ship amid the Great Fire of Smyrna and set sail for the United States. Their histories unknown to the other passengers, they marry each other on board the vessel. After arriving in New York, they locate their cousin, Sourmelina "Lina" Zizmo, in Detroit, Michigan, and stay with her. Lina is a closeted lesbian and the only person there to know of the siblings' incestuous relationship. Starting a new life, Lefty takes on a job at Ford Motor Company, but is later retrenched. He unknowingly joins Lina's husband, Jimmy, in bootlegging. Desdemona gives birth to a son, Milton, and later a daughter, Zoe. Lina gives birth to a daughter, Theodora or "Tessie". The relationship between Lefty and Desdemona declines after she learns that there is an increased chance of genetic disease for children born from incest. In 1924, after Milton's birth, Lefty opens a bar and gambling room, calling it the Zebra Room. Milton and Tessie marry in 1946. They have two children, Chapter ElevenBecause his brother drives the family business into bankruptcy, Cal refers to him by a specific portion of the US bankruptcy law. and Calliope ("Callie"). Prior to Callie's birth, Desdemona predicts the child to be a boy, although the parents prepare for a girl. Chapter Eleven is a biologically "normal" boy; however, Callie is intersex. Her family members are unaware of her situation for many years, so they raise Callie as a girl. After the 1967 Detroit riot, the family moves to a house on Middlesex Boulevard, Grosse Pointe. When she is 14 years old, Callie falls in love with her female best friend, whom Callie refers to as the "Obscure Object".A reference to the 1977 film That Obscure Object of Desire directed by Luis Buñuel In separate encounters, Callie has her first sexual experiences with a woman, the Obscure Object, and with a man, the Obscure Object's brother. After Callie is injured by a tractor, a doctor discovers that she is intersex. She is taken to a clinic in New York and undergoes a series of tests and examinations. After learning about the syndrome and facing the prospect of sex reassignment surgery, Callie runs away and assumes a male identity as Cal. He hitchhikes cross-country and reaches San Francisco, where he joins a burlesque show. Cal is arrested by the police during a raid on his workplace. He is released into Chapter Eleven's custody and learns of their father's death. The siblings return to their family home on Middlesex. In a private moment, Desdemona recognizes Cal's condition, associating it with stories from her old village about children born of incest. She confesses to Cal that her husband, Lefty, is also her brother. As Milton's funeral takes place at the church, Cal stands in the doorway of his family home, assuming the male-only role in Greek traditions to keep his father's spirit from re-entering the family home. Several years later, Cal becomes a diplomat stationed in Berlin. He meets Julie Kikuchi, a Japanese-American woman, and tentatively starts a relationship with her. |
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas | Gertrude Stein | 1,933 | Alice B. Toklas, as narrator of the work, says she was born into an affluent family in San Francisco. Later she met Gertrude Stein's mother during the San Francisco fires and finally decided to move to Paris in 1907. Alice talks about the important role of Helene, Gertrude's housemaid, in their household in Paris. She mentions preparations for an art exhibition. She discusses Picasso and his mistress Fernande. The couple break up and Fernande moves to Montparnasse to teach French. Alice and Gertrude visit her there. Alice tells of Gertrude and her brother Leo Stein buying paintings by Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse from Ambroise Vollard. They subsequently all become friends. She next discusses spending the summer with Gertrude in Fiesole while Picasso goes to Spain. Back in France, Gertrude falls out with Guillaume Apollinaire. Later, Picasso has an argument with Matisse. Alice tells how Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, then moved to Vienna, Passy, and finally New York City and California. She attended Radcliffe College, where she was taught by William James. She decided to study for a Master's degree at Johns Hopkins University but dropped out because she was bored, then moved to London and was bored there too, returned to America, and eventually settled in Paris. Alice tells stories about Matisse, Apollinaire, and many other Cubist artists. She recounts holidays in Italy and Spain with Gertrude. Finally, they move to England on the eve of the First World War to meet with Gertrude's editor, leaving Mildred Aldrich alone in Paris. Gertrude and Alice begin the war years in England, then go briefly to France to rescue Gertrude's writings. They then live in Spain for a while and eventually move back to France. There, they do volunteer work for the American Fund for the French Wounded driving around France to help the wounded and homeless. By the end of the war, Paris seems changed. Alice tells of Gertrude's argument with T. S. Eliot after he finds one of her writings inappropriate. She talks about her friendship with Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, who helped with the publication of The Making of Americans. They the couple make friends with a coterie of Russian artists, but they constitute no artistic movement. Later, Gertrude gives a lecture at Oxford University. Alice then mentions more parties with artists. Later, they abridge The Making of Americans to four hundred pages for commercial reasons and devise the idea of authoring an autobiography. |
1982, Janine | Alasdair Gray | 1,984 | The novel is narrated by Jock McLeish, a supervisor of the installation of alarm systems. Divorced, alcoholic and approaching fifty, his problems coalesce in a long night of the soul in a hotel room in Greenock. McLeish attempts to spend the night assembling an intricate pornographic fantasy. His cast of characters includes: Janine, based on a childhood memory of Jane Russell in The Outlaw; Superb (short for Superbitch); and Big Momma, an obese lesbian. All of these are submitted to sadomasochistic practices, parts of which are described at some length. However, McLeish constantly returns to reminiscences of his previous life and lovers. These prompt his attempted suicide. Chapter 11 of the novel is a typographical explosion, with the text splitting into several parallel voices on each page (including that of God). The crisis concludes with McLeish vomiting up the pills which he had hoped would kill him, and facing the truth of his actions as morning dawns. |
Firewall | Henning Mankell | 2,002 | A series of bizarre incidents sweep across Sweden: a man dies in front of an ATM, two young women slaughter an elderly taxi driver, a murder is committed aboard a Baltic Sea ferry, and a sub-station engineer makes a gruesome discovery while investigating the cause of a nationwide power cut. As Wallander investigates, he uncovers a sinister plan to bring the Western world to its knees. The major background theme around which the action takes place is the dilemma of the Western economic system versus poverty. The criminal mastermind is a persuasive and talented IT specialist who plans to right the wrongs of the world by "deleting" vast quantities of money from multinational banks' accounts system, so bringing on a credit and financial panic. The criminals believe their intended cybercrime is justified; for them the "big picture" involves the sacrifice of the banking system in order to wipe out third world debt. At a crucial moment Wallander unwittingly manages to persuade a key accomplice that, ethically, there is in fact no "big picture," that instead we just have lives that are fragile but also "miraculous". That this major issue of our times should feature in a detective novel shows that it is not merely about detection, yet Wallander's answer just repeats the very old idea of caring for one's proximate neighbours in the here and now. |
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | 2,003 | Christopher, a fifteen-year-old boy with an autistic spectrum condition, lives with his father; he explains that his mother, Judy, died two years ago. He discovers the dead body of Wellington, the neighbour's dog, speared by a garden fork. Mrs Shears, Wellington's owner, calls the police, and Christopher comes under suspicion. When a policeman touches him, he hits the policeman, and is arrested, then released with a caution. He decides to investigate the dog's death, despite his father's orders to stay out of other people's business. However, he is severely limited by his fears and difficulties when interpreting the world around him. Throughout his adventures, Christopher records his experiences in a book: a "murder mystery novel". During his investigation, Christopher meets people whom he has never before encountered, even though they live on the same street, including the elderly Mrs Alexander, who informs Christopher that his mother had an affair with Mr Shears and had been with him for a long time. Ed, his father, discovers the book and confiscates it from Christopher, after a brief fight between them. While searching for the confiscated book, Christopher uncovers a trove of letters which his mother wrote to him, dated after her supposed death, which his father has also hidden. He is so shocked by his father lying about his mother's death that he is unable to move, curls up on the bed, vomits and groans for several hours until his father returns home. Ed realises that Christopher has read the letters and cleans him up. He then confesses that he had indeed lied about Judy's death and also that it was he who killed Wellington, stating that it was a mistake resulting from his anger after a heated argument with Mrs Shears. Christopher, having lost all trust in his father and fearing that Ed may try to kill him since he had already killed the dog, runs away. Guided by his mother's address from the letters, he embarks on an adventurous trip to London, where his mother lives with Mr Shears. After a long and event-filled journey, evading policemen, and feeling ill from the overwhelmingly large amount of information and stimuli from the trains and crowds around him, he finally finds his way to his mother and Mr Shears' home, and waits outside until they arrive. Judy is delighted that Christopher has come to her; she cannot believe that Ed would tell Christopher that she was dead. Mr Shears does not want Christopher living with them and never did. Moreover, very soon after arriving, Christopher wants to return to Swindon in order to take his mathematics A-level. His mother leaves Mr Shears, their relationship having broken down because of the conflict and his rejection of Christopher. Judy then moves into a rented room in Swindon, and after an argument with Ed, agrees to let Ed meet Christopher for daily brief visits. However, Christopher remains terrified of his father and makes repeated attempts to prevent him from talking. He hopes Ed will be imprisoned for killing Wellington. The story ends with Ed getting Christopher a pet dog, and promising that he will rebuild trust with Christopher slowly, "no matter how long it takes". Christopher asserts that he will take further A-level exams and attend university. He completes his first mathematics A-level with top grades and, despite previously wanting to be an astronaut, his ultimate goal is to become a scientist. The book ends with Christopher optimistic about his future, having solved the mystery of the murdered dog, gone to London on his own, found his mother, written a book about his adventures, and achieved an A* in his A-level maths exam. Christopher goes on to live with his mother, and occasionally visits his father's house. |
Ella Enchanted | Gail Carson Levine | 1,997 | At birth, Ella of Frell is given the gift of obedience by the well-meaning but misguided fairy Lucinda. As a result, she cannot disobey a direct order given to her, though her mother Lady Eleanor and the family's cook Mandy protect Ella throughout her childhood. Ella is close to her mother and they share the same free-spirited nature, but when Ella is nearly fifteen, Eleanor dies. At Eleanor's funeral, Ella meets and befriends Charmont (Char), the Prince of Kyrria. Not long afterward, Ella's father Sir Peter sends Ella off to finishing school with Hattie and Olive, the daughters of the wealthy Dame Olga. However, Hattie soon discovers that Ella is unable to disobey direct orders and she takes advantage of Ella. At school, Ella becomes friends with Areida, a girl from the neighboring country Ayortha. When Hattie orders Ella to stop being friends with Areida, Ella runs away and learns that her father is attending a giant's wedding. After various misadventures, she finds Lucinda at the wedding and tries to presuade her to take back her gift. Instead, Lucinda misunderstands and orders Ella to be happy with her gift. Upon returning home, Mandy reverses the order upon Ella. After failing to find a rich husband for Ella, Sir Peter decides to marry Dame Olga in order to pay off his debts. Ella renews her friendship with Char at the wedding and they begin writing to each other frequently after Char leaves on a diplomatic mission to Ayortha. When Sir Peter leaves to continue his business, Dame Olga and her daughters quickly reduce Ella to being an obedient servant their home. Ella and Char fall in love through their letters, but Ella rejects him when she realizes her gift of obedience could be used to harm him. She tricks Char into thinking she has eloped with another man, leaving Char heartbroken. When Char returns to Kyrria, a three-night homecoming ball is held in his honor. Ella, who still loves him, goes to the ball in disguise with help from Mandy and Lucinda, who now realizes the terrible nature of her gifts. On the third night of the ball, when she is dancing with Char, a jealous Hattie unmasks Ella, forcing her to flee. Returning to the manor, she and Mandy attempt to run away, but are thwarted by Char's arrival. Char unwittingly orders Ella to marry him, causing Ella to will herself to defy the order out of her desire to protect him and the kingdom from her curse. Her unselfish desire allows her to succeed and refuse his proposal. Free from the spell, she accepts Char's hand in marriage because she wants to, and they live happily ever after. |
The Blue Flowers | Raymond Queneau | 1,965 | The Duke of Auge dreams that he is Cidrolin, living on a barge alone with his daughter, while Cidrolin dreams that he is the Duke of Auge, travelling through the history of France. They will meet in 1964. Carl Reinecke, a critic writing for the London Times, has argued that this novel is an example of the archetypal "prodigal son" storyline. de:Die blauen Blumen fr:Les Fleurs bleues it:I fiori blu ka:ლურჯი ყვავილები (რომანი) |
Romance of Atlantis | null | null | Atlantis is ruled by the beautiful and intelligent Empress Salustra. The fate of the Empire will be decided by an arranged marriage with the ruler of a less advanced, semi-barbarian northern kingdom, as the advanced technology of Atlantis is powerless against strange environmental and ecological disasters. |
The Vampire Armand | Anne Rice | 1,998 | With Lestat still in slumber after his adventures in Memnoch the Devil, the vampire coven is united around the "brat prince" (a nickname for Lestat given by Marius), and the vampire David Talbot takes the opportunity to request that Armand tell David his life story. Armand, who first appeared in Interview with the Vampire, agrees to tell his tale. Born somewhere in the eastern European state of Kiev in the late 15th century, Armand (at this time called Andrei) becomes an icon painter in a monastery. He is forcefully taken out of this life of prayer and devotion by slave traders, who take him to Constantinople and then to Venice, where he is destined to work in a brothel. Soon after his arrival in Venice he is purchased by the vampire Marius de Romanus (whose life story is told in Blood and Gold), who names him Amadeo. In Venice, Marius lives the extravagant life of a respected Renaissance painter, and mentors many boys who serve as his apprentices. Marius provides his apprentices with education, shelter, food, and he assists them in finding respectable positions once they are grown. Life in Marius' villa is a stark contrast to the poverty, hunger and disease described elsewhere in the city. Over time, Amadeo's relationship to Marius develops and they become much closer than Marius is with any of the other boys. In addition to developing a sexual relationship, Amadeo sleeps in Marius' bed, is privy to special privileges, and becomes something of a 'head boy' in the household. Still, Marius maintains strict control over Amadeo, and expects industriousness from him in all things. When Amadeo comes of age (the book is not specific, but he is most likely 15 or 16 at this point), Marius begins Amadeo's education in sexuality and coupling. He takes Amadeo to a brothel, where Amadeo remains for several days. Amadeo later visits a male brothel for several days, and while there makes several observations about the difference in sexual activities with the different genders. There is a distinct bisexuality to Amadeo's nature, as he enjoys activity with either sex. He later has a brief affair with an Englishman called Lord Harlech. Harlech becomes obsessed with Amadeo, but his love is not returned. During this period, Amadeo also befriends Bianca Solderini, a wealthy debutante and courtesan whose primary role in life seems to be to throw nightly parties. Amadeo ultimately seduces the willing Bianca. Marius eventually divulges his vampire nature to Amadeo, who almost immediately begins asking to be made a vampire. Marius shows Amadeo some of what it means to be immortal, and allows him to join him in the hunt on several occasions. He tells Amadeo that they must always focus on killing evildoers. They assist Bianca by murdering her kinsmen who force her to poison those they have borrowed money from. Eventually, on a night when Marius is out of the country, Lord Harlech breaks into Marius's palazzo and attacks Amadeo, murdering two apprentices in the process. Amadeo kills Harlech, but not before the Englishman wounds him with a poisoned sword. Amadeo falls critically ill, and over several days falls into fever and delusions. Upon returning and finding Amadeo on his deathbed, Marius heals Amadeo's external wounds, cleans and grooms him, then gives him the Dark Gift, turning him into a vampire. Marius sets out to train Amadeo, and sets up a coffin in a secret basement with his own. Marius retains high expectations of Amadeo, and forces him to continue his education in the arts. Amadeo's transition to vampire is relatively easy for him, although the Dark Gift brings about nightmares of his childhood. Marius and Amadeo return to Russia, where Amadeo visits his old school and home. He finds his elderly mother and father there, reveals that he is alive, and says farewell to them, leaving them with all the money and jewels he has with him. This is generally a happy reunion, as Amadeo is able to let go of his mortal background and his parents are able to see that their beloved son is alive (so to speak) and thriving. Though this reunion allows Amadeo to let go of his mortal background, discovering that his father is alive (Amadeo believed he was dead) and a drunkard hurts him deeply. Shortly after returning to Venice, the vampire Santino and his coven (the "Children of Darkness") attack Marius' home, kidnap Amadeo and the apprentices, and burn the villa. Marius is burned and thought to be destroyed; his boys are taken to a bonfire that the coven has created and thrown in one by one as Amadeo watches. Santino spares Amadeo and educates him in the laws of the Coven. Amadeo later goes to Paris, changes his name to Armand, and creates his own coven under the Cimetière des Innocents, which Lestat would years later drastically impact thus resulting in the creation of the Théâtre des Vampires (featured in the earlier novel Interview with the Vampire). Armand also shares with David his version of some of the events recounted by Louis de Pointe du Lac in Interview with the Vampire: the end of the Théâtre des Vampires and the time that Armand and Louis shared together. The book also chronicles Armand's feelings about several of the major vampire characters from the previous books. It is also revealed that Armand thinks he saw Bianca in Paris in the 18th century, and has wondered ever since if Marius made her a vampire. In the final segment of the book, Armand explains what occurred to him after the final chapters of Memnoch the Devil. At the end of Memnoch the Devil, Armand rushes into the open daylight and appears to be destroyed in a conflagration. Armand explains to David that by some means beyond his understanding he survived, and ended up on a rooftop in a stairwell protected from further exposure to the sun. However, he is badly burned and unable to move or fully function. While in this delirious state, he makes a mental connection to two children in a nearby apartment - Sybelle and Benji. The connection is forged through Sybelle's constant piano playing. Eventually, Armand is able to reach out to the children and lead them to him. They believe he is an angel, but are moderately unsurprised when Armand divulges his true nature to them. Armand cannot hunt, so the two agree to trick a drug dealer up to the apartment so that Armand may feed on him. The plan works, and ultimately Armand is fully healed. He becomes friends with Sybelle and Benji and ultimately falls in love with them, showing to a certain degree a lolita complex. He shares his wealth with them without limit, mirroring the relationship Marius had with him to a certain degree. Armand brings them to see Lestat, which he has some concerns about since vampires are traditionally not safe for mortals to be around. After trying to wake Lestat from his catatonic state, Armand returns to Marius's house to discover that Marius has given Benji and Sybelle the Dark Gift. Armand is at first furious at Marius because he wanted Sybelle and Benji to have full, mortal lives. The fact that Benji is ecstatic about the prospect of eternal life, only serves to fuel his anger. Marius explains to Armand that he did it since Armand never could without the two coming to hate him for it. Marius is willing to take the burden of Sybelle and Benji's eventual anger. |
The Dharma Bums | Jack Kerouac | null | Ray Smith's story is driven by Japhy, whose penchant for the simple life and Zen Buddhism greatly influenced Kerouac on the eve of the sudden and unpredicted success of On the Road. The action shifts between the events of Smith and Ryder's "city life," such as three-day parties and enactments of the Buddhist "Yab-Yum" rituals, to the sublime and peaceful imagery where Kerouac seeks a type of transcendence. The novel concludes with a change in narrative style, with Kerouac working alone as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak (adjacent to Hozomeen Mountain), in what would soon be declared North Cascades National Park (see also Desolation Angels). These elements place The Dharma Bums at a critical junction foreshadowing the consciousness-probing works of several authors in the 1960s such as Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. One episode in the book features Smith, Ryder and Henry Morley (based on real-life friend John Montgomery) climbing Matterhorn Peak in California. It tells the story of Kerouac's first introduction to this type of mountaineering and would serve as inspiration for him to spend the following summer as a fire lookout for the United States Forest Service on Desolation Peak in Washington. The novel also gives an account of the legendary 1955 Six Gallery reading, where Allen Ginsberg gave a debut presentation of his poem "Howl" (changed to "Wail" in the book), and other authors such as Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth, Michael McClure, and Philip Whalen performed. |
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues | Gus Van Sant | null | Sissy Hankshaw, the novel's protagonist, is a woman born with enormously large thumbs who considers her mutation a gift. The novel covers various topics, including "free love", drug use, political rebellion, animal rights, body odor, religion, and yams. Sissy capitalizes on the size of her thumbs by becoming a hitchhiker and subsequently travels to New York, United States (US). The character becomes a model for The Countess, a male homosexual tycoon of feminine hygiene products. The Tycoon introduces Sissy to a staid Mohawk named Julian Gitche, whom she later marries. In her later travels, she encounters, among many others, a sexually open cowgirl named Bonanza Jellybean and an itinerant escapee from a Japanese internment camp happily mislabeled The Chink. The Chink is presented as a hermetic mystic and at one point states "I believe in everything; nothing is sacred. I believe in nothing; everything is sacred. Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee." A flock of whooping cranes also makes frequent appearances throughout the novel which includes details of their physical characteristics and migratory patterns. Robbins also inserts himself into the novel (as a character) as well. |
Den Haag | null | 2,008 | Den Haag is the faction (fact+fiction) which is based on the historical fact of the Korean Empire's credential three secret delegates at the Second Peace Conference at The Hague (Den Haag in Dutch) in 1907. This story mingles three different incidents crossing time and space. In 1907, at The Hague, Yi Jun, one of the three delegates died a mysterious death. In 2007, in Seoul, a 10 year old child died from an ill-defined brain disease. These two stories are linked together through the letter to the Vatican sent by a veiled priest called 'Q' and his activities. This novel call our of today to account what is the historical meaning of Japan-Korea Forced Annexation a hundred years ago: Who am I, what left behind 'a time of Japanese forced occupation' to me of the present time, and in confronting such historical problems, how to eliminate the legacy of Japan’s colonial rule of Korea which have been restricting liberty and pride of Korean even now. |
James and the Giant Peach | Roald Dahl | 1,961 | A boy named James Henry Trotter, 5 years old, lives with his loving parents in a pretty and bright cottage by the sea in the south of England. James's world is turned upside down when, while on a shopping trip in London, his mother and father are eaten by an escaped rhino. James is forced to live with his two cruel aunts, Spiker and Sponge, who live in a run-down house on a high, desolate hill near the white cliffs of Dover. For three years Spiker and Sponge verbally and physically abuse James, not allowing him to venture beyond the hill or play with other children. Around the house James is treated as a drudge, beaten for hardly any reason, improperly fed, and forced to sleep on bare floorboards in the attic. One summer afternoon when he is crying in the bushes, James stumbles across a strange old man, who, mysteriously, knows all about James's plight and gives him a sack of tiny glowing-green crocodile tongues. The man promises that if James mixes the contents of the sack with a jug of water and ten hairs from his own head, the result will be a magic potion which, when drunk, will bring him happiness and great adventures. On the way back to the house, James trips and spills the sack onto the peach tree outside his home, which had previously never given fruit. The tree becomes enchanted through the tongues, and begins to blossom; indeed a certain peach grows to the size of a large house. The aunts discover this and make money off the giant peach while keeping James locked away. At night the aunts shove James outside to collect rubbish from the crowd, but instead he curiously ventures inside a juicy, fleshy tunnel which leads to the hollow stone in the middle of the cavernous fruit. Entering the stone, James discovers a band of rag-tag anthropomorphic insects, also transformed by the magic of the green tongues. James quickly befriends the insect inhabitants of the peach, who become central to the plot and James' companions in his adventure. The insects loathe the aunts and their hilltop home as much as James, and they were waiting for him to join them so they can escape together. The Centipede bites through the stem of the peach with his powerful jaws, releasing it from the tree, and it begins to roll down the hill, squashing Spiker and Sponge flat in its wake. Inside the stone the inhabitants cheer as they feel the peach rolling over the aunts. The peach rolls through villages, houses, and a famous chocolate factory before falling off the cliffs and into the sea. The peach floats in the English Channel, but quickly drifts away from civilization and into the expanses of the Atlantic Ocean. Hours later, not far from the Azores, the peach is attacked by a swarm of hundreds of sharks. Using the blind Earthworm as bait, the ever resourceful James and the other inhabitants of the peach lure over five hundred seagulls to the peach from the nearby islands. The seagulls are then tied to the broken stem of the fruit using spiderwebs from the Spider and strings of white silk from the Silkworm. The mass of seagulls lifts the undamaged giant peach into the air and away from the sharks. As the seagulls try to get away from the giant peach, they merely carry it higher and higher, and the seagulls take the giant peach great distances. The Centipede entertains with ribald dirges to Sponge and Spiker, but in his excitement he falls off the peach into the ocean and has to be rescued by James. That night, thousands of feet in the air, the giant peach floats through mountain-like, moonlit clouds. There the inhabitants of the peach see a group of magical ghost-like figures living within the clouds, "Cloud-Men", who control the weather. As the Cloud-Men gather up the cloud in their hands to form hailstones and snowballs to throw down to the world below, the loud-mouthed Centipede insults the Cloud-Men for making snowy weather in the summertime. Angered, an army of Cloud-Men appear from the cloud and pelt the giant peach with hail so fiercely and powerfully that the peach is severely damaged, with entire chunks taken out of it, and the giant fruit begins leaking its peach juice. All of this shrinks the peach somewhat, although because it is now lighter the seagulls are able to pull it quicker through the air. As the seagulls strain to get away from the Cloud-Men, the giant peach smashes through an unfinished rainbow the Cloud-Men were preparing for dawn, infuriating them even further. One Cloud-Man almost gets on the peach by climbing down the silken strings tied to the stem, but James asks the Centipede to bite through some of the strings. When he does a single freed seagull, to which the Cloud-Man is hanging from, is enough to carry him away from the peach as Cloud-Men are weightless. As the sun rises, the inhabitants of the giant peach see the glimmering skyscrapers of New York City peeking above the clouds. The people below see the giant peach suspended in the air by a swarm of hundreds of seagulls, and panic, believing it to be a floating, orange-coloured, spherical nuclear bomb. The military, police, fire, and rescue services are all called out, and people begin running to air raid shelters and subway stations, believing the city is about to be destroyed. A huge passenger jet flies past the giant peach, almost hitting it, and severing the silken strings between the seagulls and the peach. The seagulls free, the peach begins to fall to the ground, but it is saved when it is impaled upon the tip of the Empire State Building. The people on the 86th floor observation deck at first believe the inhabitants of the giant peach to be monsters or Martians, but when James appears from within the skewered peach and explains his story, the people hail James and his insect friends as heroes. They are given a welcoming home parade, and James gets what he wanted for three long years - playmates in the form of millions of potential new childhood friends. The skewered, battered remains of the giant peach are brought down to the streets by steeplejacks, where its delicious flesh is eaten up by ten thousand children, all now James's friends. Meanwhile, the peach's other former residents, the anthropomorphic insects, all go on to find very interesting futures in the world of humans. In the last chapter of the book, it is revealed that the giant hollowed-out stone which had once been at the center of the peach is now a mansion located in Central Park. James lives out the rest of his life in the giant peach stone, which becomes an open tourist attraction and the ever-friendly James has all the friends he has wanted. |
Sphere | Michael Crichton | 1,987 | A group of scientists, including psychologist Norman Johnson, mathematician Harry Adams, biologist Beth Halpern, and astrophysicist Ted Fielding, along with U.S. Navy personnel, are dispatched to a deep sea habitat at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to explore a crashed spacecraft. To their surprise, they discover the spacecraft is not alien, but an American spacecraft constructed in the future and apparently sent through time, crashing 350 years before its creation. On further exploration, the team discovers a mysterious spherical artifact, clearly of extraterrestrial origin, which quickly becomes the focus of their attention. Harry becomes quite certain that, because the ship's future builders didn't seem to learn that their ship had already been discovered, the members of the team aren't likely to survive. At this point, a storm traps the scientists on the ocean floor without contact or support from the surface for over a week. The crew soon focuses on asking questions about the sphere and then on attempting to open it and learn about its nature, contents, and origin. Harry eventually succeeds in opening it and goes inside. Upon returning, he has a terrible headache and he remembers little about what happened inside or how he opened it. The scientists are eventually contacted by an intelligent, seemingly-friendly lifeform which calls itself Jerry, apparently from within the sphere. It first contacts them via a numeric code, which Harry translates. But while they struggle to communicate with Jerry, increasingly bizarre and deadly events occur, including the appearance of sea creatures that Beth claims don't exist. Jerry tells them he is "manifesting" the creatures. Members of the team start to die in various attacks by sea life, and the dwindling survivors struggle to placate the unthinkably powerful, childlike, and temperamental Jerry. Norman suddenly has an important role when he realizes he must use psychology to keep the surviving team (now only himself, Beth, and Harry) alive by placating Jerry. Translating the original code himself, though, Norman discovers that Jerry is actually Harry: by entering the sphere, Harry acquired the power to manifest his subconscious thoughts into reality. As Harry noted his childhood fears of squids and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, he has unconsciously created them as an enemy. Beth and Norman tranquilize Harry with a powerful mixture of sedatives and wait for contact to be re-established with the surface. However, although Harry is sedated, the manifestations continue. Beth accuses Norman of having entered the sphere and gaining access to the power. Though unable to recall this incident, Norman is close to yielding until he watches a security video of Beth entering the sphere herself. Concluding that Norman is a threat to her, Beth irrationally plants potent explosives around the spacecraft and habitat and then attempts to suffocate Norman with the habitat's climate systems. Norman escapes to the spacecraft and, figuring out at last how to open it, enters the sphere. Norman begins to ascend by himself in the submarine, but realizes that he could never leave the others to die. Now with the same power of thought as Harry and Beth, Norman fights Beth and brings both her and Harry to the escape submarine before the explosives destroy the site. Afterward, while in a surface decompression chamber, the three survivors ponder what to tell the Navy about what happened. Realizing they could not control the power, they decide to use the power to remove it from themselves and their memories simultaneously, replacing it with memories of a technical failure. Afterwards, as they mourn the colleagues lost to this scenario, Norman compliments Beth's appearance, saying that she looks lovely despite their hardship in the deep. Beth only smiles. |
Triton | Samuel R. Delany | 1,976 | The novel examines how Triton's freedoms and customs are perceived by the main characters, particularly Bron Helstrom, a young man who has previously worked on Mars as a male prostitute. The society of Mars is far harsher than that of Triton, and it has evidently influenced Bron's personality. He is self-absorbed, often lacks insight about himself and others, and has great difficulty with personal relationships. Though the civilization of Triton offers everything that he could reasonably want, he is unhappy with his life, out of harmony with those around him, and continually looking for others to blame whenever things go wrong. As the novel continues, political tensions between Triton and Earth lead to a destructive interplanetary war. This is mainly used as the backdrop for Bron's (ultimately disastrous) relationship with a brilliant young woman known as the Spike, but Delany speculates interestingly on how an interplanetary war might actually unfold. |
Revelation Space | Alastair Reynolds | 2,000 | Revelation Space starts off with three seemingly unrelated narrative strands that eventually meet—and merge—as the novel progresses. This plot device is characteristic of many of Reynolds's works. The book opens in the year 2551 on Resurgam, a planet considered a backwater on the edge of colonized human space. Dan Sylveste, an archaeologist, leader of the colony, and wealthy scion of a prominent scientific family, leads a team excavating the remains of the Amarantin, a long-dead, 900,000-year-old civilization that once existed on Resurgam. As a violent dust storm threatens to temporarily shut down the excavation, Sylveste discovers new evidence that the entire Amarantin race achieved a much higher level of technological sophistication than was previously known, before they were wiped out in a single mysterious cataclysm. Next, the book jumps back to 2540, where most of the crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity are frozen for the journey to Yellowstone (in the Epsilon Eridani system) in order to find Sylveste. Because information is often decades old by the time it reaches other human settlements in a universe without faster-than-light travel, the crew does not realize it has been more than 15 years since Sylveste left Yellowstone to pursue archaeological work on Resurgam. The Nostalgia for Infinity is an ancient ship that once carried hundreds of thousands, but now its crew is only a handful of Ultras—highly modified humans adapted to the rigors of long interstellar spaceflight. And they're desperate to find Sylveste because their captain has been infected with the Melding Plague, a virus that attacks human cells and machine nanotechnology in equal measure, perverting them into grotesque combinations. It's believed that only the technological expertise of the Sylveste family can help cure the captain. Meanwhile, in 2524 in Chasm City, Yellowstone, professional assassin Ana Khouri is hired by a mysterious figure known as The Mademoiselle to infiltrate the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity as it reaches orbit around Yellowstone. Khouri's new employer knows the ship will follow Sylveste to the edge of human space in an attempt to find a cure for its captain, and gives Khouri explicit orders to kill Sylveste once the Nostalgia for Infinitys crew have found him. Using subterfuge, this new employer is able to arrange a meeting twenty years later between Khouri and one of the ship's triumvirs, Ilia Volyova, making it appear as though the meeting happened by chance. In 2566, after Khouri has successfully infiltrated the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity as the ship's new gunnery officer, the ship arrives in orbit around Resurgam. Desperate to secure Sylveste's expertise to help cure their captain, triumvirs Volyova, Sajaki and Hegazi demand the fledgling Resurgam civilisation turn Sylveste over to them. When the government of the small human colony baulks, Volyova reminds them of the power at the disposal of her massive ship by apparently wiping out one of the planet's settlements with a single discharge of the Infinitys weapons. Fearing the consequences of defying the Ultras for a second time, and knowing full well the starship is capable of destroying all human life on the planet, Resurgam's government hands over Sylveste, who travels to orbit accompanied by his wife, Pascale. Once aboard, however, Sylveste turns the tables—he informs the triumvirs that he has antimatter bombs hidden inside the implants in his artificial eyes. A detonation from one of those anti-matter bombs would be enough to destroy the Nostalgia for Infinity. Emboldened, Sylveste makes a deal with the crew—he will attempt to cure their captain in exchange for them using their ship to bring him closer to Cerberus, a planet near Resurgam that carried particular significance for the Amarantin civilisation. As Sylveste and the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity approach Cerberus, Sylveste realizes the massive celestial body isn't a planet at all—but rather, a massive technological beacon, aimed at alerting machine sentience to the appearance of new star-faring cultures. It is this beacon, Sylveste belatedly realises, that alerted a machine intelligence known as the Inhibitors to the presence of the Amarantin, and ultimately caused the demise of that race. The beacon begins to activate and Sylveste detonates the bombs in his eyes to destroy the facility. |
Subsets and Splits
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