Truth is, I'm still in my pajamas feeling a little dazed and somehow violated. My inner psyche feels bruised like a bell that's just been rung.
It is as tTruth is, I'm still in my pajamas feeling a little dazed and somehow violated. My inner psyche feels bruised like a bell that's just been rung.
It is as though I am an instrument that's just been played by the most gifted of all musicians.
Deeply felt and profoundly intimate My Dark Vanessa is as stunning as it is courageous.
“The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.”
It took me a long time to read this story in its entirety. Perhaps that is becaus
“The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.”
It took me a long time to read this story in its entirety. Perhaps that is because I was quite familiar with what the story was about, but I don’t think so. I need only reflect back on such classics as Gone with the Wind to know I can be held captive by stories even more familiar than this. Still there were sections of this story that for whatever reason did not resonate with me.
But, oh my, the writing. You know these days we are most likely all of us thoughtful of our diets and such, but this? Well it’s more like, a full on roast turkey dinner, you know the kind, with mashed potatoes, yorkshire pudding, roast corn and yams and ta-dadada…..rich creamy gravy (lots). And believe me I ate my fill. But then I needed to let that lay with me for a while, so I took a break and visited some old friends that were beckoning me from a different shelf. I had a lovely time until once again I found myself back in Maugham’s world.
As a character Philip Carey fairly stepped off the page. He seemed so real, as though I could reach out and touch him. And the whole time Philip was stepping off the page, I myself was stepping into these pages.and into his life or at least into his search for acceptance and love and meaning in his life. But Philip will not be the only character that steps out here. It is a rich and vibrantly woven tapestry, full of people and places, hopes and fears, sin and obsession, tenderness and greed, manipulation and despair.
Songs carry memories almost as reliably and poignantly as smells. (all the chapters are named after songs)
Max is in the winter of Five Luminous Stars
Songs carry memories almost as reliably and poignantly as smells. (all the chapters are named after songs)
Max is in the winter of his years and for the majority of them he has carried a secret guilt, a burden of shame, that will not be gone. It has manifested itself onto him in most peculiar ways.
There was a mannequin standing at the centre of my grandfather’s overgrown garden, a life-size male with black hair and hopeful blue eyes. He was dressed in a black suit, a white shirt and black shoes. The elements and birds had reduced him and his clothes to a forlorn forsaken state.
These days Max keeps lists of memories, more protection from ever forgetting, more fuel for the fire that stokes the flames of guilt that have consumed him all of his adult life.
Max’s guilt dates back to when he was twelve and living in Paris in the days just leading up to the Nazi occupation. He was then best friends and inseparable from a Jewish girl called Ada. They spent most of their time in Ada’s tree house where they taught each other spells and copied each one down meticulously in their book, which of course was kept hidden from all prying eyes but their own.
On any other day, in any other place, at any other time in history Max’s small act, not an act at all really, more of an unact, though mean and hurtful, would not have carried such a heavy weight. But it was not any other day.
Much time has passed and Max realizes that in order to keep the memory of Ada alive, he must share his story, his secret shame, with his grandson Mark.
But Mark has a shame all his own and harbours fears that are debilitating, reductive and have resulted in more loss than life.
It is not always possible to know which, if any, of my grandfather’s stories were actually true so when he told me about Ada and their book of spells, I could not tell if it was just a story or an actual memory.
Honestly for such a small book, that could be read in a few short hours, if you did not feel the need to go back and read again some of the beautiful, haunting passages that evoke such a visceral response; this one packs a lot of story into very few pages.
It was less the soldiers and more the enormous Nazi flags draped over buildings which brought home how altered reality was. The most immediate effect of the red and white flag with the black swastika was one of unfriendliness. It made the familiar look unreal. Like waking up into a dream. It seemed to steal one’s memories. Steal the substance from everything it presided over. The sight of it always made me feel a bit dizzy as if I was filled with hot air.
It has already made it to my must read again list.
And soon, when I can slow down, chew and savour every respectful word. I cannot believe I just said that about a novel about the Holocaust, but it’s true.
Highly recommended! A Must Read. Thank you Katie.
As always, my thanks to Cheyne Walk, NetGalley and Glenn Haybittle for an opportunity to read and review this book....more
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. Rudyard Kipling
When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me ny
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. Rudyard Kipling
When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and cousins. Least of the lesser goddesses, our powers were so modest they could scarcely ensure our eternities. We spoke to fish and nurtured flowers, coaxed drops from the clouds or salt from the waves. That word, nymph, paced out the length and breadth of our futures. In our language, it means not just goddess, but bride.
I was first held captive by Madeline Miller’s voice a couple of years ago when I had the good fortune of reading The Song of Achilles. I knew then that I wanted to hear that voice again.
As legend has it, Circe, due to her wilful ways, is banished by her father Helios ( Titan god of the sun) and confined by his will to the island of Aiaia.
The next morning I stepped into my father’s chariot and we lurched into the dark sky without a word. The air blew past us; night receded at every turning of the wheels. I looked over the side, trying to track the rivers and seas, the shadowed valleys, but we were going too fast, and I recognized nothing. What island is it? My father did not answer, his jaw was set, his lips bled pale with anger. My old burns were aching from standing so close to him. I closed my eyes. The lands streamed by and the wind ran across my skin. I imagined pitching over that golden rail into the open air below. It would feel good, I thought, before I hit. We landed with a jolt, I opened my eyes to see a high, soft hill, thick with grass. My father stared straight ahead. I felt a sudden urge to fall on my knees and beg him to take me back, but instead I forced myself to step down onto the ground. The moment my foot touched, he and his chariot were gone.
But Circe did not wilt within her exile, she explored her new island prison, honed her art of witchcraft; employing the islands flora and fauna and fungi to fuel her burgeoning powers. She learned to live alone and in harmony with the islands abundant wildlife. Then one day, while tending her garden, she hears a voice and sees a young man leaning against her house. It is the Olympian god, Hermes, emissary and messenger of the gods. He will not be the last god or mortal to visit these shores.
I am not ashamed to admit I was completely swept away by this tale, by Circe’s coming of age, her tales of family feuds and rivaling gods. Circe’s is a tale of love and loss and discovery, of learning the art of restraint, of celebrating life and embracing her inner strength. I found myself rooting for her every step of the way despite her many flaws, like the fact that she transformed Odysseus’s men to pigs.
Honestly I have never read anything like this. Madeline Miller not only held me captive but had me thirsting for more knowledge of the Olympian gods and Titans alike, not to mention the mortals, those Greek heroes, and their many monsters like Scylla and Charybdis. I cannot believe she has left me wanting to read The Odyssey. How else will I ever slake this thirst?
Oh and yes, Madeline, I most assuredly do want to hear your voice again. Please.
My sincere thanks to Pamela Brown and Lee Boudreaux Books, Little Brown and Company for this advanced readers copy. My god I loved it!
This feeling was different. I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran aThis feeling was different. I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. This and this and this, I said to him. I did not have to fear that I spoke too much. I did not have to worry that I was too slender or too slow. This and this and this! I taught him how to skip stones, and he taught me how to carve wood. I could feel every nerve in my body, every brush of air against my skin.
Do you remember that feeling of being in love? How you can be in a room full of others and just know, without even turning to see, that he has entered. You can feel his gaze at it lands upon you across that crowded space. Or the warmth that spreads slowly from within, and builds gradually but surely in intensity, until your entire being is aflame, lit it would seem by the merest whisper of his skin upon your arm. His hand perhaps as it grazes your elbow or his scent as he leans in to speak to those around you. How your body reacts independent of intention, turning toward him, unfurling as a flower does for the sun.
In short The Song of Achilles is a modern retelling of The Iliad. Miller tells this tale from the perspective of Patroclus, son of Menoetius. Patroclus at the tender age of ten is exiled from his father’s kingdom for accidently killing the son of a nobleman and is fostered out to King Pelius of Phthia. It is there that he meets Pelius’s golden haired son, the prince Achilles. Soon thereafter Achilles chooses Patroclus as his companion and they become fast friends spending their childhood growing and basking in each others company. Achilles mother, the sea-nymph Thetus, however, does not like Patroclus, feeling he is unworthy of being the friend of a future god. To separate the two after having seen them in an intimate embrace, Thetis sends her son away to be taught further by Chiron, the centaur on Mount Pelion. But unable to cope with the loss of his best friend, Patroclus soon follows, joining Achilles on Mount Pelion where they spend many idyllic seasons together, as their friendship blossoms into something more, being taught about war, medicine and survival by Chiron. But this too will pass as all good things must. Achilles is summoned back to Phthia where he learns that war is imminent against Troy.
Oh my goodness this book is so beautiful, so tender, yet strong and passionate. It has me all a tingle, quivering in recollection of the words read, anxious to start all over and experience those feelings anew, read those glorious words once again. Yes it is about war and death, gore and blood, lust and gods and betrayal. There is rape and plunder, hubris and humility, but at its heart, this is a love story and Miller tells it to us in words that leave me breathless, my knees shaking, thirsting for more.
Just listen………
“I will go,” he said. “I will go to Troy.” The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered green of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again. He was watching me, his eyes as deep as earth. “Will you come with me?” he asked. The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death. “Yes,” I whipsered. “Yes.” Relief broke in his face, and he reached for me. I let him hold me, let him press us length to length so close that nothing might fit between us. Tears came, and fell. Above us, the constellations spun and the moon paced her weary course. We lay stricken and sleepless as the hours passed.”
Please read it.
Five furiously quivering, phenomenal stars!!!!! ...more
First of all the physical; the book I see looking up at me from my coffee table. It looks worn, well thumbed, wel Hands Down my Favourite Book in 2014
First of all the physical; the book I see looking up at me from my coffee table. It looks worn, well thumbed, well read, pages and cover alike, beginning to curl up, and soiled by use. Well that and all the casual (I take books with me) acquaintances, to the one, they all had to pick it up, look it over. It may look well rode, but it still feels soft, warm and pliant in my hand. The stars twinkle up at me from the cover and I wish, I wish, I wish it wasn’t over. I long to go back…….
When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake – not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over. The sow had it by the neck and the shoat by the tail.
“You pigs git” Augustus said kicking the shoat. “Head on down to the creek if you want to eat that snake.” It was the porch he begrudged them not the snake. Pigs on the porch just made things hotter and things were already hot enough. He stepped down into the dusty yard and walked around to the springhouse to get his jug. The sun was still high, sulled in the sky like a mule, but Augustus had a keen eye for sun, and to his eye the long light from the west had taken on an encouraging slant.
And so it begins. I have read a number of different reviews; many of which discuss how long it took for them to get invested in the story. Not so for me, I gotta say that I latched on to Augustus McCrae pretty early on and even though I can feel, quite acutely, Captain Call’s presence every time he crosses the page with Hell Bitch, it is Gus’s company I seek on this trail. Makes sense I guess, I met him first, back in 1876 in Lonesome Dove, Texas.
It has been quite a journey. Make no mistake; I spent time with all of the Hat Creek Cattle Company, not just the ex-rangers, as they drove their herd out of Texas and across the Great Plains, bound for Montana. I pined with Dish, listened to the Irish sing, and the remuda nicker and whinny. I ate dust with Newt on the heels of the herd and scouted for water and crossings with Deets. I was there for the water moccasins, the grizzlies and the cloud of grasshoppers, not to mention Blue Duck, one of the most frightening, sinister men ever; he made the hair on the back of my neck, my arms and everywhere else stand, stock still at attention. I seethed at Jake, swam with Pea Eye and felt Lorena’s despair way down deep in my bones. I am just skimming the surface here, there are others with tales to tell, like July Johnson, the painfully shy sheriff from Arkansas, searching for his wife and Clara, the dark haired beauty with the scorching tongue in Nebraska, who may just sear you with her words.
But back at the fire I would curl up and listen to Gus talk, reassured by his very presence, as we have a drink, play a hand or two and prepare to bed down. Amid all the words, in all the books, on all of the pages I have ever travelled, never before have I met a man so damn finely crafted, so carefully rendered, so agonizingly authentic as Augustus McCrae. It is as though I know him for real. Honestly. I enjoy his company and even now, miss his conversation. Yes, I want to go back……….. Ride one more time with the Hat Creek Cattle Company, who don’t rent pigs.
I god, folks, seriously, what is happening here? I do not read westerns. Fact is, were I not a member of this wonderful on line community of book lovers, chances are pretty good that I would never have read this book. Do not make that mistake and yes, I Thank You one and all! ...more
I walk these streets of New York City with Mrs. Frances Osgood ( 1811- 1850), an American poet and one of the most popular woman writers of Breathless
I walk these streets of New York City with Mrs. Frances Osgood ( 1811- 1850), an American poet and one of the most popular woman writers of her time, also famous for her exchange of romantic poems with Edgar Allan Poe. It is 1845 and Mrs. Osgood is en route to Miss Anne Charlotte Lynch’s conversazione, where none other than Mr. Poe, whose poem, ‘The Raven’, has reached fever pitch adulation here, is expected to attend.
Earlier when Mrs. Osgood was reading this poem out loud to her daughters, she shared her own thoughts:
“That’s it!” I dropped the magazine. “What Mamma?” asked Vinnie “This silly alliteration – it’s clinkering, clattering claptrap.” Ellen’s face was as straight as a judge’s on court day. “You mean it’s terrible, trifling trash?” I nodded. “Jumbling, jarring junk.” Vinnie jumped up, trailing shawls like a mummy trails bandages. “No it’s piggly, wiggly poop!” “Don’t be rude, Vinnie,” I said. The girls glanced at each other. I frowned. “It’s exasperating, excruciating excrement.”
She was completely unprepared then for her feelings, when having once met this author, whose work she ridiculed, she learns that he admires her own work.
I was still quite young when I first read and loved Edgar Allan Poe’s work. In fact I credit him, even today, with my love of poetry. Truly, he made me want to read more and so I did. Just as I now follow Frances Osgood and Edgar Poe through the streets of this incredible city, captured so breathlessly; it’s political climate and historic events, changing, evolving, shaping life and further defining this time and place. Cullen does not shine the light on Edgar here, after all this is titled ‘Mrs. Poe’, but allows him some shade in which to command this stage, as Frances tells us her story, and the air about me sizzles and snaps every time Mr. Edgar Poe steps onto and owns the page.
Eliza, in Mr. Bryant’s circle with her husband, saw Mr. Poe enter with Miss Lynch. She sought my gaze.
“I see nothing wrong with the Irish, Reverend Griswold,” I said. “They are good people, doing the best that they can in spite of their poverty. In fact, my girls spend much of their time with the Bartlett’s Irish maid and they do not speak ‘Hibernian trash.’ ”
I could feel Mr. Poe looking my way. I turned as does a flower to the sun. When our eyes met, I felt the heat of his intensity. Exhilaration poured through my veins like hot nectar.
I can feel my cheek flush as his gaze lands softly upon her from across the parlour, or later as I recall the touch of his hand upon her arm. Shaken to my core with heady anticipation, I read on; these pages simply saturated in gothic romance stain my fingers, leaving their tips thirsting for more.
Virginia, Mr. Poe’s wife and first cousin, whom he married when she was but thirteen and who clearly idolizes him, invites Frances Osgood to her home, and proceeds to pursue her friendship. Mrs. Poe is frail, childlike and unwell. She believes that Frances has a restraining effect on her husband’s vices; he has after all given up alcohol since having made her acquaintance. What possible good can come of this?
With it’s darkly, gothic poetic prose, twisted clandestine affairs and flirtatious literary delights, this sirens song is a warm blanket tossed softly over my savaged soul.
I have sat down several times now to write a review and each time I get caught up once again in this story. I swoon, and then I stall, unable to form a coherent thought. Fear perhaps, that my words could somehow diminish this work.
My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.
So begins the story of the Wingo family of Melrose Island in Colleton County, South CMy wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.
So begins the story of the Wingo family of Melrose Island in Colleton County, South Carolina. As told by Tom Wingo.
To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open you an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, “There. That taste. That’s the taste of my childhood.” I would say, “Breathe deeply,” and you would breathe and remember that smell for the rest of your life, the bold, fecund aroma of tidal marsh, exquisite and sensual, the smell of the South in heat, a smell like new milk, semen, and spilled wine, all perfumed with seawater. My soul grazes like a lamb on the beauty of indrawn tides.
Tom has a twin sister Savannah and as the story opens Savannah, a successful poet, who lives in New York City has just attempted to end her life by slashing her wrists with a razor blade. This is not the first time. He also has an older brother Luke who he idolizes, but Luke is not there as this story opens and to understand why, why his sister is barely clinging with frightening, frailty to life, why his big brother is not present; well, then we have to go back. Back to when they were children, Back to when Lila and Henry, their parents, controlled the great tides of their life.
It is not a pretty picture. The Wingos of Melrose island were an intensely disturbing, dysfunctional family. Their three children survived a brutal upbringing, one that they were not allowed ever to discuss or even acknowledge; isolated from the neighbouring community of Colleton, with only each other to turn to for strength, support and comfort. Their bond seemed unbreakable.
Still there is beauty here:
It was growing dark on this long southern evening and suddenly, at the exact point her finger had indicated, the moon lifted a forehead of stunning gold above the horizon, lifted straight out of filigreed, light-intoxicated clouds that lay on the skyline in attendant veils. Behind us, the sun was setting in a simultaneous congruent withdrawal and the river turned to flame in a quiet duel of gold…...The new gold of moon astonishing and ascendant, the depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks. The moon then rose quickly, rose like a bird from the water, from the trees, from the islands, and climbed straight up - gold, then yellow, then pale yellow, pale silver, silver - bright, then something miraculous, immaculate, and beyond silver, a color native only to southern nights.
These days Tom Wingo is a family man himself with a beautiful wife and three beautiful daughters but he can feel it all slipping away. He used to be a teacher and a coach, work that he loved, but that was before Luke. Now he cannot seem to bring himself to give his wife the intimacy she craves, he wants to, but it is like he is frozen, unable to get himself in motion. He knows even before his wife confirms it, that he is losing her. Perhaps their time apart, while he is in New York City trying to help his sister will give them both an opportunity to reflect and come to terms with what they really want. It is in New York that Tom meets Susan Lowenstein, Savannah’s psychiatrist and at her urging turns back the hands of time as he relates the events of their childhood in a last ditch effort to help Lowenstein understand the trauma that may go a long way in explaining Savannah’s suicide attempts and her current mental state.
It is the beginning of a long and uncanny season in the house of Wingo. There will be honor and decency and the testing of the qualities of our humanity, or the lack of them. There will be a single hour of horror that will change our lives forever. There will be carnage and murder and ruin. When it is over, we will all think that we have survived the worst day of our lives, endured the most grisly scenario the world could have prepared for us. We will be wrong.
Violence sends deep roots into the heart; it has no seasons; it is always ripe, evergreen.
There will also be Luke, our Prince of Tides. Luke’s story however is one you would be well advised to read for yourselves.
But there is also a Bengal tiger and whales and a rare white porpoise and the South Carolina low country. There is sadness and brutality yes, but also adventure and mirth and heart swelling love; all wrapped up in Conroy’s luscious, lyrical, haunting prose.
Later when we spoke of our childhood, it seemed part elegy, part nightmare.
I am sure a great many of you have likely already seen the movie with Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte, which was great. I loved it! You may be thinking why should I read the book when I already know the story? Why? Because there is so much more story here and because it is so beautifully written that it brings tears to my eyes and my chest feels oddly swollen, just remembering some of Conroy’s passages. The movie cannot even begin to compare or compete.
We meet her first when she is twelve and in Ingrid’s (her mother) care.
Ingrid is a woman of such rare, unearthly beauty as to bThis is Astrid’s story.
We meet her first when she is twelve and in Ingrid’s (her mother) care.
Ingrid is a woman of such rare, unearthly beauty as to be most likely found in dreams.
Fitch describes her through Astrid’s eyes, gradually, poetically, using very sparse language, as the story unfolds, with words that sing, the pages glistening with the image reflected from her eyes.
The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shrivelling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blossoms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I. I woke up at midnight to find her bed empty. I climbed to the roof and easily spotted her blonde hair like a white flame in the light of the three-quarter moon.
I sat next to her, and we stared out at the city that hummed and glittered like a computer chip deep in some unknowable machine, holding its secret like a poker hand. The edge of her white kimono flapped open in the wind and I could see her breast, low and full. Her beauty was like the edge of a very sharp knife.
Ingrid also covets beauty in all its many forms.
Beauty was my mother’s law, her religion. You could do anything you wanted as long as you were beautiful, as long as you did things beautifully. If you weren’t, you just didn’t exist. She had drummed it into my head since I was small.
She becomes so wrapped up in her own world, her own needs that Astrid’s no longer filter through.
We swam in the hot aquamarine of the pool, late at night, in the clatter of palms and the twinkle of the new-scoured sky. My mother floated on her back, humming to herself. “God, I love this." She splashed gently with her fingers, letting her body drift in a slow circle. "Isn't it funny. I am enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is tempermental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you. Changes its mind.” Her eyes were closed. Beads of water decorated her face, and her hair spread out from her head like jellyfish tendrils. “But hatred, now. That's something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It's hard or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but hatred cradles you. It's so soothing."
When Ingrid is imprisoned Astrid is fostered out to a series of homes in Los Angeles, her mother, an ever present part of the baggage that she carries with her.
This is such a beautifully written story. So simple, the words arranged to please the ear, one after the other, melodic in their cadence and rhythm. But Astrid’s is not a pretty story.
I gave her to the quiet boy with short cropped hair and straggly beard, followed the fat boy back into the bushes behind the bathrooms. He unbuckled his pants, pushed them down over his hips. I knelt on a bed of pine needles, like a supplicant, like a sinner. Not like a lover. He leaned against the white stucco wall of the bathroom as I prayed with him in my mouth, his hands in my hair.
It is too real, too raw, to conform to anyone’s preconceived notion of beauty. And yet Fitch makes it sing, with her beautiful, simple words.
I left walking backwards so I wouldn’t miss a moment of her. I hated the idea of going back to Marvel’s, so I walked around the block, feeling Olivia's arms around me, my nose full of perfume and the smell of her skin, my head swirling with what I had seen and heard in the house, so much like ours, and yet not at all. And I realised as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty separate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.
As I read this I became overwhelmed with the number of passages that I wanted to secrete away, to take out, and read again. Perhaps that explained the worn and tattered condition of the book I held within my hands, pages yellowing, stained and dog-eared or soiled in some other way by the fingers of less careful readers.
Truly (I have done it several times now) I can let this fall open to any page and find one of these passages.
That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific-chair, eye, stone- but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out.
Don’t miss a word……..read this one for yourselves....more
A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may be Walked on, if necessary.
THE ASHLEY BOOK O
Quoyle A coil of rope
A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may be Walked on, if necessary.
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
Much like that coil of rope, our protagonist, Quoyle, has also been stepped on all his life. A great damp loaf of a body. At six he weighed eighty pounds. At sixteen he was buried under a casement of flesh. Head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair ruched back. Features as bunched as kissed fingertips. Eyes the color of plastic. The monstrous chin, a freakish shelf, jutting from the lower face. He stumbles into the newspaper business through a friend he meets one night in a laundromat in Mockingburg, New York. He is not very good at it. He also meets Petal Bear, a small woman he yearns for, they share a month of happiness , followed by six years of misery, two children and a multitude of scars, seared into his flesh from her indiscreet, two timing ways. Petal Bear does not value Quoyle or his children. Alone, without work, without a wife, on the heels of his father’s death, he decides to gather his children and follow his Aunt Agnis to his ancestral home on Newfoundland’s stark and majestic coast.
It is there, working for The Gammy Bird, a small newspaper, covering the shipping news, that Quoyle battles his inner demons and struggles to build a new life for himself and his daughters. But Quoyle is a man defeated, a man with no love of self. He even considers himself as a headline for one of his stories. Stupid Man Does Wrong Thing Once More. I wanted so badly for Quoyle to find some gumption, to love himself just a little. When an oil tanker docks a Killick-Claw, Quoyle writes an article about it. Before release, the entire tone of his article is rewritten by the managing editor, only this time Quoyle is incensed. “This is a column”, bellowed Quoyle. “You can’t change somebody’s column, for Christ’s sake, because you don’t like it! Jack asked me to write a column about boats and shipping. That means my opinion and description as I see it. This” – he shook the paper against the slab cheeks –“isn’t what I wrote, isn’t my opinion, isn’t what I see.” At last! I was so overcome with sheer joy that I leapt out of my deckchair, threw my arms in the air and let loose a resounding “YES”! (okay so my neighbours may think I am a little hinky)
This is a great story, with a cast of truly colourful characters but if you will bear with me for just a moment, I would like to talk about what this book, wrong or right, said to me.
You cannot leave your past behind, no matter where you travel, there too, it is.
Everyone is worthy, not all heroes are tall, dark, handsome, beautiful, sexy, confident or comfortable in their own skin.
You cannot run, but you can dig deep and you can find a new hope, a new joy in life.
Family is defined not only by blood but also by bond, by those who are there, in the dark and the light.
These homes of love we build, house many rooms, sanded and painted in the shades and colours of our life, furnished with those moments that, however inconsequential they may seem to others, have in fact, defined us.
Cover beauty is coveted and exploited; provides keys to all the right doors, but it is our inner selves, our own moral code that is the true compass to the coveted life of beauty, peace, happiness and love.
I am not going to lie. I love the fact that this story unfolds on the stark and beautiful, majestic coast of Newfoundland, a province in the land I call my own.
Very rarely do I change a rating on a book once I have set it, but in this case, how can I not. Trust me, this story is worthy of every one of those five stars.
Finally I would like to thank Steve who wrote an incredible, heartfelt review of this work that put it on my radar. ...more
And after we stood whispering in the underbrush – one last look at the body and a last look round, no dropped keys, lost glasses, everybody got everytAnd after we stood whispering in the underbrush – one last look at the body and a last look round, no dropped keys, lost glasses, everybody got everything? – and then started single file through the woods, I took one glance back through the saplings that leapt to close the path behind me. Though I remember the walk back and the first lonely flakes of snow that came drifting through the pines, remember piling gratefully into the car and starting down the road like a family on vacation, with Henry driving clench-jawed through the potholes and the rest of us leaning over the seats and talking like children, though I remember only too well the long terrible night that lay ahead and the long terrible days and nights that followed, I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through the saplings, a picture that will never leave me.
Donna Tartt had me from the first page. This was a story that I wanted to hear.
Some where, inside, a door opened Onto a room I quite like it here I’m comfortable I belong Of course they are all here
Henry, Francis, Charles, his sister Bunny And me.
The dishes lay waiting to be washed The bed to be made The floor to be cleaned The cat to be fed Life’s detritus, tangled underfoot I read.
I am complicit.
I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.
Okay so I found this book at the bottom of a stack of already read books at a yard sale a couple of doors down from where I live. It was clear to me fOkay so I found this book at the bottom of a stack of already read books at a yard sale a couple of doors down from where I live. It was clear to me from the get go that it had not been read by anyone in the family of it’s current home, it’s pristine condition leaving no doubt on that score. I quickly handed over my toonie and absconded with my find.
It is an ordinary story, about an ordinary family caught up in an extraordinary event. Very sparsely written from the POV of Eric, the father whose teenage son, babysat an eight year old girl one night; an eight year old girl who is missing the following morning.
Eric tells us then, what unfolds over the following days as the search for Amy, the missing girl continues.
I remember Stephen King talking about the nakedness of one of his Bachman stories, without even a rug on the floor, he said. Eric’s story is like that but it also makes me think of whip cream, the thick, viscous liquid you can pour into a bowl. Until you beat it and beat it until finally it becomes so thick it is standing in peaks and can no longer be poured. Ever again.
So many wonderful reviews have been written about Daughter of Smoke & Bone that initially I was not going to bother. What could I possibly say that haSo many wonderful reviews have been written about Daughter of Smoke & Bone that initially I was not going to bother. What could I possibly say that had not already been said? Problem is I can’t not talk about this book. So please just
Listen…..
Once upon a time, An angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.
It wasn’t like in the storybooks. No witches lurked at the crossroads disguised as crones, waiting to reward travelers who shared their bread. Genies didn’t burst from lamps, and talking fish didn’t bargain for their lives. In all the world there was only one place humans could get wishes: Brimstone’s shop. And there was only one currency he accepted. It wasn’t gold, or riddles, or kindness, or any other fairy tale nonsense, and no, it wasn’t souls, either. It was weirder than any of that. It was
For me the very best stories are the ones that transport you effectively and completely to another place and time so that you lose your tether in this, the real world. Laini Taylor delivers!
Still what elevates this well above most other young adult that I have read is without a doubt, the prose: so full of beauty, it is like your breath gets caught between words, then traded for more, again, and again, until breathing is reading, and reading is breathing, and they become one: each word a glistening drop of dew, essential to the fragrance and supple of the petal. I got lost in it absolutely.
This is an incredible and richly built fantasy all wrapped up in the spun silk threads of a fairy tale. And it is intoxicating.
Until a few days ago, humans had been little more than legend to him, and now here he was in their world. It was like stepping into the pages of a book - - a book alive with color and fragrance, filth and chaos - - and the blue - haired girl moved through it all like a fairy through a story, the light treating her differently than it did others, the air seemed to gather around her like held breath. As if this whole place was a story about her.
She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a foxes tongue. She tastes like hope.
She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of a devil’s lair, She wasn’t innocent now………………
This is the cream of the crop people. Drink your fill.
Originally published in a weekly periodical between late 1859 and 1860 as a serial story, this is believed to be the first English crime detection novOriginally published in a weekly periodical between late 1859 and 1860 as a serial story, this is believed to be the first English crime detection novel. This is Victorian fiction that combines romance, mystery and Gothic horror with a psychological twist.
The story opens with an eerie encounter, in the dead of night on a moonlit London road.
In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop… There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth…stood the figure of a solitary woman, dressed from head to foot in white.
Collins had me at hello. This is the story of what a woman’s patience can endure, and what a man’s resolution can achieve. I loved the fly on the wall perspective of events as revealed through a series of narrators, starting with Walter Hartright, drawing master of the time and place, who introduced me to Marian Halcombe thusly;
The instant my eyes rested on her, I was struck by the rare beauty of her form, and by the unaffected grace of her attitude. Her figure was tall, yet not too tall; comely and well developed, yet not fat; her head sat on her shoulders with an easy, pliant firmness; her waist, perfection in the eyes of man, for it occupied it’s natural place, it filled out its natural circle, it was visibly and delightfully undeformed by stays. She had not heard my entrance into the room; and I allowed myself the luxury of admiring her for a few moments, before I moved one of the chairs near me, as the least embarrassing means of attracting her attention. She turned towards me immediately. The easy elegance of every movement of her limbs and body as soon as she began to advance from the far end of the room, set me in a flutter of expectation to see her face clearly. She left the window – and I said to myself, The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps – and I said to myself, The lady is young. She approached nearer – and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly!
Marian knows who she is, personally and as a woman in Victorian society. She reflects these qualities and embraces society’s expectations with elegance and grace, deftly, slowly, surely and quite successfully disarming her male audience and the reader with her charming, disarming, demeanour that both mirrors and ever so subtly mocks those expectations. Never have I been so invested in a character. I adore and applaud her. She is simply one of the most deftly drawn, beautiful and complex renderings I have ever encountered in the written word.
Without a doubt it is Collins characters that both support and propel this story, each in their own unique voice, of which Marian is but one. All brilliantly drawn and cleverly revealed as time goes by. It is a classic, therefore it is wordy, with long drawn out, highly descriptive sentences that go on and on and on as they slowly, persistently tug you forward.
I have spent the last two weeks in Roberts's seductive, chaotic, slum filled, audacious Bombay, full of vibrant, wonderful, charismatic characters. ThI have spent the last two weeks in Roberts's seductive, chaotic, slum filled, audacious Bombay, full of vibrant, wonderful, charismatic characters. This is a grand, sprawling, intelligent, autobiographical novel, elegantly written and splendidly evocative of an India I would otherwise never know. As I sit here trying to decide how to best sum up just what this novel is about I realize that it is about everthing. All of life's many lessons are here in this huge, sweeping, monumental story; but mostly it is about love and forgiveness and one man's searing search for redemption. Above all, perhaps, as Pat Conroy says "it is a grand work of extraordinary art, a thing of exceptional beauty". Do not let the size deter you, I was hooked from the very first sentence and stayed that way through to the final word. Simply one of the most thrilling and touching novels I have ever read. ...more
I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking - a precious yet poingnant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking - a precious yet poingnant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.
To read Jane Eyre is to drink from this well, to imbibe a nectar that will reawaken all your senses, to the pure delight and artistry of the written word. This work, for me, shall hold court over every love story I have ever read. To say anything seems, somehow, to demean the absolute beauty and brilliance of this work.
Suffice then to say that I feel forever changed by the experience. Am I gushing? I should be. I absolutely adored it! Have no doubt that I will drink from this well again and often....more
A beautiful, poingnant story that is so incredibly, lyrically captivating you are seduced from the very first word. An absolute work of art, each page A beautiful, poingnant story that is so incredibly, lyrically captivating you are seduced from the very first word. An absolute work of art, each page overflows with beautiful, sensual, evocative images.
Such is the skill and authority of Golden's writing, I feel as though I have spent hours, being entertained by the most gifted of all Geisha. Utterly Satisfying. I want to read it again for the very first time!
Suddenly the sails caught the breeze and filled, they bellied out in the wind, lovely and white and free, the gulls rose in a mass, screaming above thSuddenly the sails caught the breeze and filled, they bellied out in the wind, lovely and white and free, the gulls rose in a mass, screaming above the masts, the setting sun caught the painted ship in a gleam of gold, and silently, stealthily, leaving a long dark ripple behind her, the ship stole in towards the land. And a feeling came upon Dona, as though a hand touched her heart, and a voice whispered in her brain, “I shall remember this.” A premonition of wonder, of fear, of sudden strange elation. She turned swiftly, smiling to herself for no reason, humming a little tune, and strode back across the hills to Navron House, skirting the mud and jumping the ditches like a child, while the sky darkened, and the moon rose, and the night wind whispered in the tall trees.
This is the story of a woman, Lady Dona St. Columb, grown jaded by a life of privilege in restoration period London, who leaves her husband’s side and flees with her children and their governess to the countryside and their rarely visited home, Navron House, on the coast of Cornwall. And it is there that she first hears the tales of piracy and catches sight of “La Mouette” as she looks out to sea, from the cliffs, where the river runs away to the left, wide and shining as it meets the sea. And it is here that she first meets the Frenchman and embracing danger, escapes the tedium of her London life, with a daring, romantic adventure on the high seas.
Anyone at all familiar with Du Maurier’s style is well aware of how masterfully she can paint a scene, at once so vivid, as to transport the reader to those same cliffs, where Dona stands, and down below, far and deep, the little waves splash upon the rocks.
Reading this one cannot help but think that one day, Du Maurier decided to take her considerable writing skills out for a walk, urging them forward, bidding them stretch their legs, and once they had reached their stride and adopted a working rhythm, she let them loose to wander and sniff out their own path. I love where they went.
In fact this is the second time I have accompanied Du Maurier on this audacious, romantic escape to the coast of Cornwall and her ship of dreams. I really have no business reading this right now as I am still besieged with other commitments, but sometimes the reader’s heart wants what the reader’s heart wants and nothing else will sate that need.
Lately I have been reading a fair number of reviews of Du Maurier’s work here on goodreads, most notably, Candi’s review of this same story: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... which has resulted in two things; one of which is this reread as well as the addition of Jamaica Inn to my Kindle queue.
Arah-Lynda
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