Author: Catriona Menzies-Pike
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing
ISBN: 0645683426
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 398
Book Description
In 2023 the Sydney Review of Books celebrates a decade online and the publication of more than a thousand essays and longform reviews of Australian and international literature. Over these ten years the SRB has cleared a unique space for serious reflection on literature and for critical thinking about our culture more broadly. The journal has been shaped by the diverse aesthetic, political and critical dispositions of our contributors, each of whom has different questions to ask contemporary literature. As they’ve asked these questions, they’ve guided a bold and independent public conversation about literature, and especially about the many forms of Australian literature. Critic Swallows Book brings together twenty-two essays that together demonstrate the eclecticism of the Sydney Review of Books. It includes essays on decolonising Australian literature and revisiting the classics, on blockbuster fiction and book-length poetry, on modernism in the Antipodes and reading during the pandemic. Essays on Susan Sontag and Rita Felski sit alongside critical considerations of Murray Bail and Joan London, of Evelyn Araluen and Samia Khatun. Contributors: Timmah Ball, Paola Balla, Alix Beeston, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Andrew Brooks, Bonny Cassidy, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Tom Clark, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Ben Etherington, Ross Gibson, Ivor Indyk, Yumna Kassab, Louis Klee, Jeanine Leane, James Ley, Catriona Menzies-Pike, Drusilla Modjeska, Alys Moody, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Oliver Reeson. Open Secrets is edited by Catriona Menzies-Pike, former editor of the Sydney Review of Book. It follows the collections Open Secrets, Second City and The Australian Face, all published by the Sydney Review of Books.
Critic Swallows Book
Author: Catriona Menzies-Pike
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing
ISBN: 0645683426
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 398
Book Description
In 2023 the Sydney Review of Books celebrates a decade online and the publication of more than a thousand essays and longform reviews of Australian and international literature. Over these ten years the SRB has cleared a unique space for serious reflection on literature and for critical thinking about our culture more broadly. The journal has been shaped by the diverse aesthetic, political and critical dispositions of our contributors, each of whom has different questions to ask contemporary literature. As they’ve asked these questions, they’ve guided a bold and independent public conversation about literature, and especially about the many forms of Australian literature. Critic Swallows Book brings together twenty-two essays that together demonstrate the eclecticism of the Sydney Review of Books. It includes essays on decolonising Australian literature and revisiting the classics, on blockbuster fiction and book-length poetry, on modernism in the Antipodes and reading during the pandemic. Essays on Susan Sontag and Rita Felski sit alongside critical considerations of Murray Bail and Joan London, of Evelyn Araluen and Samia Khatun. Contributors: Timmah Ball, Paola Balla, Alix Beeston, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Andrew Brooks, Bonny Cassidy, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Tom Clark, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Ben Etherington, Ross Gibson, Ivor Indyk, Yumna Kassab, Louis Klee, Jeanine Leane, James Ley, Catriona Menzies-Pike, Drusilla Modjeska, Alys Moody, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Oliver Reeson. Open Secrets is edited by Catriona Menzies-Pike, former editor of the Sydney Review of Book. It follows the collections Open Secrets, Second City and The Australian Face, all published by the Sydney Review of Books.
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing
ISBN: 0645683426
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 398
Book Description
In 2023 the Sydney Review of Books celebrates a decade online and the publication of more than a thousand essays and longform reviews of Australian and international literature. Over these ten years the SRB has cleared a unique space for serious reflection on literature and for critical thinking about our culture more broadly. The journal has been shaped by the diverse aesthetic, political and critical dispositions of our contributors, each of whom has different questions to ask contemporary literature. As they’ve asked these questions, they’ve guided a bold and independent public conversation about literature, and especially about the many forms of Australian literature. Critic Swallows Book brings together twenty-two essays that together demonstrate the eclecticism of the Sydney Review of Books. It includes essays on decolonising Australian literature and revisiting the classics, on blockbuster fiction and book-length poetry, on modernism in the Antipodes and reading during the pandemic. Essays on Susan Sontag and Rita Felski sit alongside critical considerations of Murray Bail and Joan London, of Evelyn Araluen and Samia Khatun. Contributors: Timmah Ball, Paola Balla, Alix Beeston, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Andrew Brooks, Bonny Cassidy, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Tom Clark, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Ben Etherington, Ross Gibson, Ivor Indyk, Yumna Kassab, Louis Klee, Jeanine Leane, James Ley, Catriona Menzies-Pike, Drusilla Modjeska, Alys Moody, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Oliver Reeson. Open Secrets is edited by Catriona Menzies-Pike, former editor of the Sydney Review of Book. It follows the collections Open Secrets, Second City and The Australian Face, all published by the Sydney Review of Books.
Boy Swallows Universe
Author: Trent Dalton
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
ISBN: 1460708415
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
'The best Australian novel I have read in more than a decade' Sydney Morning Herald 'Astonishing, captivating ... a wild, beautiful, heart-exploding ride' Elizabeth Gilbert The bestselling novel that has taken Australia, and the world, by storm. Winner of Book of the Year at the 2019 Indie Book Awards, winner of a record four Australian Book Industry Awards in 2019, including the prestigious Book of the Year Award, and winner of the 2019 UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, NSW Premier's Literary Awards Brisbane, 1985: A lost father, a mute brother, a junkie mum, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli Bell's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart and understand what it means to be a good man, but fate keeps throwing obstacles in his way - not the least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer. But now Eli's life is going to get a whole lot more serious: he's about to meet the father he doesn't remember, break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day to rescue his mum, come face to face with the criminals who tore his world apart, and fall in love with the girl of his dreams. A story of brotherhood, true love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year. Awards: 2019 ABIA Book of the Year Award, Winner 2019 Indie Book Award, Winner 2019 UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Winner 2019 People's Choice Award, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Winner MUD Literary Prize 2019, Winner 2019 ABIA Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, Winner 2019 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, Winner 2019 ABIA Audiobook of the Year, Winner 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Longlisted 2019 Colin Roderick Award, shortlist Reviews: 'Boy Swallows Universe is a wonderful surprise: sharp as a drawer full of knives in terms of subject matter; unrepentantly joyous in its child's-eye view of the world; the best literary debut in a month of Sundays.' The Australian 'Boy Swallows Universe hypnotizes you with wonder, and then hammers you with heartbreak.' Washington Post 'This thrilling novel' New York Times Book Review 'Marvelously plot-rich ... filled with beautifully lyric prose ...At one point Eli wonders if he is good. The answer is "yes," every bit as good as this exceptional novel.' Booklist 'Dalton's splashy, stellar debut makes the typical coming-of-age novel look bland by comparison ... This is an outstanding debut.' Publisher's Weekly (starred review) 'Extraordinary and beautiful storytelling' Guardian
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
ISBN: 1460708415
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
'The best Australian novel I have read in more than a decade' Sydney Morning Herald 'Astonishing, captivating ... a wild, beautiful, heart-exploding ride' Elizabeth Gilbert The bestselling novel that has taken Australia, and the world, by storm. Winner of Book of the Year at the 2019 Indie Book Awards, winner of a record four Australian Book Industry Awards in 2019, including the prestigious Book of the Year Award, and winner of the 2019 UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, NSW Premier's Literary Awards Brisbane, 1985: A lost father, a mute brother, a junkie mum, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli Bell's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart and understand what it means to be a good man, but fate keeps throwing obstacles in his way - not the least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer. But now Eli's life is going to get a whole lot more serious: he's about to meet the father he doesn't remember, break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day to rescue his mum, come face to face with the criminals who tore his world apart, and fall in love with the girl of his dreams. A story of brotherhood, true love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year. Awards: 2019 ABIA Book of the Year Award, Winner 2019 Indie Book Award, Winner 2019 UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Winner 2019 People's Choice Award, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Winner MUD Literary Prize 2019, Winner 2019 ABIA Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, Winner 2019 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, Winner 2019 ABIA Audiobook of the Year, Winner 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Longlisted 2019 Colin Roderick Award, shortlist Reviews: 'Boy Swallows Universe is a wonderful surprise: sharp as a drawer full of knives in terms of subject matter; unrepentantly joyous in its child's-eye view of the world; the best literary debut in a month of Sundays.' The Australian 'Boy Swallows Universe hypnotizes you with wonder, and then hammers you with heartbreak.' Washington Post 'This thrilling novel' New York Times Book Review 'Marvelously plot-rich ... filled with beautifully lyric prose ...At one point Eli wonders if he is good. The answer is "yes," every bit as good as this exceptional novel.' Booklist 'Dalton's splashy, stellar debut makes the typical coming-of-age novel look bland by comparison ... This is an outstanding debut.' Publisher's Weekly (starred review) 'Extraordinary and beautiful storytelling' Guardian
Chevy in the Hole
Author: Kelsey Ronan
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1250803918
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a Michigan Notable Book for 2023 Finalist for the 2022 Heartland Booksellers Award A gorgeous, unflinching love letter to Flint, Michigan, and the resilience of its people, Kelsey Ronan's Chevy in the Hole follows multiple generations of two families making their homes there, with a stunning contemporary love story at its center. In the opening pages of Chevy in the Hole, August “Gus” Molloy has just overdosed in a bathroom stall of the Detroit farm-to-table restaurant where he works. Shortly after, he packs it in and returns home to his family in Flint. This latest slip and recommitment to sobriety doesn’t feel too terribly different from the others, until Gus meets Monae, an urban farmer trying to coax a tenuous rebirth from the city’s damaged land. Through her eyes, he sees what might be possible in a city everyone else seems to have forgotten or, worse, given up on. But as they begin dreaming up an oasis together, even the most essential resources can’t be counted on. Woven throughout their story are the stories of their families—Gus’s white and Monae’s Black—members of which have had their own triumphs and devastating setbacks trying to survive and thrive in Flint. A novel about the things that change over time and the things that don’t, Chevy in the Hole reminds us again and again what people need from one another and from the city they call home.
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1250803918
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a Michigan Notable Book for 2023 Finalist for the 2022 Heartland Booksellers Award A gorgeous, unflinching love letter to Flint, Michigan, and the resilience of its people, Kelsey Ronan's Chevy in the Hole follows multiple generations of two families making their homes there, with a stunning contemporary love story at its center. In the opening pages of Chevy in the Hole, August “Gus” Molloy has just overdosed in a bathroom stall of the Detroit farm-to-table restaurant where he works. Shortly after, he packs it in and returns home to his family in Flint. This latest slip and recommitment to sobriety doesn’t feel too terribly different from the others, until Gus meets Monae, an urban farmer trying to coax a tenuous rebirth from the city’s damaged land. Through her eyes, he sees what might be possible in a city everyone else seems to have forgotten or, worse, given up on. But as they begin dreaming up an oasis together, even the most essential resources can’t be counted on. Woven throughout their story are the stories of their families—Gus’s white and Monae’s Black—members of which have had their own triumphs and devastating setbacks trying to survive and thrive in Flint. A novel about the things that change over time and the things that don’t, Chevy in the Hole reminds us again and again what people need from one another and from the city they call home.
Anatole
Author: Eve Titus
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0375839011
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34
Book Description
Anatole is a most honorable mouse. When he realizes that humans are upset by mice sampling their leftovers, he is shocked! He must provide for his beloved family--but he is determined to find a way to earn his supper. And so he heads for the tasting room at the Duvall Cheese Factory. On each cheese, he leaves a small note--"good," "not so good," "needs orange peel"--and signs his name. When workers at the Duvall factory find his notes in the morning, they are perplexed--but they realize that this mysterious Anatole has an exceptional palate and take his advice. Soon Duvall is making the best cheese in all of Paris! They would like to give Anatole a reward--if only they could find him...
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0375839011
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34
Book Description
Anatole is a most honorable mouse. When he realizes that humans are upset by mice sampling their leftovers, he is shocked! He must provide for his beloved family--but he is determined to find a way to earn his supper. And so he heads for the tasting room at the Duvall Cheese Factory. On each cheese, he leaves a small note--"good," "not so good," "needs orange peel"--and signs his name. When workers at the Duvall factory find his notes in the morning, they are perplexed--but they realize that this mysterious Anatole has an exceptional palate and take his advice. Soon Duvall is making the best cheese in all of Paris! They would like to give Anatole a reward--if only they could find him...
They Came Like Swallows
Author: William Maxwell
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 144643477X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Book Description
Discover William Maxwell’s classic, heart-breaking portrait of an ordinary American family struck by the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic 'A story of such engaging warmth that it would thaw the heart of any critic... Will melt many a reader to tears’ TIME Elizabeth Morison is an ordinary woman. Yet, to eight-year-old Bunny, his mother is the centre of his universe. To Robert, her elder son, she is someone he must protect against the dangers of the outside world. And to her husband, James, she is the foundation on which his family rests and life without her is unimaginable. As the dark winter of 1918 dawns and the shadow of Spanish flu starts to disturb day-to-day life, a moving portrait of Elizabeth takes shape, set against the lives and fate of the Morison family. ‘As you read They Came Like Swallows, you catch yourself from time to time being astonished at how tightly you're gripping the pages... There isn't a word that has dated. It could have been written yesterday, or tomorrow’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 144643477X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Book Description
Discover William Maxwell’s classic, heart-breaking portrait of an ordinary American family struck by the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic 'A story of such engaging warmth that it would thaw the heart of any critic... Will melt many a reader to tears’ TIME Elizabeth Morison is an ordinary woman. Yet, to eight-year-old Bunny, his mother is the centre of his universe. To Robert, her elder son, she is someone he must protect against the dangers of the outside world. And to her husband, James, she is the foundation on which his family rests and life without her is unimaginable. As the dark winter of 1918 dawns and the shadow of Spanish flu starts to disturb day-to-day life, a moving portrait of Elizabeth takes shape, set against the lives and fate of the Morison family. ‘As you read They Came Like Swallows, you catch yourself from time to time being astonished at how tightly you're gripping the pages... There isn't a word that has dated. It could have been written yesterday, or tomorrow’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
Out of Darkness
Author: Ashley Hope Pérez
Publisher: Carolrhoda Lab ®
ISBN: 1467776785
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
A Michael L. Printz Honor Book "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion—the worst school disaster in American history—as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people. "[This] layered tale of color lines, love and struggle in an East Texas oil town is a pit-in-the-stomach family drama that goes down like it should, with pain and fascination, like a mix of sugary medicine and artisanal moonshine."—The New York Times Book Review "Pérez deftly weaves [an] unflinchingly intense narrative....A powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism."―starred, Kirkus Reviews "This book presents a range of human nature, from kindness and love to acts of racial and sexual violence. The work resonates with fear, hope, love, and the importance of memory....Set against the backdrop of an actual historical event, Pérez...gives voice to many long-omitted facets of U.S. history."―starred, School Library Journal
Publisher: Carolrhoda Lab ®
ISBN: 1467776785
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
A Michael L. Printz Honor Book "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion—the worst school disaster in American history—as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people. "[This] layered tale of color lines, love and struggle in an East Texas oil town is a pit-in-the-stomach family drama that goes down like it should, with pain and fascination, like a mix of sugary medicine and artisanal moonshine."—The New York Times Book Review "Pérez deftly weaves [an] unflinchingly intense narrative....A powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism."―starred, Kirkus Reviews "This book presents a range of human nature, from kindness and love to acts of racial and sexual violence. The work resonates with fear, hope, love, and the importance of memory....Set against the backdrop of an actual historical event, Pérez...gives voice to many long-omitted facets of U.S. history."―starred, School Library Journal
Bringing Down the Colonel
Author: Patricia Miller
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374715629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
“I’ll take my share of the blame. I only ask that he take his.” In Bringing Down the Colonel, the journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely nineteenth-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined,” Pollard brought the man—and the hypocrisy of America’s control of women’s sexuality—to trial. And, surprisingly, she won. Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard’s hand—and then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. But Pollard struck back, suing Breckinridge for breach of promise in a shockingly public trial. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable: that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged equally. Nearly 125 years after the Breckinridge-Pollard scandal, America is still obsessed with women’s sexual morality. And in the age of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein, we’ve witnessed fraught public reckonings with a type of sexual exploitation unnervingly similar to that experienced by Pollard. Using newspaper articles, personal journals, previously unpublished autobiographies, and letters, Bringing Down the Colonel tells the story of one of the earliest women to publicly fight back.
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374715629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
“I’ll take my share of the blame. I only ask that he take his.” In Bringing Down the Colonel, the journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely nineteenth-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined,” Pollard brought the man—and the hypocrisy of America’s control of women’s sexuality—to trial. And, surprisingly, she won. Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard’s hand—and then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. But Pollard struck back, suing Breckinridge for breach of promise in a shockingly public trial. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable: that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged equally. Nearly 125 years after the Breckinridge-Pollard scandal, America is still obsessed with women’s sexual morality. And in the age of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein, we’ve witnessed fraught public reckonings with a type of sexual exploitation unnervingly similar to that experienced by Pollard. Using newspaper articles, personal journals, previously unpublished autobiographies, and letters, Bringing Down the Colonel tells the story of one of the earliest women to publicly fight back.
American Gods
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0380789035
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 628
Book Description
Shadow is a man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident. Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible. He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever he the same...
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0380789035
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 628
Book Description
Shadow is a man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident. Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible. He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever he the same...
Anniversaries
Author: Uwe Johnson
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681372045
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1713
Book Description
A landmark of 20th Century literature about New York in the late 1960s, now in English for the first time. Late in 1967, Uwe Johnson set out to write a book that would take the unusual form of a chapter for every day of the ongoing year. It would be the tale of Gesine Cresspahl, a thirty-four-year-old single mother who is a German émigré to Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and of her ten-year-old daughter, Marie—a story of work and school, of friends and lovers and the countless small encounters with neighbors and strangers that make up big-city life. An everyday tale, but also a tale of the events of the day, as gleaned by Gesine from The New York Times: Johnson could hardly foresee the convulsions of 1968, but some of the news—the racial unrest roiling America, the escalating war in Vietnam—was sure to be news for some time yet to come. Finally, it would be a tale told by Gesine to Marie about Gesine’s childhood in a small north German town, of her independent and enterprising father, of her troubled mother, of Nazi Germany (Gesine was born the year Hitler came to power) and World War II and Soviet retribution and the grimly regulated realities of Communist East Germany. An ambitious historical novel as well as a wonderfully observed New York novel, Anniversaries would take in the unsettled world of the present along with the twentieth century’s disastrous past, while vividly depicting the struggle of a loving, though hardly uncomplicated mother and a bright, indomitably curious girl to understand and care for each other and to shape a human world. Gesine and Marie are among the most memorable and engaging characters in literature, and Anniversaries, at once monumental and intimate, sweeping and full of incident, stylistically adventurous and endlessly absorbing, is quite simply one of the great books of our time.
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681372045
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1713
Book Description
A landmark of 20th Century literature about New York in the late 1960s, now in English for the first time. Late in 1967, Uwe Johnson set out to write a book that would take the unusual form of a chapter for every day of the ongoing year. It would be the tale of Gesine Cresspahl, a thirty-four-year-old single mother who is a German émigré to Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and of her ten-year-old daughter, Marie—a story of work and school, of friends and lovers and the countless small encounters with neighbors and strangers that make up big-city life. An everyday tale, but also a tale of the events of the day, as gleaned by Gesine from The New York Times: Johnson could hardly foresee the convulsions of 1968, but some of the news—the racial unrest roiling America, the escalating war in Vietnam—was sure to be news for some time yet to come. Finally, it would be a tale told by Gesine to Marie about Gesine’s childhood in a small north German town, of her independent and enterprising father, of her troubled mother, of Nazi Germany (Gesine was born the year Hitler came to power) and World War II and Soviet retribution and the grimly regulated realities of Communist East Germany. An ambitious historical novel as well as a wonderfully observed New York novel, Anniversaries would take in the unsettled world of the present along with the twentieth century’s disastrous past, while vividly depicting the struggle of a loving, though hardly uncomplicated mother and a bright, indomitably curious girl to understand and care for each other and to shape a human world. Gesine and Marie are among the most memorable and engaging characters in literature, and Anniversaries, at once monumental and intimate, sweeping and full of incident, stylistically adventurous and endlessly absorbing, is quite simply one of the great books of our time.
An Uncertain Grace
Author: Kris Kneen
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 9781925355987
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Some time in the near future, university lecturer Caspar receives a gift from a former student called Liv: a memory stick containing a virtual narrative. Hooked up to a virtual reality bodysuit, he becomes immersed in the experience of their past sexual relationship. But this time it is her experience. What was for him an erotic interlude, resonant with the thrill of seduction, was very different for her—and when he has lived it, he will understand how. Later... A convicted paedophile recruited to Liv’s experiment in collective consciousness discovers a way to escape from his own desolation. A synthetic boy, designed by Liv’s team to ‘love’ men who desire adolescents, begins to question the terms of his existence. L, in transition to a state beyond gender, befriends Liv, in transition to a state beyond age. Liv herself has finally transcended the corporeal—but there is still the problem of love. An Uncertain Grace is a novel in five parts by one of Australia’s most inventive and provocative writers. Moving, thoughtful, sometimes playful, it is about who we are—our best and worst selves, our innermost selves—and who we might become.
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 9781925355987
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Some time in the near future, university lecturer Caspar receives a gift from a former student called Liv: a memory stick containing a virtual narrative. Hooked up to a virtual reality bodysuit, he becomes immersed in the experience of their past sexual relationship. But this time it is her experience. What was for him an erotic interlude, resonant with the thrill of seduction, was very different for her—and when he has lived it, he will understand how. Later... A convicted paedophile recruited to Liv’s experiment in collective consciousness discovers a way to escape from his own desolation. A synthetic boy, designed by Liv’s team to ‘love’ men who desire adolescents, begins to question the terms of his existence. L, in transition to a state beyond gender, befriends Liv, in transition to a state beyond age. Liv herself has finally transcended the corporeal—but there is still the problem of love. An Uncertain Grace is a novel in five parts by one of Australia’s most inventive and provocative writers. Moving, thoughtful, sometimes playful, it is about who we are—our best and worst selves, our innermost selves—and who we might become.