Book Description
"'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." So begins The Towers of Trebizond, the greatest novel by Rose Macaulay, one of the eccentric geniuses of English literature. In this fine and funny adventure set in the backlands of modern Turkey, a group of highly unusual travel companions makes its way from Istanbul to legendary Trebizond, encountering potion-dealing sorcerers, recalcitrant policemen, and Billy Graham on tour with a busload of Southern evangelists. But though the dominant note of the novel is humorous, its pages are shadowed by heartbreak—as the narrator confronts the specters of ancient empires, religious turmoil, and painful memories of lost love.
Customer Reviews:
A Great--And Very Different--Read.......2007-10-01
*MILD SPOILERS*
This is a sneaky book. It starts off one way--as a comic recount of eccentric, genteelly arrogant Brits (the narrator's Aunt and a high-church Anglican priest) on a quixotic mission to convert and reform Turkey. As told by the crazy Aunt's niece (?), Turkey itself (and the Turks' reaction to the Brits) is beautifully evoked. Then, a hint here, a little more explication there, then a major plot twist as the Aunt and the Priest disappear into the Soviet Union, and the book evolves into a profound rumination on love and faith, and the conflicts the two can engender.
The story is always told in an arm's length, almost unemotional, way. And I think the last page of the book, on the "eternal dilemma" of searching for the City on the Hill is one of the most moving and profound pieces of writing I have ever read.
The book is also hilarious. There is more than one LOL moment, but my favorite is when the narrator from her (?) Turkish phrase book confuses, "I don't speak Turkish well," with "Can you connect me with Mr. Yorum"--and then is introduced to a Mr. Yorum.
Kudos to whomever it was that noted that the gender of the narrator is never clearly identified. One tends to assume it is female, from the voice of the book, yet when you look back, you really don't know. The ambiguity just adds one more layer to an already many-layered book.
I'd like to conclude by noting my thanks to New York Review Classics. I have read something like twenty of them now, none of which I would have heard of, much less read, without their publication through this series. The editors have done a magnificent job in bringing back to new and more-than-deserved life these forgotten classics.
It's witty and erudite.......2007-01-11
Macaulay's Towers is clever and generally a joy to read. A familiarity with classical near east history helps but is not absolutely necessary; an appreciation of strains of high church Christian theology is almost essential. I especially liked Aunt Dot, who appears in the bulk of the book. When she takes a sabbatical, I found my attention wandering; the fantastic bits with long camel rides and driving monkeys did not appeal to me. The underlying theme of the book deals with how ones religion is manifested in ones life, and the author's views are sophisticated. Much is made of interplays between traditional Christianity and Islam; evangelical Christianity makes a minor appearance, and a few basic issues of feminism are sprinkled throughout. The book does a fine job in identifying many of the troubles which continue to plague the Levant in the present era. Recommended.
Take my camel, dear.......2006-08-12
I stumbled across Rose Macaulay while browsing through the "New York Review of Books Classics". It turns out that the Towers of Trebizond was a great hit in the UK and US back in the 1950's. I highly recommend taking a look at those wonderful reprints of older books. All praise to the New York Review of Books.
This book is a mostly hilarious sendup of conventional society (primarily British, but others do not escape unscathed) in the form of a travelogue and memoir of a youngish upper middle-class English woman who travels to Turkey with her Aunt Dot and their High Anglican minister Hugh Chantry-Pigg. A camel, Billy Graham sightings, and a disappearance into Soviet Russia are involved in this wonderfully witty tale. Macaulay also sprinkles some philosophy along the way and a sudden and sobering twist at the end.
By turns quirky, eccentric, funny, and thoughtful, The Towers of Trebizond is a nugget well worth rediscovery.
Eccentric And Touching.......2004-09-07
The Towers of Trebizond might mislead a reader who picks it up into thinking it to be a standard travel account of a journey to Turkey and the Middle East in the 1950s. However, the famous first line "Take my camel, dear . . ." will soon warn that there is much much more to this hilarious, odd little novel.
Rose Macaulay uses as narrator the ambiguously named Laurie. Most people assume Laurie is a woman, and there is some internal evidence to substantiate this, but as other reviewers have pointed out, Laurie could just as well be a man, and in some ways, the story makes more sense if he is.
Regardless of Laurie's gender, the story revolves principally around her/his Aunt Dot, one of the great British eccentrics, and her escapades on a journey through Turkey and into the Soviet Union. Her adventures, and those of Laurie, the camel, a monkey, and various other assorted characters, are hilarious. At the same time, there is a sad note of wistfulness tand a sense of loss and deprivation that are not quite so easy to sort out.
Read The Towers of Trebizond and laugh, but you'll be pondering it in more solemn moments for a long time to come.
" Considered Macaulay's masterpiece".......2004-09-01
Rose Macaulay, the author of 35 books, The Towers of Trebizond is considered her masterpiece. In it, she recounts an hilarious overland journey in the 1950s across Turkey to the legendary town of Trebizond. On the way she meet potion-selling sorcerers, dirty cops and a busload of Southern Baptists.
Book Description
Private houses, museums, restaurants, pubs, a former cinema, and numerous little-known treasures jostle for attention in this beautifully photographed collection of weird and wonderful interiors in England.
Often featuring deliberate references to the tastes and styles of bygone eras, all the interiors are united by a wonderful blend of vivacity and individuality, and display a great deal of passion and dedication in the creation of a unique space. At the same time, these interiors feature a diverse assemblage of traditions and tastes from every corner of the world, reflecting not only the historical make-up of British society but also the far-reaching knowledge-base upon which the creators of these glorious interiors have been able to draw.
From a bizarre magician's house in London to a wildly entertaining hotel in rural North Yorkshire, there is ample evidence of the creative output resulting from this heady mix of enthusiasm and expertise. Historical fantasies sit alongside glorious 21
st-century expressions of maximalism, from Walpole's stunning 'little play-thing house' at Strawberry Hill in Twickenham to the newly opened Great John Street Hotel in Manchester where the style is joyfully described as 'New York meets vintage chic.' Quirky, intellectual, stylish or humorous, all the interiors in this book serve as a glorious testimony to the richly creative tradition of English eccentricity, past and present.
Average customer rating:
- Poor layout greatly harms this book.
- Bizarre Art + Bizarre Tales = Excellent Book
- Must Have!
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Tales of the Weirrd
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Little.com
ASIN: 1552976440 |
Book Description
Genuine weirdness is a rare quality. To be truly weird demands character and wanton disregard for the social mores of the day.
Unleashed in
Tales of the Weirrd is Ralph Steadman's fantastic interpretations and biographies of nineteenth century grotesques, oddities, imposters and eccentrics. The book is a hilarious catalog of nature's freakish humor and, in the best Victorian tradition, it instructs as well as entertains. This crazy collection of dwarfs, and gluttons, wits and water-spouters includes:
Charles Charlesworth, who grew a beard at age four and died of old age at the age of seven
Old Boots, who could hold a piece of money between his nose and chin
Barbara Urselin, the hairy-faced woman
Henry Lemoine, an eccentric bookseller
Guillaume de Nittis, who tried to eat himself
Fakir Agastiya, who kept his arm in the air for ten years
Neville Vadio, the blind caricaturist, who was claimed by many to be a better draughtsman than Rembrandt.
Tales of the Weirrd is an extraordinary celebration of the bizarre brought to life by the astonishing energy, imagination and power of Ralph Steadman's pen.
Customer Reviews:
Poor layout greatly harms this book........2007-06-14
The stories in this book are fun documentations of abnormal individuals.
The illustrations are as dynamic and charming as you'd expect from Mr. Steadman.
It can be very hard to enjoy them, however, as the publisher has taken all of the best illustrations and buried them in the spine of the book crossing the page breaks. What the hell were they thinking?! You can tell there's a great drawing there, but you can't even see most of it without mangling the book. This is true on page after page.
Somebody who really doesn't care put this thing together slap-dashedly. It's a shame. It makes the whole thing not worthwhile.
Bizarre Art + Bizarre Tales = Excellent Book.......2006-03-17
This book is not just a worthy purchase because of the Steadman artwork. The short stories and accounts of the faboulously odd fellows and delightfully abnormal ladies would make this book a definite keeper even if there were no pictures. But add the refreshingly unique artwork to the equally interesting tales and you have a book that you'll pull off the shelf more than once. I also like that this book is somewhat oversized, which means the reader can appreciate the artwork on a more grand scale. Also, if you don't have the time or the energy to read a book from front to back in one sitting, this is an ideal book for you because it is full of short stories that you could walk away from for months and come right back to without having to remember a thing.
Must Have!.......2003-01-25
Along with Steadman's unique and inspiring art, this book explores the land of the weirrd....humans who once entertained the boring people with their bizarre and unusual oddities. With each tale of a sideshow star, Steadman draws us a picture and weaves an eloquent and highly entertaining story about his subject. Steadman is literate as all hell. When you're done with this be sure to check out his latest...DOODAA - a triography. No doubt this man has a bundle of fun with himself - his mind is a treasure chest of wacky good times and he seems to have a great grasp on our human reality - every inch of dystopic madness. With books like this, Steadman does his part, in keeping the rest of us sane and amused.
Book Description
One day in 1925 a friend asked A. J. A. Symons if he had read Fr. Rolfe's Hadrian the Seventh. He hadn't, but soon did, and found himself entranced by the novel -- "a masterpiece"-- and no less fascinated by the mysterious person of its all-but-forgotten creator. The Quest for Corvo is a hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of the strange Frederick Rolfe, self-appointed Baron Corvo, an artist, writer, and frustrated aspirant to the priesthood with a bottomless talent for self-destruction. But this singular work, subtitled "an experiment in biography," is also a remarkable self-portrait, a study of the obsession and sympathy that inspires the biographer's art.
Customer Reviews:
Roundabout Biographical Excursion.......2003-05-28
In agreement with what other reviewers have said, I enjoyed The Quest for Corvo primarily because of the ways the book displays the author's quaint but intense enthusiasm for his subject. This is, to me, the most interesting aspect of the biography, for the most defining (and perhaps most important) thing about Fr. Rolfe was not his literary exploits (relatively few, mostly unnoticed) or indeed anything he ever accomplished, but rather his eccentricity of character. And Symons' enthusiasm for Rolfe's eccentricity is infectious, and it lends not only authenticity but genuine merit to his choice to structure the book as a "quest" instead of as hagiography.
Nonetheless, despite his intrinsically fascinating character, Rolfe should be approached first through Hadrian the Seventh, and not directly through The Quest for Corvo--if only because then the reader will be following in the biographer's footsteps.
As for the content of the biography, I found its wayward structure refreshing, but confusing, especially with regard to the author's depictions and analyses of Rolfe's literary output. A bibliography or chronology would have been quite helpful. Also, echoing other reviewers, Symons's reluctance to speak at length about Rolfe's homosexuality (especially the elements that might still be considered deviant today) leaves too much of Rolfe's character and contemporary reactions to him concealed.
Roundabout Biographical Excursion.......2003-05-28
In agreement with what other reviewers have said, I enjoyed The Quest for Corvo primarily because of the ways the book displays the author's quaint but intense enthusiasm for his subject. This is, to me, the most interesting aspect of the biography, for the most defining (and perhaps most important) thing about Fr. Rolfe was not his literary exploits (relatively few, mostly unnoticed) or indeed anything he ever accomplished, but rather his eccentricity of character. And Symons' enthusiasm for Rolfe's eccentricity is infectious, and it lends not only authenticity but genuine merit to his choice to structure the book as a "quest" instead of as hagiography.
Nonetheless, despite his intrinsically fascinating character, Rolfe should be approached first through Hadrian the Seventh, and not directly through The Quest for Corvo--if only because then the reader will be following in the biographer's footsteps.
As for the content of the biography, I found its wayward structure refreshing, but confusing, especially with regard to the author's depictions and analyses of Rolfe's literary output. A bibliography or chronology would have been quite helpful. Also, echoing other reviewers, Symons's reluctance to speak at length about Rolfe's homosexuality (especially the elements that might still be considered deviant today) leaves too much of Rolfe's character and contemporary reactions to him concealed.
Biography and Eccentricity.......2002-04-18
One summer afternoon in 1925, A. J. A. Symons and Christopher Millard, each somewhat obscure and eccentric literary figures in their own right, were sitting in a garden discussing books and authors that had never received proper recognition from the arbiters of literary history. Millard asked Symons whether he had ever read "Hadrian the Seventh." Symons acknowledged that he had not and that he was unfamiliar with the book. "To my surprise, [Millard] offered to lend me his copy-to my surprise, for my companion lent his books seldom and reluctantly. But knowing the range of his knowledge of out-of-the-way literature, I accepted without hesitating; and by doing so took the first step on a trail that led into very strange places."
Very strange places indeed! Symons began reading "Hadrian the Seventh," a book written by Frederick Rolfe, also known as Baron Corvo, and originally published in 1904, and quickly felt "that interior stir with which we all recognize a transforming new experience." Symons went on to spend the next eight years of his life tracking down the details of the life and writings of Baron Corvo, one of the most eccentric, original and enigmatic English writers of the last one hundred years. The result was "The Quest for Corvo: An Experimental Biography," a fascinating book that has been in- and out-of-print since its first publication in 1934 and has enjoyed a literary cult following akin to that of the text ("Hadrian the Seventh") and the author (Rolfe, aka Corvo) that originally inspired it.
As one reads "The Quest for Corvo," it seems that Symon's text represents the outermost of three concentric circles of eccentricity.
The innermost, core circle is "Hadrian the Seventh," a strange and imaginative novel that tells the story of an impoverished, eccentric and seemingly paranoid writer and devotee of the Roman Catholic faith, George Arthur Rose. Rose, a brilliant, self-taught man whose candidacy for the priesthood had been rejected twenty years earlier, is unexpectedly approached one day by a Cardinal and a Bishop who have been made aware of his devotion and his shameful treatment by the Church. Rose is ordained and ultimately becomes the first English Pope in several hundred years. While a work of fiction, Symons' biographical investigations disclose that much of the story of "Hadrian the Seventh" closely parallels the life of its strange author, Frederick Rolfe.
The second circle of eccentricity is, of course, the life of Frederick Rolfe, Baron Corvo, himself. It is the telling of this life that occupies Symons in "The Quest for Corvo," and the result is a fascinating, if perhaps not always historically accurate, detective story cum biography. Starting with his obsessive search for information on Rolfe and his meetings and correspondence with those who knew him, Symons brilliantly recreates a life-the life of a strangely talented artist, photographer, historian, and writer who led a life of seemingly paranoid desperation, ultimately dying impoverished in Venice at the age of forty-five.
The third, outermost circle is the eccentricity of the author of the "Quest for Corvo," A. J. A. Symons, a founder of The Wine and Food Society of England, a collector of music boxes, and a master at card tricks and the art of forgery. Like Corvo himself, Symons died at an early age-he was only forty years old-and his life and his book is seemingly as eccentric as its subject.
"The Quest for Corvo" is one of those little gems that deserve a cherished, if perhaps minor, place in English literature and the literature of biography. Happily, it is back in print again, courtesy of New York Review Books. Read it, and then read "Hadrian the Fourth" (also brought back into print by NYRB) for a fascinating turn in the world of the imaginative and the eccentric.
Biography and Eccentricity.......2001-08-21
One summer afternoon in 1925, A. J. A. Symons and Christopher Millard, each somewhat obscure and eccentric literary figures in their own right, were sitting in a garden discussing books and authors that had never received proper recognition from the arbiters of literary history. Millard asked Symons whether he had ever read "Hadrian the Seventh." Symons acknowledged that he had not and that he was unfamiliar with the book. "To my surprise, [Millard] offered to lend me his copy-to my surprise, for my companion lent his books seldom and reluctantly. But knowing the range of his knowledge of out-of-the-way literature, I accepted without hesitating; and by doing so took the first step on a trail that led into very strange places."
Very strange places indeed! Symons began reading "Hadrian the Seventh," a book written by Frederick Rolfe, also known as Baron Corvo, and originally published in 1904, and quickly felt "that interior stir with which we all recognize a transforming new experience." Symons went on to spend the next eight years of his life tracking down the details of the life and writings of Baron Corvo, one of the most eccentric, original and enigmatic English writers of the last one hundred years. The result was "The Quest for Corvo: An Experimental Biography," a fascinating book that has been in- and out-of-print since its first publication in 1934 and has enjoyed a literary cult following akin to that of the text ("Hadrian the Seventh") and the author (Rolfe, aka Corvo) that originally inspired it.
As one reads "The Quest for Corvo," it seems that Symon's text represents the outermost of three concentric circles of eccentricity.
The innermost, core circle is "Hadrian the Seventh," a strange and imaginative novel that tells the story of an impoverished, eccentric and seemingly paranoid writer and devotee of the Roman Catholic faith, George Arthur Rose. Rose, a brilliant, self-taught man whose candidacy for the priesthood had been rejected twenty years earlier, is unexpectedly approached one day by a Cardinal and a Bishop who have been made aware of his devotion and his shameful treatment by the Church. Rose is ordained and ultimately becomes the first English Pope in several hundred years. While a work of fiction, Symons' biographical investigations disclose that much of the story of "Hadrian the Seventh" closely parallels the life of its strange author, Frederick Rolfe.
The second circle of eccentricity is, of course, the life of Frederick Rolfe, Baron Corvo, himself. It is the telling of this life that occupies Symons in "The Quest for Corvo," and the result is a fascinating, if perhaps not always historically accurate, detective story cum biography. Starting with his obsessive search for information on Rolfe and his meetings and correspondence with those who knew him, Symons brilliantly recreates a life-the life of a strangely talented artist, photographer, historian, and writer who led a life of seemingly paranoid desperation, ultimately dying impoverished in Venice at the age of forty-five.
The third, outermost circle is the eccentricity of the author of the "Quest for Corvo," A. J. A. Symons, a founder of The Wine and Food Society of England, a collector of music boxes, and a master at card tricks and the art of forgery. Like Corvo himself, Symons died at an early age-he was only forty years old-and his life and his book is seemingly as eccentric as its subject.
"The Quest for Corvo" is one of those little gems that deserve a cherished, if perhaps minor, place in English literature and the literature of biography. Happily, it is back in print again, courtesy of New York Review Books. Read it, and then read "Hadrian the Fourth" (also brought back into print by NYRB) for a fascinating turn in the world of the imaginative and the eccentric.
A thoughtful modernist meditation on biography.......2001-04-19
In recent years we've been treated to many thoughtful and highly readable studies on the nature of biography itself, such as in Richard Holmes's FOOTSTEPS and Janet Malcolm's THE SILENT WOMAN. Symons's THE QUEST FOR CORVO could almost be a sketch for these later, deeper studies in its very metatextual approach to what it means to compose a biography of Frederick Rolfe, one of the strangest figures in fin-de-siecle British letters. Although later biographies took this work to task for its errors and omissions, that shouldn't dissuade you from enjoying how Symons juxtaposes differing perspectives on the quarrelsome and paranoid Rolfe's actions and behaviors, and his desire to get at the "real man." Greater drawbacks, I think, might be Symons's homophobia--which, while very common for its time, seems a bit hysterical today--and the fact that Rolfe (or "Baron Corvo," as he liked to style himself) as a person either enchants readers completely or eventually becomes as tiresome to them as he did to his contemporaries. Still, even though Rolfe's antics do grate on some people's nerves a bit after a while(as they did mine), the fascination of his personality remains quite compelling.
This edition features a beautiful cover and paper stock (as do all NYRB editions) and an intelligent and thoughtful introduction (which, unfortunately, they do not always).
Average customer rating:
- Eccentricity R Us
- No mere catalog of eccentricity
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The English Eccentrics
Dame Edith Sitwell , and
Richard Ingrams
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Collected Poems of Edith Sitwell
ASIN: 1873429738 |
Book Description
Dame Edith Sitwell's witty and affectionate send-up of her countrymen.
Eccentricity exists particularly in the English, states Dame Edith Sitwell, because of "that peculiar and satisfactory knowledge of infallibility that is the hallmark and the birthright of the British nation." Originally published in 1933,
The English Eccentrics has lost none of its vitality and wit. We flnd hermits (both ancient and ornamental), quacks, mariners, indefatigable travelers, men of learning. We meet the amphibious Lord Rokeby, whose beard reached his knees and who seldom left his bath; the irascible Captain Thicknesses, who left his right hand, to be cut off after his death, to his son Lord Audley; and Curricle Coats, the Gifted Amateur, whose suit was sewn with diamonds and whose every performance ended in uproar. A glorious gallery of the extremes of human nature, portrayed with humor, sympathy, knowledge, and love.
Customer Reviews:
Eccentricity R Us.......2005-10-14
Who but Dame Edith Sitwell could produce such a wonderful send-up of the British, poking fun by speaking the truth as she saw it, in The English Eccentrics. Eccentricity was often simply the Ordinary carried to a high degree of pictorial perfection, Sitwell claims, and thus we get a gifted glimpse of the usually-overlooked obvious.
Of course, there is so much material to work with, it is a wonder the book isn't multi-volumed! Originally published in 1933, it retains much of its vitality and levity despite being two generations (at least) behind the times. Sitwell caught the character of the English Eccentric at a time just before the wholesale decline of Empire, and thus the character portrayed here is a 'standard' one.
'Eccentricity exists particularly in the English, and partly, I think, because of that peculiar and satisfactory knowledge of infallibility that is the hallmark and birthright of the British nation.'
In the relating of small tales and glimpses of life, Sitwell takes us through a history of language usage and abusage, cultural niceties gone awry, personal proclivities taken to extremes, historical remembrances remembered a bit incorrectly, all the while maintaining a strong British 'we know just what we're doing, thank you, and we're doing it quite correctly' attitude.
We find hermits, both ancient and ornamental (the distinction between the two of course being a relative flash that one would think inimical to the hermit-age); quacks and alchemists, some members of the sporting set (we learn of one who, in an attempt to scare the hiccups out of himself, set fire to his nightshirt--of course he was still in it--and was satisfied despite the burns that his hiccups had been vanquished), various other sorts and sets in the land.
Perhaps the most valuable lesson to be learned from this book would the Of the Benefits of Posthumous Fame. Using Milton as the first example, Sitwell proceeds to demonstrate just how this posthumous fame (for the man who sold Paradise Lost for the meagre sum of £20) can be a great boon to all concerned, particularly those who have the foresight to collect locks of hair or write poetry about rummaging through the bone-remains of the dead poet. Of course, there followed in short order a detailed (yet anonymous) description of why the poet could not have actually handled the bones of the poet, not least of which being that as the grave said 1653, and Milton was not in fact buried until 1674, et cetera; thus begins an active correspondence of attempting to prove or disprove in fashion why Milton was not bodily handled.
This is a thoroughly English treatment; like her eccentrics, Sitwell's style of writing is likewise gloriously eccentric. Much will be missed on the first reading, and again the second; by the third reading (should you be so eccentric as to persevere through to such) you will either be so charmed by the writing that you will carry this book around, quoting passages that need context to be understood (and thus be ordained into a minor order of eccentricity yourself) or, you will give the book away to the most tedious of your friends, hoping that the friend will take the hint.
The choice is yours.
No mere catalog of eccentricity.......2000-01-02
The inimitable Edith Sitwell, in her jewelled prose, weaves together the threads of assorted strange personages, and the effect is hypnotic. The approach is poetic, oblique, and perhaps not to everyone's taste - and if it were, would you be at all interested? I, for one, was enchanted by her descriptions of, for example, the amphibious Lord Rokeby, the Ornamental Hermits, the dandy Romeo Coates, the rascally William Huntington "the coal-heaver Preacher", the intrepid Squire Waterton, and the ingenious Princess Caraboo, among dozens of others.
Such understated whimsy within these pages! Such a singular philosophy bound these disparate lives! Read, for example, of the rich Miss Beswick, whose sole concern was that, having passed on, she might not realize it, and that her death "might prove to be only an illusion, a dreamless sleep." And so she left a large sum of money to a certain doctor and his family, "on condition that the doctor should pay her a visit every morning, after what appeared to uninstructed persons, to be her death, in order that he might be assured of the reality of this." Dame Edith dryly notes, "When the Doctor died, the mummified Miss Beswick, that candidate for immortality, was removed to the Lying-in Hospital."
It's Edith Sitwell's droll, ornate prose, moreso even than the picturesque eccentrics, that make this a book to savor, to read bits of aloud, in the small hours of the night.
And now the hurled invective: Shame! Shame that this book is out of print! What poverty-stricken, unpoetic times are these?
Book Description
A fitting tribute to John B. Keane, for decades Ireland’s favorite storyteller, this winning short story collection typifies the late author’s folkloric imagination and storytelling arts. These are congenial tales, too, as this literary legend views the foibles and fallibilities of Irish country folk with abundant compassion as well as a shrewd, sometimes sardonic eye. Add to that Keane’s glorious sense of fun and roguery that will make readers relish all the more how and why, in “Fred Rimble,” Jim Conlon kills the best friend he ever had. Or how Willie Ramley determines that his future wife will be “Guaranteed Pure.” Or how, to tragic as well as comic effect, a gasp, garlic, and gossip undo Denny Bruder in “The Hanging.” In all, Keane uncovers the folly in the romantic pangs, exalted aspirations, misguided mischief, and everyday shortcomings of the characters in the village of his storyteller’s mind—and beyond the folly finds their humanity.
Customer Reviews:
Enchanting.......2007-09-07
John B. Keane is my favorite literary discovery of the last 15 years. He's witty, compassionate and insightful. The stories in this volume run the gamut from heartbreaking and tragic to fully romantic and full of giggles.
Keane has a deceptively simple style that develops character without flashy turns of phrase, and reveals the secret corners of the human heart. But when he opens that door, you're astounded by what he shows you not only in the hearts of others, but in your own.
Don't miss a chance to read anything of his you can lay your hands on.
Book Description
One day George Arthur Rose, hack writer and minor priest, discovers that he has been picked to be Pope. He is hardly surprised and not in the least daunted. "The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth," he declares. "The present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh. It pleases Us; and so, by Our own impulse, We command."Hadrian is conceived in the image of his creator, Fr. Rolfe, whose aristocratic pretensions (he called himself Baron Corvo), religious obsession, and anarchic and self-aggrandizing sensibility have made him known as one of the great English eccentrics. Fr. Rolfe endured a lifetime of indignities and disappointments. However, in the hilarious and touching pages of this, his finest novel, he triumphs.
Customer Reviews:
Different.......2007-07-30
I read this a long time ago and it left a very distinct and longlasting aftertaste. In my childhood, I met more than a few Catholics caught up with the elaborate outer crust, rituals and language of this religion, the religion of my childhood. Hadrian the seventh is more extreme in this way than all of those characters put together. You do not have to be a Catholic to enjoy his very original use of the English language. It is a classic. Poverty seems to have chased Frederick Rolfe even after death. This book is out of print! I read this book during the same period while I was at university that I read the Autobiography of Aleister Crowley, Milarepa by Evans-Wentz and Borges and shortly after that Marques, just before he won the Nobel Prize. I promise you young folks that reading these crazy books would take you on more thrilling trips than drugs, fast cars and mindless sex. It is all in the mind, is it not?
Pontifex Maximus?.......2006-11-04
Yes, well, um, quite...This eccentric, dainty, precieuse story really has not much to do with Roman Catholicism or the Papacy...It has almost everything to do with its eccentric, dainty, precieuse author, who certainly was an odd fish--It is his confession, vindication and divine wish-fulfillment all in one. Or was he really all that odd? His is the story of the eminently talented, gifted, sensitive soul left to drift in the world, his talents unappreciated by the vulgar herd, left with only his pride as consolation. He very much resembles Baudelaire's description of the poet whose "great wings prevent him from walking"--And this book encompasses his vision of what he would do could he but fly. But it must be said that this literary flight is, simply put, more odd and curious than grand or tragic or majestic or poetic. It is, like its author, idiosyncratic to the core.
Reading this book, for me, was like rummaging in a linguistic attic, chancing upon a forgotten turn of English or Ancient Greek and smiling wistfully before putting it aside again. Ultimately, this book is, like its author, a curiosity whose "caviare" as D.H. Lawrence puts it on the back cover, can and will be appreciated only by the few with a taste for the peculiar.
To the Divine Friend, Much Desired.......2005-04-21
...so Rolfe dedicated one of his books - ideal reader, confere et semblable. Ah well, Caligula - not an entirely off the wall association - wanted the moon.
Who reads books like this today - rhetoric, of course - the thing is already out of print (doubly poignant as Alexander Theroux... and I will go on about him elsewhere, wrote the singular introduction)?
The book will not outshine (in the sense of shininess) Dan Brown, but it is full of, at this writing, topical stuff of interest: papal conclaves, Vatican ritual and skullduggery (a redundancy?) - but this is not dry historical terrain. Like the Vatican itself this is a distinctly autonomous and armed entity within and often at odds with a sovereign state (here I mean, the singular "Baron Corvo" versus the world and everyone in it); it is a solipsist manifesto, a gorgeously strange decadent piece - concerned with aura, décor, style and personality and has nary a trace of agape or religion in it.
Its greatest quality is that its influence is felt in Alexander Theroux's Darconville's Cat.
Nothing like this in all English Literature.......2004-11-14
It is gratifying to see that Fr. Rolfe, a/k/a Baron Corvo is still the cause of violent polemicism in modern readers. There truly was no one like him, not even Joyce, for love of language.
Were he not so self-focused he might have written a corpus of much more sustainable themes; and yet his entire oeuvre is shaped and iterated by his own disappointments and failures (there were so many: he was so tired). In this book, he takes revenge on the world, and triumphs--as pope! What a wonderful conceit. It should be read slowly. It is truly to be savored.
A Twist on Catholicism.......2003-07-27
I thought the novel was splendid. It's about a "nobody" who became pope - not a new concept by any means - with some obscure details on, and innovative reforms of the catholic church.
I found the characters to be believable, underscoring my general feeling about the hierarchical structure of, and the personalities residing within the church.
Although it's a bit of a hard read in terms of its language usage, I enjoyed it and have recommended it to other people.
Download Description
"Bestselling author Naomi Wolf was brought up to believe that happiness is something that can be taught -- and learned. In this magical book, Naomi shares the enduring wisdom of her father, Leonard Wolf, a poet and teacher who believes that every person is an artist in their own unique way, and that personal creativity is the secret of happiness. Leonard Wolf is a true eccentric. A tall, craggy, good-looking man in his early eighties, he's the kind of person who likes to use a medieval astrolabe, dress in Basque shepherd's clothing, and convince otherwise sensible people to quit their jobs and follow their passions. A gifted teacher, he's dedicated his life to honoring individualism, creativity, and the inspirational power of art. Leonard believes, and has made many others believe, that inside everyone is an artist, and success and happiness in life depend on whether or not one values and acts upon one's creative impulse. In The Treehouse, Naomi Wolf's most personal book yet, Naomi outlines her father's lessons in creating lasting happiness and offers inspiration for the artist in all of us. The book begins when Naomi asks Leonard to help build a treehouse for his granddaughter. Inspired by his dedication to her daughter's imaginative world, Naomi asks her father to walk her through the lessons of his popular poetry class and show her how he teaches people to liberate their creative selves. Drawn from Leonard's handwritten lecture notes, the chapters of The Treehouse remind us to ""Be Still and Listen,"" ""Use Your Imagination,"" ""Do Nothing Without Passion,"" and that ""Your Only Wage Will Be Joy,"" and ""Mistakes Are Part of the Draft."" More than an education in poetry writing, this is a journey of self-discovery in which the creative endeavor is paramount. Naomi also offers glimpses into her father's past -- from his youth during the Depression to his bohemian years as a poet in 1950s San Francisco -- and the evolution of Leonard's highly individualistic vision of the artist's way. She reconsiders her own childhood and realizes the transformative effect Leonard's philosophy has had on her own life, as well as the lives of her students and friends. The Treehouse is ultimately a stirring personal history, a meditation on fathers and daughters, an argument for honoring the creative impulse, and unique instruction in the art of personal happiness. "
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating for Every Writer about the Writing Life.......2006-05-12
This book contains some gems for writers. Throughout the book, Wolf and her father are building a treehouse for her daughter. Leonard Wolf has a series of key points that he regularly teaches. "Be disciplined," Leonard said, again looking up from his class notes. "Do you want to know how to become a writer? It is not romantic." Then he glared from under his white brows and almost harshly said, as much about life, it seems, as about writing, "There is no revising a blank page. Keep going."..."Even when you do not feel like it-especially then-GO ON."
"Writer's block," he said, "comes about when you let yourself yield to two false notions about your task. The first is that writing is a profound occupation, important as a means of expressing the self, some truth about life, or about the universe. This is all nonsense."
"The second false notion is that writing must at every moment be perfect. No one objects to perfection eventually, but the idea of it does nothing to help you get started." (p. 176-177)
Many people will gain truth from reading these stories.
A window on a favorite author of mine...........2006-04-13
Have always appreciated Naomi Wolf's works and this book gives the reader a peek inside the home that helped make her the woman that she is. The only issue I have with her writing style in this books is how she goes back and forth from calling her Dad by his first name and then simply referring to him a Dad.
Loved reading about the different periods on both coasts that she have live in, which gives the reader a glimpse into the life of a well traveled woman, who also lived a unique life that was very much life the places she happened to be living in.
Loved reading about her 'nearly derelict house in the midst of a desolate meadow that was dense with thorns' in New York State. And the tid bits about the state of the house as they set about to make it livable, the daffodils poking out in the midst of nowhere.
The various lessons she writes about are: Be Still and Listen, Use Your Imagination, Destroy the Box, Speak in Your Own Voice, Identify Your Hearts Desire, Do Nothing Without Passion, Be Disciplined With Your Gift, Pay Attention to the Details, Your Only Wage Will Be Joy, Mistakes Are Part of the Draft, Frame Your Work, Sign It and Let It Go.
Winner of an "Academy Award for Books".......2006-03-09
The Treehouse is one of eight books of the thousands published in 2005 to receive a Books for a Better Life award in a ceremony like an "Academy Awards" for books. Hurrah to Larry McMurtry, who won an Oscar for Brokeback Mountain and reminded the audience of the importance of books. The seven other winners in this amazing prize-winning list are: The Tender Bar (J.R. Moehringer), The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls), Undoing Perpetual Stress (Richard O'Connor), The Sociopath Next Door (Martha Stout), Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships (John Welwood), Unattended Sorrow (Stephen Levine), and Jim Cramer's Real Money.
Tribute to an Iconoclast.......2005-12-24
Who better than Naomi Wolf, already a famous author, to tell tehstory of the life of her father, the gifted poet and novelist Leonard Wolf? It seems that, at forty, Naomi was undergoing a troubled latch in her life, though it's soort of cloudy why she suddenly felt so disengaged on the one hand and, on the other, so concerned and doubtful about the life choices she had already made. Someone looking at her would think she had it all! And yet inside, she was deeply miserable.
So she decides to try to get some elder wisdom from her dad. He, Leonard Wolf, is not to be confused with Leonard Woolf with two oo's, the one who married Virginia Woolf. But I expect plenty of people mixed them up. In one wellknown story, the novelist E M Forster made an American tour after World War II, and he was inveigled to UC Berkeley, where he snubbed the faculty and the dean and instead had tea with a group of student poets led by Leonard Wolf. Perhaps Forster thought they had already met? That would tie in with his Mr. Magoo persona. As Naomi Wolf relates, Wolf was in the very center of the so-called Berkeley Renaissance, a short-lived poetic movement of great distinction that centered around the English Department but was distinctly separate from it. Wolf and other poets, including Robert Duncan, Mary Fabilli, Jack Spicer, Thomas Parkinson, Landis Everson and Robin Blaser, sought to change the face of poetry and to yank its still beating heart from the purlieux of New York, Paris and London and consecrate it at Berkeley.
Wolf's beautiful, shiksa wife Pat, an extremely talented writer herself, was part of the mix. Leonard and Patricia later separated in the mid 1950s, and he married Naomi's mother. Naomi frames her story in the lessons Leonard taught her. Each chapter is like a little sermon in which Naomi takes the Leonardine text and expounds on it, and how it fits into her own writing, her own life, her teaching practice, her children and the circle of young female writers and activists she is committed to encouraging. Leonard must be over eighty by now, still hale and hearty and filled with great wisdom. Besides being one of the United States' most criminally ignored poets, whose very first book HAMADRYAD HUNTED is a classic of postwar literature, he is an expert on DRACULA and Francis Ford Coppola used his expertise as a consultant when he made the film version of Dracula with Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder.
This book is a keeper!.......2005-12-21
This book came highly recommended by my dad ~~ he was recommended to read it by one of his photographer friends. This book is definitely a keeper in my library! It is intense, thoroughly thoughtful, honest and engaging. While the lessons may be geared to writers, it really is geared to everyone. There is a creative bent in each of us and our life is just as important as some of the well-known writers/artists. We have to strive to find the peace deep within us and Wolf's father was just simply pointing it out to the reader.
In today's world, life is hectic and stressful enough that sometimes, we wake up one day and realize this is not where we want to be. It doesn't matter who you are ~~ you matter. It's that simple. Leonard, Naomi's father, was just mentioning that life is too short for regrets. Now he's not advocating drugs or wild sex or anything like that. He's advocating that each of us find deep within ourselves how to be a much better person because each of us has so much to offer to the world. Obviously, we all can't be Monets, but we can strive for that. The basic lesson is to find our creative vein and discover just what it is that makes individuals happy and unique in their lives.
In this book, this author's family and herself have found a wild corner in Boston's Corners where they had to basically rebuild the house from bottom up and clear the land. Her daughter wanted a treehouse built and Naomi decided to help her build one. Through their building sessions or anything, Naomi and her father would talk. Sometimes friends would join them and other times, it was just them. This book is like a treehouse ~~ starts off slowly and uncertainly then by the end, it's radiant and beautiful with the joy flowing from the author's pen.
Despite the heaviness of the topics sometimes, I never found this book to be a drag. Instead, I find this book to be joyous and uplifting and encouraging. It was an intimate book between author and reader. We're in this together, me reading her thoughts which flowed very eloquently, by the way, and her sharing her insights of what she has learned from her father and life experiences. It is encouraging in the sense that you feel your spirit awakening and you're reaching for a highlighter to mark certain passages just because it speaks to the heart. It is uplifting to know that it's never to late to find your dream again and strive to make it come true.
I will rate this one as one of my top ten reads of 2005. I have never read any of Naomi Wolf's books before though I have heard of her. This book is just inspirational in itself and it is definitely one that I would recommend to every serious reader. It is joyful and wonderful that it's just a perfect addition to your library!
12-20-05
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- Sundered Siblings
- Luminous intelligence
- Best cure for Insomnia
- Specific reasons for "A Book of Reasons"
- Interesting, odd, yet incomplete
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A Book of Reasons
John Vernon
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0395944775 |
Book Description
"History in its minute particulars touches us all, and in the least expected ways." Every family has its odd character, the one member who never seems right with the world. In his brilliant pairing of family history with the history of civilization, John Vernon discovers the extraordinary sources of ordinary things in the life of his reclusive brother, Paul. When Paul died and John was charged with settling his affairs, he came face to face with a life he had never suspected. His brother's house in southern New Hampshire was in a state of squalid, shocking disrepair: piled high with a lifetime of trash, unheated and decrepit, pitifully unlivable. An assembly worker and an amateur inventor, Paul had managed to keep his sad and strange world hidden. The story of this troubled soul is at once fascinating and tragic. And more: it cries out for reasons. Why does a childhood full of promise turn wrong? Why do we clutter our lives with things? How do we make and understand our world? Vernon seeks answers in the most unexpected places. Buying a hammer and thermometer at Wal-Mart, that icon of consumerism, inspires a short history of tools and the discovery of mercury. Paul's wake occasions an investigation of blood circulation and embalming. Vernon voyages through science and physiology, culture and mythology, on a search "for a way to comprehend a life that left behind not splendid monuments but ordinary wreckage." The result is a book of reasons: reasons for his brother's way of life, reasons for his own response to Paul's death. Bringing to bear the narrative powers that distinguished his acclaimed historical novels Peter Doyle and All for Love, Vernon links the story of one odd individual to the surprising and irregular upheavals of history. In the process, he discovers how reasons, for all of us, are one means of learning to accept things that can never be explained.
Customer Reviews:
Sundered Siblings.......2006-10-04
In The Age of Grief the writer Jane Smiley refers to that moment when "the barriers between the circumstances of oneself and of the rest of the world have broken down." A similar dawning pervades John Vernon's autobiographical A Book of Reasons. When his older brother Paul dies of an aneurysm, Vernon finds himself saddled with the responsibility of his sibling's estate. He must rehabilitate a house crammed with refuse and the sickening stench of dead pets and their sickening stench, as he tries to comprehend how Paul's life devolved into dilapidation.
Vernon quests for reasons: how could a man perceived as an eccentric sociopath at most, fall to a state that could only be described as animalistic? Though the book's time frame is the three-month period between Paul's death and the dissolution of his estate, the author manages an exhumation of some 40-odd years in a struggle to reconstruct their lives together and apart.
As the author contends with his grief and the practical aspects of the house's cleanup, he finds a coping mechanism: a consideration of items and commonplace occurrences. Buying a thermometer at Wal-Mart conjures a lengthy discourse on the history of temperature measurement. The purchase of equipment needed to build a simple set of stairs fuels a meditation on tools and how their evolution paralleled that of man and animals. Vernon reaches back through the ages to expound on how the contributions of Galileo, Pascal, Robert Fludd and many others shaped our understanding of how the present world came to be. The reader is treated to various insights ranging from how rocks were employed as hammers by Homo sapiens, to the murder of Abel by Cain with a weapon, or "tools that got to be weapons by being misused."
It's a seesaw, really: over here, the life of Paul alongside the author's guilt, incredulity and dormant memory; over there, a timeless world with its theories, speculations and advances. Both carry a long circuitous chain of reasons or "recipes for making sense of the world's arrangements and accidents."
The bulk of the work is unapologetically nonlinear, containing a larger ratio of science to actual memoir. Yet the author's brother is always there, haunting either a discourse on the history of internment or the origin of central heating back in 80 B.C. For readers who prefer straightforward memoir, these flights may prove a distraction from what is essentially a compelling look at sibling estrangement. But these technical flights never feel clinical or even detached. Vernon's wounded, probing voice holds it together nicely, whether the subject is the Big Bang, or the circumstances that led to the appearance of nine-year-old Paul's photo on the front page of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette.
In melding science to the personal, he illuminates a universe that's become as vague to us as his brother was to him, while reminding us that context is everything. At one point Vernon says that he somehow fell asleep while the brother's life plummeted, an observation that might parallel our relation to the world. Everything is moving too fast goes the song; Vernon's insistence on examining the implications of the everyday is an invitation to cease all our taking for granted.
Vernon entreats us with trenchant description and the use of metaphor. He describes the ritual of bathing after Paul: "This is how I cleaned myself: by lowering my body into Paul's gray opacity rimmed with a sort of soapy pond scum." The automobile looms as a vehicle of escape from the grief that the house represents, but also the seat of memory and revelation: an incident in their teens where he and Paul are humiliated by an aggressive motorist parallels the author's recent discovery of Paul's Duke Ellington CDs under the passenger seat.
At one point, Vernon asks, "Was his life a waste of life?" Paul's obsession with pornography, his ham radio and the Internet were "amusements...of solitude and boredom." His preoccupations with instruments of communication are symbolic of a desperate man pining for an elusive acceptance. As Paul sits glued to the computer in pathetic self-exile, Vernon makes ineffectual stabs at conversation: "He looked up only if I stood in the doorway, and eventually I did--out of fraternal duty or to torture us both, I'm not sure which."
And there lies regret: ultimately, Reasons is atonement for a missed opportunity, though its lack of resolution leaves not solace, but an aching sadness. Paul's disintegration becomes one more mystery of life that Vernon, unlike the intrepid Robert Fludd or Jane Goodall, can't crack. In resigning himself, Vernon tellingly muses that "to be fully conscious of everything, of course, from the rivers of microorganisms we breathe in and out to the history of the shoehorn, would be a form of insanity." That statement's lesson - that the world and our loved ones occasionally escape our grasp - strikes to the heart of this work's disquieting power.
Luminous intelligence.......2004-04-20
Since we live in a democracy, readers like Jude Schmidt of Rockton, Illinois, USA, are free to share their views on literature with one and all. I'll try to be charitable and say he's simply the wrong reader for this book. Unfortunately, though, anyone coming to have a look A Book of Reasons will be tainted by his misinformation. As a writer friend of mine says, "You get a terrific review in the Times and it seems to disappear overnight, but some dim bulb writes in to Amazon and the comments stay forever and a day."
The fact is, John Vernon's, A Book of Reasons is a lovely and penetrating work. It doesn't easily fall into a genre-except perhaps personal essay or meditation. A few of the other reviewers below describe it well, so I'll simply add that it's constantly surprising, luminous in its sentence craft, informed by a close reading of dozens of other texts-history, biology, cosmology, poetry (his fascinating list of "works consulted" runs to twelve pages). And he avoids the easy pieties that often creep into memoirs. I'm enriched for having spent time with Vernon's mind and heart.
I ran into this book totally by accident-it was adjacent to something I was looking for in the Tacoma Public Library. Schmidt notes that he had a hard time finding it at major bookstores and department stores-but think of what he could find there, all the hot sellers, and the books that are just like all the other books. I want to weep when I think of the beautiful and different works like Vernon's that fall through the cracks. Whoever reads this review, take a chance on A Book of Reasons, and beyond that, challenge yourself to find others like it-books that don't fit the mold, that are written with great intelligence and a passionate concern for the power of language.
Best cure for Insomnia.......2000-06-27
The writer attempts to explain if his brother's life was worth living because he ended it so badly. He never answers some basic questions such as "Why did his brother only live with his grandmother" and "what made him so distant to his family". Why the writer chooses to go into such length about the history of the thermometer and the cosmos is beyond me. This book was chosen for my bookclub because of the previous comments and star rating. It should have been a hint to me how bad the book was when no library carried it, and I tried 2 major bookstores plus 3 department store and could only get this book by ordering it. Buy this book if you have trouble sleeping because out of 5 members of my club I was the only one who finished it and it took me forever!
Specific reasons for "A Book of Reasons".......2000-01-05
The cover illustration of one of Joseph Cornell's cryptic boxes, assembled from discarded junk, is an excellent visual metaphor for the way in which John Vernon approaches the topic of death, loss and an exploration of the reasons for living in this book. Vernon attempts to make sense, not so much of the death, but of the peculiar, eclectic life of his older brother. The binding threads among the disparate elements of Vernon's university career, his role as executor of his brother's estate, the brother's gradual withdrawal from social relationships and the junkpile life that he leaves behind, are brief excerpts from an old encyclopedia that describe the tools and techniques of empirical culture. Vernon profoundly explores the microcosm of American family and lifestyle in his examination of the microcosm of his brother's life and their disconnected and blundered relationship. From the opening pages of his excursion to the local Walmart to find a thermometer to mount on his recently dead brother's house, Vernon is adept at using his own frustration and experiences of cultural clutter as the divining rod to unravel the peculiarities of brother's secluded and repulsively littered life. Vernon uses metaphors like the thermometer throughout the text to observe and measure his own as well as our cultural climate and the ways in which we collect and treat objects and relationships in our supposedly educated and modern American culture. Vernon employs a masterful mix of humor, angst, revulsion, annoyance and fascinated curiousity in his exploration of grieving as a means to examine the many-layered questions of life and death. It is a refreshing exploration that avoids the usual religious and spiritual overtones of the subject, yet retains a profound metaphysical inquiry about self, other and culture that presses the reader to frame (and reframe) his/her own perspective and practices. Vernon uses metaphor and object representation as tools to explore the essential questions and impacts of life and lifestyle. If there is one flaw in this fascinating and engaging book it is the ending, which slips into a conventional approach that pushes the reader to accept the notion that no life is a waste. When Vernon takes us into mundane territory in such an unconventional way it is a bit disappointing that he ends on such a conventional note.
Interesting, odd, yet incomplete.......1999-12-07
John Vernon has the task of cleaning out his brother's house after his brother dies of a sudden illness. He discovers that his brother lived in an abyss of hopelessness and depression. This book is his attempt to come to terms with that discovery, and the questions of personal responsibility it raises for him. Should he have known how his brother was suffering? Could he have helped? Was he required to?
In the beginning Vernon tries to approach these daunting questions in a light-hearted search for the reasons. Why the thermometer, for instance? His musings along these lines are quite interesting. He meanders through all sorts of unrelated arcane lore looking for connections, for the reasons why things happen the way they do. Ultimately, however, he has to acknowledge that all of these reasons are beside the point. He says, finally, "Reasons do have a limit. Shall I offer a history of the Pepsi bottle, the cigarette, the milk carton, the rag? A history of bad smells? Even now, in memory, I feel buried like Paul, trapped in his house, surrounded by the waste of unexplained things."
This might have been a turning point in the narrative away from reasons to the limits of personal responsibility, but the author doesn't go there. He seems to withdraw into a kind of personal disgust that pushes away the responsibilities of love and kinship. He does not come to terms with his discovery, and this is the drama of the narrative. As this drama unfolds, however, I sense that it is no longer under Vernon's control. Vernon seems to drift to a place outside of human relationships, so that the book ends on a strange unresolved note.
Book Description
Taking its title from a description of Peter Pan's Neverland, Astonishing Splashes of Colour follows the life of Kitty, a woman who, in a sense, has never grown up. As her moods swing dramatically from high to low, they are illuminated by an unusual ability to interpret people and emotions through colour.
Kitty struggles to come to terms with her life, including the loss of her mother, a miscarriage, and an unconventional marriage to her husband, who lives in the apartment next door. And when her father and brothers reveal a family secret long hidden, it overwhelms Kitty's tenuous hold on reality and propels her on an impetuous journey to the brink of madness.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
Customer Reviews:
Not astonishing enough.......2007-01-20
I read the book because of title and I enjoyed the few moments here and there when Clare Morrall played up her book's connection to Peter Pan but for the most part Astonishing Splashes of Colour left me bored. Kitty for a variety of reasons is a thirty-something adult who refuses to grow-up. It's not that she's young at heart or playful, she doesn't want to face the harsh reality that life can sometimes throw at a person.
Of course, there must be reasons for Kitty's withdrawal from the real world because people don't just break, at least that's what Morrall is implying. And rather than come up with anything "astonishing" or "colorful" she goes with humdrum and hackneyed. Kitty's family must be hiding a dead dark secret from her and if that's not enough, she's also suffered a mysterious still birth. Of course she can now, for no apparent reason try again for another child. Instead she is forced to wallow in the life that might have been for her if things had worked out differently. Whatever.
I've ready many positive reviews of the book and it was short listed in 2003 for the Man Booker Prize but I just don't see what all the praise is for. Sure, the book does have some interesting passages and I did love the first chapter, but the story doesn't go anywhere except down a very crowded and cliche ridden path followed by so many other books.
My thoughts.......2006-07-05
Many books have been written on the subject of grief and loss and the discovery of long hidden family secrets. It takes a skilled author, though, and Clare Morrall is one of those, to make us care very much. Kitty is a woman who in almost every sense has not grown up; she is forced to deal with some of the toughest things life has to offer. Towards the end, as she is teetering on the brink of insanity and then eventually falls into the abyss, we are not mad, we are not fed up with her shenanigans, we have grown to love her and want the best for her. We want her to whole-heartedly accept the love her husband has for her instead of settling for living across the hall from him.
This is a tragic, beautiful and subtle book from a talented writer. I will be reading anything else she writes.
Of Identity.......2005-04-23
There are many books out there which strike resemblance to this one, or so one would think after the first look on it. What could possibly be new about dissfunctional family, loosing of a child, and psychothic women. Everything that had to be said has been sayed. Where is the difference?
And then one starts to read. And then He understands.
Loosing of a child, excentric painter as a father, brothers who are alienated and whose only bond is Kitty herself, obsessive behaviours, all of them stands for finding the identity. Another author has often wondered: "How do we become what we are?" and this book partly answers that question. In a world where nothing functions as it should, in a world were values have tvisted meanings, and trauma is almost a common thing how can one stand up, and develop onself in a way that society concieves as 'normal'.
Surprisingly (at least for me) this isn't a book about position of women in a evil patriarhal world. This is a book about ordinary people and connections that makes them just that - people.
Struggle for survival can take up many faces and this book presents maybe the most painful one.
Ten chapters you should meditate over.
An interesting perspective on grief and loss.......2005-03-07
The main character of this novel, Kitty, tends to view things in terms of color, and she lives in a world akin to Neverland (the title is taken from a description of the same). The book opens with Kitty waiting for her son outside a school, but the reader quickly senses that there is something not quite right about both the situation and Kitty herself. In a manner quite similar to another first-time novel, She's Come Undone, Kitty begins to unravel, with her reality and fantasy worlds becoming hopelessly intertwined. Still, she makes an effort to process her losses, from the more recent shared loss with her supportive yet distant husband (who lives in his own apartment next door and is unable to cope directly with Kitty's grief) to deficits tracing back to her family of origin, which includes a domineering father, an absent mother, and a much older sister who Kitty never knew. Over the course of the story, Kitty's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre, but the conclusion offers a hint of hope and redemption. Although I would be hard-pressed to say whether or not I "liked" this book, I found it to be an interesting, worthwhile read that I would recommend to others, particularly those looking for a unique, thought-provoking reading group selection.
One of the best books I've read in a long time........2005-02-27
We watch as Kitty, the main character's, life spirals out of control and we hold our breath as her diminishing mental state hits bottom. This book was so compelling. Kitty had an unusual, sad and lonely childhood; her mother died when she was three and she grew up with a distant father and distant older brothers. There are many color references in the book, her life is filled with color and intermittently void of color, the author used vivid (or stark) color references that really work. Kitty and her husband live in adjacent apartments, his is all white and immaculate, hers is bright and messy.
There are several surprises in the book that left me shaking my head, not in disbelief, but at the turn of events. I will be watching anxiously for another book by Clare Morrall.
Books:
- The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family
- The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family
- The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves & Other Little People
- Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students (Design Briefs)
- To Weave a Web of Magic
- Trash: The Graphic Genius of Xploitation Movie Posters
- Twentieth-Century American Architecture: The Buildings and Their Makers
- Twentieth-Century Russian and East European Painting: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
- Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
- Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages (The New Middle Ages)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say
- Hope Rising: Stories from the Ranch of Rescued Dreams
- Big Cherry Holler: A Novel
- Dating Dead Men: A Novel
- Getting in the Gap: Making Conscious Contact with God Through Meditation
- Introduction to Cake Filtration: Analyses, Experiments and Applications
- John Paul II For Dummies
- Arts & Architecture: The Entenza Years
- Darwin's Desolate Islands
- Russian Nuclear Industry Business Opportunites Handbook
The Siege of Krishnapur (New York Review Books Classics)
Memed, My Hawk
The Singapore Grip (New York Review Books Classics)
Troubles (New York Review Books Classics)
Turkish Reflections: A Biography of a Place
