Two Turtle Doves is the story of a life spent making things. Growing up in 1970s Suffolk in a crumbling giant of a house with wild, tangled gardens, Alex Monroe was left to wreak havoc by invention. Without visible parental influence, but with sisters to love him and brothers to fight for him, he made nature into his world. Creation became a compulsion, whether it was go-carts and guns, cross-bows and booby-traps, boats, bikes or scooters. And then, it was jewellery. From full-out warfare waged against the local schoolboys to the freedom found in daredevil Raleigh bike antics to the delicacies of dress-making and the most intricate designs for jewellery, Two Turtle Doves traces the intimate journey of how an idea is transformed from a fleeting thought into an exquisite piece of jewellery. It is about where we find our creativity, how we remember and why we make the things we do. Views: 44
Maud Gonthier yearns for an escape from the cocoon of the bourgeois modesty. The splendid, caddish David Tyler appears to offer one. In this stylish, deeply knowing novel by the author of Hotel du Lac, Maud's seduction creates a chemistry of longing, sensuality, and betrayal--with a surprising climax. 240 pp. Views: 43
The extraordinary Anita Brookner gives us a brilliant novel about age and awakening. In Visitors, Brookner explores what happens when a woman's quiet resignation to fate is challenged by the arrogance of youth.Dorothea May is most at ease in the company of strangers -- so when she is prevailed upon to take in a young man in town for a family wedding, her carefully constructed, solitary world is thrown into disarray. As the wedding approaches, old family secrets surface and conflicts erupt between the generations. Dorothea's fragile façade of peaceful acceptance is pierced, forcing her to face in a new way both her past and her future.Exquisite writing, richly drawn characters, and penetrating perceptions about people are featured in another superb novel from this acclaimed and award-winning writer. Views: 43
Standing on a railway platform in a Swiss resort town, sensibly clad in his Burberry raincoat and walking shoes, a man thinks he may be looking at the woman for whom he ruined his life many years earlier. Alan Sherwood, a quiet English solicitor, remembers back to a time when he stepped briefly out of character to indulge in a liaison with Sarah Miller, an intriguing but heartless distant relative--only to find himself in a series of absurd situations that culminated in his marriage to Sarah's clinging, childlike friend Angela.With her compassionate portrait of a man who has paid a terrible price for his folly, Anita Brookner gives us a novel that it at once harrowing and humane. In the traditions of Henry James and Thomas Mann, Altered States is a beautifully rendered tale of loneliness, guilt, and erotic obsession. Views: 43
An "almost flawless novel" (People) about a quiet scholar who is convinced that her life has been ruined by literature and that she must make a new start in life.Since childhood, Ruth Weiss had been escaping from life into books, and from the attentions of her eccentric parents into the gentler warmth and company of friends and lovers. Now at forty years old, an academic devoted to the study of Balzac, she believes that literature has ruined her life and that she must once again, make a fresh start. "Lively, filled with gentle humor" (Miami Herald) this is an elegant and wry novel that will stay with you long after the final page is turned. Views: 42
A classic work of experimental poetry by a titan of modernist literatureTender Buttons, Stein's first published work of poetry, debuted in 1914 as a volume of powerful avant-garde expression. This meditation on ordinary living is presented in three compelling sections—"Objects," "Food," and "Rooms"—through which Stein delights in experiments with language. Emphasizing rhythm and sonority over traditional grammar, Stein's wordplay has garnered praise from readers and critics alike. In "A Piece of Coffee," for example, Stein plays with conventional language and cubist imagery to produce a stunningly original literary effect:A single image is not splendor. Dirty is yellow. A sign of more is not mentioned. A piece of coffee is not a detainer. The resemblance to yellow is dirtier and distincter. The clean mixture is whiter and not coal color, never more coal color than altogether. This ebook has been professionally proofread... Views: 41
A Better Class of Blond is an absorbing account of a year spent in and around San Francisco. In his diary, the author records not only his impressions of cities and places, but of people and their way of life, and of falling in love —with a young Vietnamese man, with the landscape of California, and with San Francisco itself. “This diary should be one long hymn of praise to its beauty, the fascination of its streets, the diversity of its life-styles, the joys of its fleshly pleasures, the satisfactions of sex with its men.” Views: 40
Kitty Maule longs to be "totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful." She is instead clever, reticent, self-possessed, and striking. For years. Kitty has been tactfully courting her colleague Maurice Bishop, a detached, elegant English professor. Now, running out of patience, Kitty's amorous pursuit takes her from rancorous academic committee rooms and lecture halls to French cathedrals and Parisian rooming houses, from sittings with her dress-making grandmother to seances with a grandmotherly psychic. Touching, funny, and stylistically breathtaking, Providence is a brightly polished gem of romantic comedy. Views: 40
Paul Sturgis is a retired banker manager who lives alone in a dark little flat. He walks alone and dines alone, seeking out and taking pleasure in small exchanges with strangers: the cheerful Australian girl who cuts his hair, the lady at the drycleaners. His only relative, and only acquaintance, is a widowed cousin by marriage -- herself a virtual stranger -- to whom he pays ritualistic visits on a Sunday afternoon. Trying to make sense of his current solitary state, and fearing that his destiny may be to die among strangers, Sturgis trawls through memories of his failed relationships and finds himself longing for companionship, or at the very least a conversation.But then a chance encounter with a stranger -- a recently divorced and demanding younger woman -- shakes up his routine and when an old girlfriend appears on the scene, Sturgis is forced to make a decision about how (and with whom) he wants to spend the rest of his days... Views: 37
