Muriel Spark's autobiography traces how one of the great modern writers in English emerged. Beginning with luminous evocations of a 1920s childhood in Edinburgh and memories of school, taught by the original 'Miss Jean Brodie', Spark recalls her formative years, up to the publication of her first novel in 1957. 'In order to write about life as I intended to do, I felt I had first to live,' Spark says. In her account of her unhappy marriage in colonial Kenya, her return to wartime London on a troop ship, working at the Foreign Office as one of the 'girls of slender means', editing Poetry Review and her conversion to Catholicism, Muriel Spark outlines the life that provided material for some of the best-loved novels of the twentieth century. Views: 43
When Constance Barrington dies, she leaves behind a wealthy estate and a complex family network. But when the whole family gathers to hear her last will and testament, they are in for a terrible shock. Constance—possessed of a long memory and a spiteful disposition—altered her will shortly before her death. The new provisions are far from fair; some benefit hugely and others hardly at all. Constance's granddaughter, Louise, is bequeathed the copyright for her late grandfather's novels (barely remembered, long-since out of print and valuable only as a reminder of the man she loved). It is a paltry inheritance and one that comes to symbolise the inequity at the heart of the Barrington family. Soon, old family feuds and long-hidden resentments come to the surface, and with them, secrets start to emerge. But it is through Louise's inheritance—those dusty, long-forgotten books—that the most explosive secret of all will come to light, bringing with it a very... Views: 43
"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their head above water. It may be the heroin that a down-and-out jazz pianist uses to face the terror of pouring his life into an inanimate instrument. It may be the brittle piety of a father who can never forgive his son for his illegitimacy. Or it may be the screen of bigotry that a redneck deputy has raised to blunt the awful childhood memory of the day his parents took him to watch a black man being murdered by a gleeful mob. By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying--and informed throughout by Baldwin's uncanny knowledge of the wounds racism has left in both its victims and its perpetrators--Going to Meet the Man is a major work by one of our most important writers. A collection of eight short stories that explore with devastating frankness the roots of love, hate, and racial conflict. By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying, this is a major work by one of America's quintessential writers. Views: 42
Like the blues -- sweet, sad and full of truth -- this masterly work of fiction rocks us with powerful emotions. In it are anger and pain, but above all, love -- affirmative love of a woman for her man, the sustaining love of a black family. Fonny, a talented young artist, finds himself unjustly arrested and locked in New York's infamous tombs. But his girlfriend, Tish, is determined to free him, and to have his baby, in this starkly realisitic tale... a powerful endictment of American concepts of justice and punishment in our time. Views: 42
THIS TITLE IS AN OUT-OF-COPYRIGHT BOOK. THE QUALITY OF THE CONVERTED EBOOK WILL VARY. Views: 42
