6/30/2023 0 Comments The man who saw everything![]() ![]() In a relatively short book, Levy spins an extraordinary web of connection, a dreamscape in which plangent images like a pearl necklace, a spilled drink, or the petals of a tree recur like soft chimes. These, however, are merely the broad brush strokes of a story layered with detail and import, spanning many themes, from sexual identity to fatherhood, memory to mortality. ![]() There, he falls in love with translator Walter Müller and also, separately, becomes sexually involved with Müller’s sister. ![]() Later, that same event is presented again with a different outcome, the repetition sandwiching the space in which Jennifer rejects Saul’s proposal of marriage and ends their relationship, and he travels to East Berlin on a research trip. But Saul is knocked down by a car and lightly injured. As the book opens, Saul is crossing Abbey Road in London in 1988, mimicking John Lennon on the cover of the Beatles’ eponymous album, for the sake of a photograph being taken by his girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau. "I’ve mixed now and then all up,” says Saul Adler, the central figure in Levy’s ( The Cost of Living, 2018, etc.) tantalizing new novel, which interconnects place, subject, and time as intricately as lace-making. Multiple versions of history collide-literally-in a superbly crafted, enigmatic new story from an author of note. ![]()
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6/30/2023 0 Comments Footfall niven![]() ![]() ![]() Beyond that was the smithsonian, old castle and new extension." The archives, with the original Constitution and declaration of Independence to make you misty-eyed and silent and remind you that we've done great things even the Romans couldn't, we'd invented a stable government of free citizens. Government granite, magnificent buildings in the old classics stype, built to last back when America had Craftsmen able to compete with the great builders of old Greece and rome. He walks back from the Whitehouse, observing the tourist spots, and giving me an excerpt that curled my lip: He meets with the president he didn't say no, he couldn't go. But only the Russians have a space station: ask them for permission. He suggests meeting them on neutral ground: outer space. When the aliens are on their way, he finagles his way to meet them. ![]() 6/30/2023 0 Comments Wattle Creek by Fiona McCallum![]() Until Jacqueline Havelock, a young psychologist escaping her own issues, arrives fresh from the city and makes Damien question everything he has known about himself, also igniting a spark in his lonely heart. But in a small town like Wattle Creek, there are few people to turn to and Damien learned long ago to keep his problems to himself. Spending long, hard days on a farm he has no affection for, and nights ignoring the criticisms of his mother, Damien can no longer remember what he's living for. Until Jacqueline Havelock, a young psychologist escaping her own issues, arrives fresh from the city and makes Damien question everything he has known about himself, also igniting a spark in. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() As French hopes dimmed, a courageous young woman arrived from the farthest recesses of the kingdom. Caught in the complex dynastic battle of the Hundred Years War, Yolande of Aragon championed the dauphin's cause. In a stunning work filled with intrigue, madness, and mysticism, Nancy Goldstone solves the thrilling mystery by showing that if you pry open the Queen's secrets, you will find the Maid's. ![]() Until now, though, her relationship with Yolande of Aragon, the ambitious and beautiful queen of Sicily-mother-in-law to the dauphin-has been little known. Joan of Arc, the brave peasant girl who heard the voices of angels and helped restore her king to the throne of France, astonished her contemporaries and continues to fascinate us today. “Attention, ‘Game of Thrones’ fans: The most enjoyably sensational aspects of medieval politics - double-crosses, ambushes, bizarre personal obsessions, lunacy and naked self-interest - are in abundant evidence in Nancy Goldstone's The Maid and the Queen. ![]() ![]() ![]() That is, until Mr Jupiter shows up at the last minute with a list of credentials that would make Maria Montessori and Indiana Jones feel inadequate. Mrs Struggles, the principal, is in a desperate situation without a teacher to take on the fourth grade and only a day before school starts. Fleming has a Dickensian gift for naming her characters and I suspect she had many a good laugh as she wrote this book and chose the names. ![]() In the first chapter, "The Principle Struggles," we learn that the soon-to-be fourth graders at Aesop elementary have a reputation and it is not a good one. For those of you interested, a great list of Aesop's fables and morals can be found at Fairy Tales, Fables and Stories. In The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary each chapter features a different character and ends with a moral first popularized by Aesop. ![]() |