Bonjour Tristesse Review

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(More customer reviews)`Bonjour Tristesse' is a typical French coming-of-age story. Written in the 1950s' it was an instantaneous scandal for dealing so clearly with teenagers and their sexuality. The times have change, we see the world in a different way, adolescents are the same, but this novel still holds the interest.
Cécile is a precocious seventeen-year-old girl who travels to the French Riviera in the company of her father and his mistress. She is used to having different women around with her father all the time. But when he decides to marry one of them, Cécile and her lover Cyril decide to do something to stop him. Meanwhile, she is also learning about life, love, sex and pleasures. All these life-changing experiences will make the girl grow up towards to womanhood.
Françoise Sagan writes about something she knew, and it makes the book very interesting to read. Her prose never sounds fake or far-fetched. Although, it is a little dated --some of Cécile's acts that were daring by that day are just `normal' nowadays-- it has not lost its freshness. The Riviera settings are beautifully described, and we're often asking what the girl will do next.
It is undeniable it is a novel about that time in our lives when we're not a child any more and not yet an adult. With a mind filled with questions, we're trying to define who we are and will be in the future to come. Cécile has to face tragic events to understand what her life is and what it will be like for the next years. While many consider her being a spoilt little brat, this is the time when she is forced to stop being that, and see she won't have her father papering her forever.
`Bonjour Tristesse' opens with a powerful paragraph that reads: `A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the name of sadness'. At this point, had we any doubts it is a book about teenage angst, they are all dissipated.
Sagan wrote this novel when she failed to pass her examination at Sorbonne. The book became an international best seller and also a movie. While `Bonjour Tristesse' is a short and quick book, it is a good work of fiction, and probably Sagan's masterpiece.

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Set against the translucent beauty of France in summer, Bonjour Tristesse is a bittersweet tale narrated by Cécile, a seventeen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood, whose meddling in her father's love life leads to tragic consequences.
Freed from boarding school, Cécile lives in unchecked enjoyment with her youngish, widowed father -- an affectionate rogue, dissolute and promiscuous. Having accepted the constantly changing women in his life, Cécile pursues a sexual conquest of her own with a "tall and almost beautiful" law student. Then, a new woman appears in her father's life. Feeling threatened but empowered, Cécile sets in motion a devastating plan that claims a surprising victim.
Deceptively simple in structure, Bonjour Tristesse is a complex and beautifully composed portrait of casual amorality and a young woman's desperate attempt to understand and control the world around her.

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The Color Purple Review

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(More customer reviews)"The Color Purple" is one of the strongest statements of how love transforms and cruelty disfigures the human spirit that this reviewer has ever read. Alice Walker gives us Celie, 14 years old when the book opens, who has been raped, abused, degraded and twice impregnated by her father. After he takes her children away from her without a so much as a word, he marries her off like a piece of chattel to her husband, who is so cold, distant and inhuman to her that she can only refer to him as Mr; and this person deprives her of her sister Nettie, the only one who ever loved her.
Celie manages to survive by living one day at a time. Her life is a series of flat, lifeless panoramas painted in browns and grays. Into this existence, if you can call it that, comes Shug Avery, her husband's mistress, who shows Celie her own specialness and uniqueness. A lot has been made about lesbianism in this book and all of it is beside the point. Celie isn't a lesbian, she is a human being in need of love and Shug Avery helps Celie realize that she is somebody worth loving and caring about. When Celie hurls her defiance into Mr's face -- "I'm poor, I'm black, I may be ugly... but I'm here", she is making an affirmation not only to him, but to the whole world; the reader can only say, along with Shug Avery, "Amen".
When Celie finds the strength to leave Mr, he is left to face the reality of himself and what he sees isn't pretty; his transformation humanizes him and allows Celie to call him Albert, recognizing him as a person, as he finally recognizes her as one. The last chapter makes many readers go through half a box of Kleenex (Stephen Spielberg once said in an interview that he "cried and cried at the end" of the book), but Walker doesn't play cheap with the reader's emotions; she has a powerful story to tell and she tells it with such consummate skill and sensitivity that she brings us into it and makes it ours. This is a book to be treasured and read over and over again.

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Sisters Nettie and Celie, the former a missionary in Africa, the latter a southern woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, share their thoughts and experiences throughout a thirty-year correspondence. Reissue. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. NYT.

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Mrs. Dalloway Review

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(More customer reviews)Although the time covered in this complex novel is only one day, Virginia Woolf, through her genius, manages to cover a lifetime unraveling and exposing the mysteries of the human personality.
The central character of the novel is the delicate Clarissa Dalloway, a disciplined English gentlewoman who provides the perfect contrast to another of the book's characters, Septimus Warren Smith, an ex-soldier whose world is disintegrating into chaos. Although Clarissa and Septimus never meet, it is through the interweaving of each one's story into a gossamer whole that Woolf works her genius.
The book is set on a June day in 1923, as Clarissa prepares for a party that evening. Unfolding events trigger memories and recollections of her past, and Woolf offers these bits and pieces to the reader who must then construct the psychological and emotional makeup of Clarissa Dalloway in his own mind. We also learn much about Clarissa through the thoughts of other characters, such as her one-time lover, Peter Walsh, her friend, Sally Seton, her husband, Richard and her daughter Elizabeth.
It is Septimus Warren Smith, however, driven to the brink of insanity by the war, an insanity that even his wife's tender ministrations cannot cure, who acts as Clarissa's societal antithesis and serves to divide her world into the "then" and the "now."
In this extremely complex and character-driven novel, Woolf offers her readers a challenge. The novel is not separated into chapters; almost all of the action occurs in the thoughts and reminiscences of the characters and the reader must piece together the story from the random bits and pieces of information each character provides. The complexity of the characters may add to the frustration because Woolf makes it difficult for the reader to receive any single dominant impression of any one of them. This, however, forms the essence of the novel and displays the genius of Woolf: It is impossible to describe any human being in a simple phrase or collection of adjectives. We are many things to many people, all of them somewhat different, none of them the same, just as we are many things to ourselves.
Throughout the book, the reader is constantly called upon to compare and contrast Peter Walsh and Richard Dalloway, the two significant love interests in Clarissa Dalloway's life. Compared to Peter, an adventurer, Richard Dalloway appears more than a bit reserved and dour. But, readers must constantly question this view of Richard as his personality seems to alter with his altering relationships.
Intimacy, particularly emotional intimacy, and the preservation of one's uniqueness are two of Woolf's continuing themes. We find that Clarissa married Richard, in part, to preserve her sense of self; Peter would have demanded far more of her than she was, perhaps, willing to give. Here, Clarissa and Septimus, so outwardly different, would find they share much in common. While Clarissa feels threatened by her daughter's tenacious tutor, Miss Kilman, as well as by Peter, Septimus feels threatened by his doctor. Each feels the others are asking too much. Septimus and Clarissa even agree on the subject of death: "There is no death," Septimus declares, while Clarissa, the atheist, secretly believes that bits and pieces of her will remain intact forever.
Although some characters in this book may, at first, appear to be one-dimensional, we soon learn that all are extraordinarily complex. There is Sally, impulsive yet considerate; Richard, bashful yet timid; Peter inhibited yet adventurous; Septimus, insane yet credible. And Clarissa? She is all of these things and more.
It is, however, Woolf's torrential stream-of-consciousness prose that makes this novel a true masterpiece. Even those who find the plot of little interest will be drawn in by the exquisiteness of Woolf's language. This is a complex, character study in the fullest sense of the word, one with no easy answers, for Woolf, in the end seems to be telling us that perhaps, at our essence, we are all unknowable, even to ourselves.

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Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Editions) Review

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(More customer reviews)My copy is missing pages 225 to 276, comprising the last four essays in the Prose section: "Blood, Bread and Poetry: The Location of the Poet," "The Genesis of 'Yom Kippur 1984'," "Adrienne Rich: The Interview with David Montenegro," and "Swarthmore College Commencement: June 1, 1992." Must have been a bad printing batch. Caveat emptor.

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This Norton Critical Edition presents the work of one of America's foremost poets. It moves well beyond the scope of its predecessor, Adrienne Rich's Poetry (1975), in giving proper recognition to Rich's extraordinary achievements in both poetry and prose in recent years. The result is a judiciously edited, sensibly annotated volume ideally suited for classroom study of one of our most distinguished working writers.
In both poetry and prose, the editors have chosen selections intended to give readers a clear sense of Rich's evolution and accomplishment. Many of the poems in this expanded collection are from Rich's five recent volumes-The Dream of a Common Language (1978), A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far (1981), Your Native Land, Your Life (1986), Time's Power: Poems 1985-1988 (1989), and An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991). Prose selections include "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision," Rich's canonical statement on feminism; "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," on being a lesbian in a heterosexual world; Rich's interview for American Poetry Review, which presents a full and frank discussion of her work; and her previously unpublished commentary on the genesis of the poem "Yom Kippur 1984."The editors have also taken into account the many essays on Rich and reviews of her work that have been published since 1975. Some earlier biographical selections have been replaced with works that focus on the quality of Rich's writing and her place in twentieth-century American literature-not just as a poet, but as a woman, a lesbian, and a mother. Criticism includes thirteen reviews and interpretations of Rich's work by W. H. Auden, John Ashbery, Margaret Atwood, Helen Vendler, Judith McDaniel, Adrian Oktenberg, Charles Altieri, and Joanna Feit Diehl, among others. A second recent study by Albert Gelpi traces the events in Rich's life from which her work evolves. An updated Chronology and Selected Bibliography, as well as an expanded Index, are included.

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Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics) Review

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(More customer reviews)Milton's great epic poem was written "to justify the ways of God to men", thus telling the story of Lucifer's expulsion from Heaven and Adam's subsequent banishment from Eden. The classic representations of idyllic Eden, fiery Hell, and glorious Heaven are as rich now as when they were first created in 1667.
Paradise Lost is a very complicated, yet rewarding, Epic poem. It is by far the best of its kind in the English language, and where it lacks in original conventions, it more than makes up for it in its pure power of poetry. For those readers of translations who are unable to enjoy Homer's Greek, Virgil's Latin or Dante's Italian, Paradise Lost can offer them a unique chance to enjoy an epic poem in its original vernacular.
However, you must bear in mind that Paradise Lost is one of the most difficult pieces of poetry to read, and is by no means as simple as reading a translation of Homer or Virgil. The language is lexically dense, with complex grammar structures at times. These hurdles will be found considerably easier for experienced readers of Shakespeare, and those who are already aware of common traits of epic poetry.
Milton's use of language is majestic, boasting an impressive metre. The poem is lavished with many famous quotes that have become ingrained into everyday English, with such examples as "Pandemonium" and "All hell broke loose". Paradise Lost is, without a doubt, a must read for any intellectual English reader.
Like all epic poetry Milton's piece of art is highly indebted to Homer's conventions, with typical imitations of the Iliad's list of warriors and the Odyssey's garden of Alcinous. But Milton's debt to the Classics manifests itself as a representation of learned study, (with links to such writers as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Shakespeare and Spenser), therefore it does not so much as pilfer from great literature, as it instead endeavours to become a part of it.
Paradise Lost offers the epic reader a new form of subject, not just the usual heroes and large battles, but a theme which captivates the reader - the devils fall and man's respectively. The rebel Angels' descent from heaven to hell and Adam's from Eden to a desolate "outside" world, captivate the reader with an intriguing theme: the loss of innocence and the fall into experience. Why must Man sin? What is his relationship to Satan's loss of grace? And where does God's image of himself measure with his own maker? Milton's poem may lack the great Achilles and the gleaming towers of Troy, but it does offer much intellectual food for thought.
This Penguin edition is a rare find of value for money, it is not particlularly inexpensive, but come on ... please bear in mind the tiny price tag on this book - for less than half the price of a DVD you can own the English language's greatest poetic feat!
It is the Miltonic Satan that really comes to the forefront of this poem. The cunning fallen angel, who decides that "All good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my Good" (IV.109-10), is as appealing to the reader as Marlowe's "Nun-poisoning" Barabas the Jew. It is with some guilt that this present commentator must own to rooting for this most infamous baddy throughout the poem. With a display of wit almost as sharp as Ovid or Nonnos, Milton indisputably gives his best lines to God's antagonist. This Devil is not just a superficial evil being, but instead a complex character; one that feels remorse for his fall, love for his close friends, and a harrowing jealousy of Man. What we are given by Milton's villain is not just a rewarding psychological study of Christianity's Devil, but also a commentary upon our own ignoble actions.

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In the PENGUIN CLASSICS series, a new edition of the epic poem on the subject of the foundation of hell and the fall of man, written by the seventeenth century poet, John Milton. It contains a critical introduction and notes on unfamiliar words and any biblical, classical or historical allusions.

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