Year: 2008
E.M. Forster: Howards End
Homecomings Most of us connect the notion of “home” or “childhood home” with one particular place, that innocent paradise we have since had to give up and keep searching for forever after. In Ruth Wilcox’s world, Howards End is that place; the countryside house where she was born, where her family often returns to spend […]
Read MoreEdith Wharton: The Age of Innocence
Love, Loneliness, and the Strictures of Society Imagine living in a world where life is governed by intricate rituals; a world “balanced so precariously that its harmony [can] be shattered by a whisper” (Wharton); a world ruled by self-declared experts on form, propriety and family history – read: scandal –; where everything is labeled and […]
Read MoreMichael Cox: The Meaning of Night
“For Death is the meaning of night, the eternal shadow into which all lives must fall, all hopes expire.” Phoebus Rainsford Daunt, we learn from this book’s alleged editor (one J.J. Antrobus,* who claims to have discovered the collection of quarto-leaf pages making up the “confession” reproduced herein amidst a series of papers recently left […]
Read MoreJhumpa Lahiri: Interpreter of Maladies
Interpreting Maladies An Interpreter of Maladies is not, as Mrs. Das thinks (and as the reader of Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories may initially be thinking, too), a medical doctor or a psychologist; someone who interprets the origin and meaning of his patients’ various illnesses and malaises and then prescribes the adequate treatment. No: an Interpreter of […]
Read MoreEllis Peters: A Morbid Taste for Bones
The First Chronicle of a Truly Rare Benedictine’s Adventures In a number of visions, a young monk of the Benedictine abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Shrewsbury believes he has encounters with St. Winifred, in her earthly life a girl from a remote Welsh village decapitated by an evil-spirited nobleman. The saint, Brother […]
Read MoreAgatha Christie: Miss Marple’s Final Cases
Dear Aunt Jane’s Final Short Cases “Miss Marple insinuated herself so quickly into my life that I hardly noticed her arrival,” Agatha Christie wrote in her posthumously-published autobiography (1977) about the elderly lady who, next to Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot, quickly became one of her most beloved characters. Somewhat resembling Christie‘s own grandmother and her […]
Read MoreEudora Welty: One Writer’s Beginnings
Glimpses Into a Unique Writer’s Mind “Listening,” “Learning to See” and “Finding a Voice,” Eudora Welty entitled the three chapters of her autobiography “One Writer’s Beginnings.” And while these may be steps that most writers will undergo at some point, Welty’s compact memoir is notable both because it allows a rare glimpse into the celebrated […]
Read MoreAgatha Christie: Miss Marple – The Complete Short Stories
Dear Aunt Jane’s Shorter Cases “Miss Marple insinuated herself so quickly into my life that I hardly noticed her arrival,” Agatha Christie wrote in her posthumously-published autobiography (1977) about the elderly lady who, next to Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot, quickly became one of her most beloved characters. Somewhat resembling Christie‘s own grandmother and her friends, […]
Read MoreOscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Beauty is a form of Genius.” Oscar Wilde was one of the foremost representatives of Aestheticism, a movement based on the notion that art exists for no other purpose than its existence itself (“l’art pour l’art”), not for the purpose of social and moral enlightenment. Born in Dublin and a graduate of Oxford’s Magdalen College, […]
Read MoreAgatha Christie: The Thirteen Problems
The Tuesday Club Puzzles “Miss Marple insinuated herself so quickly into my life that I hardly noticed her arrival,” Agatha Christie wrote in her posthumously-published autobiography (1977) about the elderly lady who, next to Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot, quickly became one of her most beloved characters. Somewhat resembling Christie‘s own grandmother and her friends, although […]
Read MoreJohn Nichols: A Fragile Beauty
In Harmony With the Earth “An albatross around his neck” John Nichols called his 1974 novel The Milagro Beanfield War in an afterword to the book’s 1994 anniversary edition, because he felt that particularly after Milagro had, over multiple obstacles, been made into a 1988 movie directed by Robert Redford, it had eclipsed much of […]
Read MoreSarah R. Labensky / Alan M. Hause: On Cooking
Culinary Arts “Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.” – Robert Burton, British author (1621). One of the many neat features of studying at Cornell University is that, even if you’re not enrolled in its famous School of Hotel Administration, you can attend one of the cooking and wine tasting classes […]
Read MoreVal McDermid: A Place of Execution
A multi-layered thriller which asks difficult questions. A Place of Execution is a chilling tale set in rural Derbyshire, and woven around the disappearance of Alison Carter, a teenage girl. The year is 1963, and the place is the (fictional) backwater village of Scardale; secluded from modern life, populated by only a few families who […]
Read MoreReginald Fleming Johnston: Twilight in the Forbidden City
A compelling (if biased) account reflecting unique insights You may have heard that “Twilight in the Forbidden City” is the book that Bernardo Bertolucci’s movie “The Last Emperor” is “based” on. If at all, however, this is true only with regard to the first part of the movie (the book was published in 1934, just […]
Read MoreTony Hillerman: Sacred Clowns
One of the Biggest Highlights in an Outstanding Series Against his editor’s counsel, Tony Hillerman switched from nonfiction to fiction writing over 30 years ago, with a story ultimately entitled “The Blessing Way;” introducing an (at the time) new type of hero and a new setting to the realm of the mystery novel – a […]
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