A spoof encyclopedia of contemporary accepted wisdom and commonplaces, the Dictionary of Received Ideas sees Flaubert at his witty and satirical best. Perhaps intended as a companion to his final, unfinished novel Bouvard and Pecuchet, this compilation was the result of a lifetime of collecting the absurd and the cliched with darkly humorous explanations.
A playful look at nineteenth-century values and talking points, this dictionary will provide enduring entertainment and prove relevant even today.
The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind.
From a girls' fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America.
England, in the mid-fifties. Meg Bailey has always aspired to live a respectable life. With her best friend, Roxane, she moves from secondary school to an un-Bohemian art college in Oxford.
Under the watchful eye of Roxanne's mother, Mrs Wheeler, the two girls flourish in Oxfordian society. But Meg constantly longs for more. Not content to stay in Oxford, she finds a job in London.
Roxane stays behind and marries Dick, a man of Mrs Wheeler's choosing. As Meg's independence grows, Dick suddenly appears in London for work. A connection to her past, Meg and Dick's friendship flourishes, blurring the lines of loyalty between what is and what was in a way that changes life for these three friends forever.
As sharp and starling now as when it was written, this unflinching and candid book of love and betrayal encapsulates Diana Athill's gift of storytelling at its finest.
φίλτρα αναζήτησης:
Καθαρισμός Όλων