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Stephen Chbosky, Empty Author: The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Paperback, 2012, imusti, SIMON SCHUSTER)
Charlie writes letters to an unknown mail recipient, detailing his struggles with high school, family, and finding his place in …
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social …
Stories of Your Life and Others is a collection of short stories by American writer …
This short-story collection is ideas-driven, not character-driven, and very good. In a way, it feels like a throwback to the 1950s anthologies I read in my teens, minus any trite cliches or stereotyped characters. And the ideas presented in Chaing's stories are exciting. What if in ancient Babylonia, you could buil a tower to heaven? What would the logistics be? What if the letters used to activate a golem was like its DNA? What would the world be like if biblical angels came to earth fairly regularly? And that other one, about beauty - excellent food for thought.
The book does what the title says: It presented me with a largish number of socialist fairy tales (late 19th/early 20th century), a genre I didn't know existed - looking back, it makes perfect sense, though. - I can't say how comprehensive this overview is. The stories were all a bit similar and mostly not very good. I don't want to hold this against the book, so I'm unsure how to rate the book.
I know little about socialism and I actually learned some theory from the book; still, I would have preferred fewer stories and more about the authors, the audience, how these works were received and what influence they had. There is a foreword addressing just these points, true, and I guess I could always go to a history of socialism in the UK to find out more.
Leonora Carrington, the distinguished British-born Surrealist painter is also a writer of extraordinary imagination and …
The novel is not as surrealistic as I expected; there is a plot, of sorts, and it is easy to follow. But people say and sometimes do things that would strike you as unreasonable in a realistic novel, and nobody seems to mind. 3 1/2 stars, rounded down.
For me, the novel took off in the second half. At a good 150 pages, the sudden intrusion of 30 pages of found narrative right out of Dan Brown/Foucault's Pendulum/Indiana Jones/Knights Templar came as quite a surprise. It's straight horror-adventure fare, told in documents, not surreal at all. Or am I just so used to this kind of fiction that it doesn't strike me as odd anymore? Very enjoyable to read. From then on, the book takes an even weirder turn into apocalyptic winter.
Lud was a prosperous, bustling little country port, situated at the confluence of two rivers, …
Low Fantasy? Urban Fantasy, set in pre-industrial villages?
I remember the book from a German version of the late early 1990s - Chanticleer, the name of the protagonist's family, struck a chord. It's the story of a peaceful little town of successful burghers, with fairyland basically just across from it but never officially acknowledged. Still, there is an undercurrent of fairy dealings even in the town of Lud-in-the-Mist, possibly in the workers' class but creeping onto the upper strata as well.
The fairies here, appearing late in the book if at all, are of the Oberon/Titania kind, or Puck rather, stealing human children, weaving the their magic glamour and leading humans astray. (Which may do some of them good anyway.)
Reminded me of a poem by Mervyn Peake, "Lean sideways on the wind", which is also about staid citizens and the call of elfin horns. Three and a half stars, …
Low Fantasy? Urban Fantasy, set in pre-industrial villages?
I remember the book from a German version of the late early 1990s - Chanticleer, the name of the protagonist's family, struck a chord. It's the story of a peaceful little town of successful burghers, with fairyland basically just across from it but never officially acknowledged. Still, there is an undercurrent of fairy dealings even in the town of Lud-in-the-Mist, possibly in the workers' class but creeping onto the upper strata as well.
The fairies here, appearing late in the book if at all, are of the Oberon/Titania kind, or Puck rather, stealing human children, weaving the their magic glamour and leading humans astray. (Which may do some of them good anyway.)
Reminded me of a poem by Mervyn Peake, "Lean sideways on the wind", which is also about staid citizens and the call of elfin horns. Three and a half stars, rounded up.
xl, 1016 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : 20 cm
Very much what A.D. Jansen said in their Goodreads review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1341638505
(Couldn't have put it better myself. Not recognized enough; Borges; little variation but genius at what she does.)
Weakest stories: "Tempests" and "The Ring". Most fun & light-hearted story: "Ehrengard". Best stories: "Babette's Feast" and "The Immortal Story" - the last almost a parody of an O. Henry story, or of the darker origins of an O. Henry story, maybe.
