Suzy McKee Charnas0.0 25 years after the landmark publication of Walk to the End of the World, Suzy McKee Charnas has completed her epic tale of the Holdfast.
The Fems were slaves of the men in the Holdfast. When Alldera escaped her slavery, she led a band of rebels to build a world where women rule. Now Sorrel, Alldera's daughter, joins her mother. She brings with her a young boy she has adopted.
The Conqueror's Child completes an epic history of life and love and the war between men and women which will stand for generations to come.
Джуди Будниц0.0 The astonishing Orange Prize-shortlisted debut from the author of ‘Flying Leap’ and ‘Nice Big American Baby’.
This is a truly strange and striking tale that begins in the deep, and deeply magical, European forest, in the world depicted in Chagall’s paintings and Grimms’ Fairy Tales, and proceeds to tell the story of four generations of women from one fated family.
Budnitz builds her book with wit and art somewhere in the gaps between magic realism, family saga and female bildungsroman. She marries great technical skill to quirky humour and dizzying metaphor. She has an uncanny knack for the destabilizing and indelible image, but does not abandon sense for sensibility. She is always readable, albeit strangely so. She might yet be an Americanized heir to the throne left vacant by Angela Carter.
Penelope Lively0.0 On holiday with her laptop-obsessed husband, Myra undergoes a quiet transformation. The Australian landscape (even in paintings) seems to have an almost miraculous effect on her, and when they go on a bus tour of the Blue Mountains, she finds herself suddenly broaching the taboo subject--Bridget Cashel, her husband's mistress. Penelope Lively limns the tense moment: "Myra listened to her own words with astonishment and satisfaction. George too listened, apparently. His eyes leapt to life. Myra saw surprise, dismay and a process of rapid thought." By the end of the ride, alas, reality returns, and she sees they will not again speak so openly. "What had passed between them today would remain for ever beyond the Blue Mountains, potent and powerful. She felt a touch sorry for Bridget Cashel. And possibly for George." A trainee at a local manor is increasingly drawn to the Medusa Fountain. Though he knows it's against the rules, one day he joins the nymphs, a transgression that modulates unavailingly into a shocking conclusion--the daring subtlety of Lively's art turning a fable into a tragedy. Another character, stuck in Slovenia following a conference, suddenly realizes "there are realities which for most of us are beyond imagination." Not beyond this author's, however.
The Five Thousand and One Nights is a collection of quiet wit. Its author tends to view her characters sympathetically, especially as they cope with change and the passage of time. The title story is more assertive in mode, and contains a very modern Sultan and Scheherazade. At 42, she is still narrating, though the Sultan has recently found her tales more addling than enjoyable: "You're using some rather confusing words these days, you know. What does sensibility mean? And I get muddled about the settings. Where's Devonshire?" It takes the narrative of a certain Mrs. Dalloway to make him fight back, getting in on the story game with some action- and violence-packed prose. This is fairy-tale revisionism at its best and reads as if Lively delighted in its creation. It is the most irresistible, and exhilarating, story of this fine collection.
Ким Стэнли Робинсон3.1 Ученый-биолог Смит в лаборатории на Марсе пытается изучать особенности генетического развития земных водных млекопитающих, но его успехи весьма сомнительны. К тому же Смит терпит неудачу в личных отношениях со своей девушкой. Между тем, изыскания Смита приводят его к более чем неожиданным выводам.
