Гербранд Баккер0.0 When his twin brother is killed in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to give up university to take over his brother’s role on the small family farm, resigning himself to spending the rest of his days "with his head under a cow." The novel begins thirty years later with Helmer moving his invalid father upstairs out of the way, so that he can redecorate the downstairs, finally making it his own. Then Riet, the woman who had once been engaged to marry Helmer’s twin, appears and asks if her troubled eighteen-year-old son could come live on the farm for a while. Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, The Twin ultimately poses difficult questions about solitude and the possibility of taking life into one’s own hands. It chronicles a way of life that has resisted modernity, a world culturally apart yet laden with familiar longing.
Зои Хеллер3.9 Люди любят поговорить о своих убеждениях. Но как они воплощают их в жизнь?
Для героев своего нового романа Зои Хеллер - одновременно и злой следователь, и добрый. То с сочувствием, то с сарказмом она описывает их поступки и желания. Почти сорок лет назад Одри вышла замуж за адвоката Джоэля Литвинова, защитника угнетенных, обездоленных и бесправных. Спустя десятилетия супруги Литвиновы являются истинным символом либеральных ценностей, и детей своих они воспитывали в том же духе. Но на закате жизни выяснилось, что одними убеждениями человек сыт не будет, и даже у самых честных и принципиальных найдется свой скелет в шкафу. Едкая комедия, семейная драма, диагноз современной интеллигенции - каждый найдет свое в этом великолепном многоголосом романе.
Мюриель Барбери3.9 «Элегантность ежика» — второй роман французской писательницы Мюриель Барбери (р. 1969), который прославил ее имя не только во Франции, но и во многих других странах. Мюриель страстно влюблена в творчество Л. Н. Толстого и культуру Японии, и обе эти страсти она выразила в этой книге. Девочка-подросток, умная и образованная не по годам, пожилая консьержка, изучающая философские труды и слушающая Моцарта, богатый японец, поселившийся на склоне лет в роскошной парижской квартире… О том, что связывает этих людей, как меняется их жизнь после того, как они случайно находят друг друга, читатель узнает, открыв этот прекрасный, тонкий, увлекательный роман.
Роберт Эдрик0.0 In December 1922, Ivor Gurney, ex-soldier, poet and composer was transferred from Barnwood House Asylum in Gloucester to the City of London Mental Hospital, Dartford. Suffering from increasingly frequent and deepening bouts of ‘Systemized Delusional Insanity’ — paranoid schizophrenia — Gurney was to spend the rest of his life there until his death in 1937.
Neglected by the military and by his own family, and abandoned by all but a notable handful of his friends, Gurney descended into the madness and oblivion which he believed had long been waiting to claim him. But for a short period following his arrival at Dartford, there seemed to be those who continued to believe in Gurney’s capabilities. A belief that by having finally found some calm and ease in his life, he might at last achieve the status of a major composer that some considered him capable of becoming.
Few of those now responsible for Gurney, however, had any true idea of what he had endured on the Western Front during almost three years of military service, or of what he had already achieved in both his poetry and his compositions.
Christoph Hein0.0
Provincial Guldenberg is still reeling from World War II when a flood of German refugees arrives from the east, Bernhard Haber's family among them. Life is hard enough - Bernard's father has lost an arm and his carpenter's income. But added to this injury comes an accumulation of insults, as the upright town turns hostile toward the newcomers. After a string of mysterious losses - from the killing of the boy's dog to the unexplained death of his father - Bernhard is set on extracting revenge. Rich with psychological insight, Christopher Hein's acclaimed novel tells Bernhard's story across nearly fifty years, chronicling his remarkable rise from victimized outsider to Guldenberg's most prominent burgher.What began as a geographic dislocation evolves into a personal quest: the thirst for vengeance yields to the deeper need for a home and settling down proves more important than settling grudges. As the socialist state gives way to reunification and capitalism of the 1990's, Hein's masterful, multivoiced narration charts the transformation not just of one man but of an entire nation struggling to leave behind and claim a home.
Joseph O'Neill3.0 New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year
In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, and left alone after his English wife and son return to London, Hans van den Broek stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. As the two men share their vastly different experiences of contemporary immigrant life in America, an unforgettable portrait emerges of an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.
Росс Рейзин0.0 Sam Marsdyke is a lonely young man, dogged by an incident in his past and forced to work his family farm instead of attending school in his Yorkshire village. He methodically fills his life with daily routines and adheres to strict boundaries that keep him at a remove from the townspeople. But one day he spies Josephine, his new neighbor from London. From that moment on, S
Marilynne Robinson3.7 Hundreds of thousands of readers were enthralled and delighted by the luminous, tender voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
Now comes HOME, a deeply affecting novel that takes place in the same period and same Iowa town of Gilead. This is Jack's story. Jack - prodigal son of the Boughton family, godson and namesake of John Ames, gone twenty years - has come home looking for refuge and to try to make peace with a past littered with trouble and pain. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold down a job, Jack is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child. His sister Glory has also returned to Gilead, fleeing her own mistakes, to care for their dying father. Brilliant, loveable, wayward, Jack forges an intense new bond with Glory and engages painfully with his father and his father's old friend John Ames.
