![]() ![]() ![]() Léger, though, is well aware of this, and Exposition is in many ways a homage to the person behind the reputation, irrespective of whom she may have taken as her lover. The danger would thus be to become too fascinated with the many popular narratives surrounding Castiglione and forget about the woman herself. Castiglione was, after all, a highly significant and well-known figure in the French salons of the latter half of the nineteenth century: famous for her beauty, she was for some time a mistress of Emperor Napoleon III. ![]() Amanda DeMarco’s vibrant translation, if a little overfaithful to the original French at times, successfully renders Léger’s intensely visual style, capturing her trains of thought and many digressions with precision and flair.Īny book describing the life of the Countess of Castiglione, whether non-fiction, fiction or the curious mix of the two that it is here, is constantly vulnerable to the risk of relaying gossip. ![]() Specifically, the narrator (a half-fictional version of Léger herself) is fascinated by the visits Castiglione made to be photographed in the same Paris studio over four decades – turbulent years which saw her reach the height of power and influence and ultimately the very depths of isolation and poverty. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London and Victoria Miro, London ![]() ![]() These portraits show Neel’s love for and familiarity with the neighbourhood – its stars, its politics, its constant evolution – and is today an invaluable record of an important milieu.Ībdul Rahman (1964), Alice Neel. Cayton, who Neel painted in 1949, the year he moved to the area from Chicago, had co-authored the influential Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City four years previous. A relaxed portrait of Harold Cruse (1950) was made 17 years before he wrote The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, whereas Horace R. Childress had only recently embarked on her writing career, but later won acclaim for both her plays and her novels, which included Like One of The Family (1956) and A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich (1973). In Alice Childress (1950) Neel crafts a portrait of the playwright, who was a member of the American Negro Theatre, that nods to her intelligence through her dignified pose and expression. Many were important civil rights activists, members of the immigrant community, and writers, who were not necessarily well-known at the time but would go on to be. ![]() ![]() The governess arrives at Bly, where she is met by a beautiful little girl, eight-year-old Flora, and the housekeeper Mrs. There is one condition: She cannot contact him at any time and must deal with all problems herself. The previous governess has died and the boy is now away at school and the girl in the care of the housekeper. She was quite smitten with him, and he was able to convince her to accept the position of governess to his niece and nephew at his country house Bly. Three days later, the manuscript arrives by the post, and Douglas begins his story.īefore reading the manuscript, Douglas explains that the young woman had interviewed for her first governess job with a gentleman on London's Harley Street. It was written by a woman, now dead, who was once his younger sister's governess and with whom he was in love. ![]() He keeps the manuscript of the story locked in a drawer at home in London. A man named Griffin tells a ghost story featuring a little boy, and a man named Douglas proposes to tell a true story about two children. The novel opens as a group of friends sit around the fireplace of an old house in 1890s England, telling ghost stories. ![]() ![]() ![]() Oddly, for something I do every day, I can’t remember many meals in detail, while it is far easier for me to call up favorite movies, faithful friendships, graduations. I don’t mean celebratory dinners, good fellowship I mean salivation, mastication, and peristalsis. I have to wonder whether any of the true highlights of my fortysome years have had to do with food. Science: Obesity Gene Linked to Hunger Hormone.New York Times: Overweight? Maybe You Really Can Blame Your Genes.“If it were just my family’s problem, I don’t know that I would necessarily have made a novel, but in that it’s also a larger social problem, I thought it was worth writing about,” Shriver told Here & Now. Her brother died days after she wrote the column. She wrote an op-ed piece for the Guardian in 2009 about her morbidly obese big brother: “ Lionel Shriver: My brother is eating himself to death.” ![]() Shriver mines some of her own family history for the novel. In her new novel “ Big Brother,” the topic is morbid obesity.Īn Iowan couple, Pandora and Fletcher have their lives upended when Pandora’s 400-pound brother Edison comes to live with them. Her acclaimed 2011 novel “ We Need to Talk About Kevin” looked at the aftermath of a high school massacre, and her 2010 book “ So Much for That” critiqued the U.S. Author Lionel Shriver has taken on hot-button topics before. ![]() ![]() He needs a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament in order to uncover a security problem. To make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships-only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.Ĭonvinced she’s going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game’s creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. But the bounty-hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down Warcross players who bet on the game illegally. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. ![]() ![]() ![]() From #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu-when a game called Warcross takes the world by storm, one girl hacks her way into its dangerous depths.įor the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game-it’s a way of life. ![]() ![]() ![]() When a case of mistaken identity leads to a devilish dance of seduction and an indelicate wager is made, this marchioness will show her marauding marquess just who he married. Determined to carry on his rakish ways provoking his straitlaced duke of a father and scandalizing the ton, the minute Winter ties the knot, he dumps his starry-eyed debutante of a bride at his country estate and hies back to London.īut three years later, forgotten in slumbering Chelmsford while her husband gallivants in town, Lady Isobel Vance decides that enough is enough and she’s ready to take matters into her own hands. Lord Winter Vance, a notorious scoundrel and the Marquess of Roth, must marry to save his inheritance, but a wife is the last thing he needs. ![]() ![]() Sleeping Beauty meets Much Ado About Nothing ![]() ![]() At a time when so much of our daily media diet is toxic and making us spiritually sick, The Wisdom Pyramid suggests that we become healthy and wise when we reorient our lives around God―the foundation of truth and the eternal source of wisdom.įor more information on The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World and how to receive for your partnering gift please click here. In an effort to help us consume a more balanced, healthy diet of information, our guest Brett McCracken has created the “Wisdom Pyramid.” Inspired by the food pyramid model, the Wisdom Pyramid challenges us to increase our intake of enduring, trustworthy sources (like the Bible) while moderating our consumption of less reliable sources (like the Internet and social media). In the face of dizzying distractions we encounter on a daily basis, Christians are called to cultivate wisdom. ![]() ![]() Why aren’t we wise? One of the greatest paradoxes of the information age-a historic period of unparalleled access to information and knowledge-is that we are woefully unwise. ![]() ![]() ![]() Livia orchestrates a Satanic mass to distract herself from a recently remembered trauma, and two lovers must resolve their differences in order to defy a lethal curse. An Oxford historian, in bitter competition with the rest of her faculty members, discovers an ancient tome whose sinister contents might solve her problems. In the 13 darkly audacious stories of Parallel Hells, we meet a golem, made of clay, learning that its powers far exceed its Creator's expectations a ruined mansion which grants the secret wishes of a group of revellers and a notorious murderer who discovers her Viking husband is not what he seems.Īsta is an ancient being who feasts on the shame of contemporary Londoners, who now, beyond anything, wishes only to fit in with a group of friends they will long outlive. Some say that hell is other people, and some say hell is loneliness. ![]() In this deliciously strange debut collection, Leon Craig draws on folklore and gothic horror in refreshingly inventive ways to explore queer identity, love, power and the complicated nature of being human. ![]() ![]() It had been so long since he’d been touched. Garth dragged his hands up the man’s sides, enjoyed the firm ridges of honed flesh through thin cotton, the hills and valleys of ribcage, and the strangled groan his touch elicited in another human being. It was hot, forbidden to acknowledge and accept the invasion of tall, lean muscle into his space, to feel the way the man had difficulty catching his breath and the quick thrum of his heart when their chests met. He knew he should pull away, yet curling his fingers through the man’s empty belt loops came far too naturally. ![]() It was impossible not to as preciously as he was held and as rigid as the anonymous cock was which insistently pressed his. ![]() No features, no facial landmarks to distinguish this man from any of the other guests. Shadows hid the man’s face dipping his eye sockets, jaw, throat into blackness where the planes were merely lit to charcoal gray obscurity. His fingers touched the top whirls of his ears. The man held Garth’s face, a solid warm palm on either side. Garth is a Priest and this book will be the first in the Men of the Cloth series. ![]() This is from Faking Perfection, coming out through DreamSpinner Press. CAUTION: Male/Male Scene Ahead (male/male – PG 13) ![]() ![]() ![]() There is also a reference to a classification difference of 1 pound that kept Severin from becoming not only a good wrestler but a great one. The better the book, the higher the weight class. The title of the book refers to how Severin classifies novels into weight classes. He comes from Vienna and has a lot to say about a lot, every though the narrator has him as brooding and moody most of the time. Short and ‘bear-like’, he is a wrestling coach first and a teacher of German language second. He could be a portrait of the author himself. The narrator never seems to be named but the main character in the book is named Severin Winter (the book says it is pronounced SAY-VER-INbut I contend it is pronounced as it is written). This novel is another example of John Irving’s showcase of characterization. Of course, they may not see eye to eye on anything, but isn’t that what makes marriage interesting? Do opposites attract? Apparently they do…and they make better marriage partners than ones that have similar interests. ![]() |