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In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly 100, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half-brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle.
The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another.
The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the accident at Bennington, the two friends - once inseparable roommates - haven't spoken in over a year. Lucy - always fearless and independent - helps Alice emerge from her flat and explore the country. But soon a familiar feeling starts to overtake Alice - she feels controlled and stifled by Lucy at every turn. Then Alice's husband, John, goes missing, and Alice starts to question everything around her.
Auntie Poldi can think of no finer place to wait for death than Sicily. All she asks is a sea view, fine wine (and plenty of it), and her family close around. When death instead takes her handsome young friend Valentino - and under mysterious circumstances at that - Poldi will not take it lying down. Perhaps it's in her blood, but Auntie Poldi's hunting instincts have never felt more alive. Justice must be served - if it's the last thing she does....
Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life - except when there’s a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora’s dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. Then one morning she returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the neighborhood, and the fault lines begin to open: on the block, at her job, especially in her marriage.
Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at 60 and a central pillar of the women's movement for decades, is a figure who inspires others to change the world and make the most of themselves. Upon hearing Faith speak for the first time, Greer - madly in love with her devoted boyfriend, Cory, but still full of longing for an ambition that she can't quite place - is awestruck.
In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly 100, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half-brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle.
The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another.
The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the accident at Bennington, the two friends - once inseparable roommates - haven't spoken in over a year. Lucy - always fearless and independent - helps Alice emerge from her flat and explore the country. But soon a familiar feeling starts to overtake Alice - she feels controlled and stifled by Lucy at every turn. Then Alice's husband, John, goes missing, and Alice starts to question everything around her.
Auntie Poldi can think of no finer place to wait for death than Sicily. All she asks is a sea view, fine wine (and plenty of it), and her family close around. When death instead takes her handsome young friend Valentino - and under mysterious circumstances at that - Poldi will not take it lying down. Perhaps it's in her blood, but Auntie Poldi's hunting instincts have never felt more alive. Justice must be served - if it's the last thing she does....
Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life - except when there’s a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora’s dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. Then one morning she returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the neighborhood, and the fault lines begin to open: on the block, at her job, especially in her marriage.
Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at 60 and a central pillar of the women's movement for decades, is a figure who inspires others to change the world and make the most of themselves. Upon hearing Faith speak for the first time, Greer - madly in love with her devoted boyfriend, Cory, but still full of longing for an ambition that she can't quite place - is awestruck.
What if our homes could tell the stories of others who lived there before us? Set in a small village near Paris, The Balcony follows the inhabitants of a single estate - including a manor and a servants' cottage - over the course of several generations, from the Belle Époque to the present day, introducing us to a fascinating cast of characters. A young American au pair develops a crush on her brilliant employer. An ex-courtesan shocks the servants, a Jewish couple in hiding from the Gestapo attract the curiosity of the neighbors, and a housewife begins an affair.
Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. The first section, "Folly", tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. A tender and exquisite account of an unexpected romance that takes place in New York during the early years of the Iraq War.
Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survives. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.
Kit Raine, an American writer living in Tuscany, is working on a biography of her close friend, a complex woman who continues to cast a shadow on Kit’s own life. Her work is waylaid by the arrival of three women - Julia, Camille, and Susan - all of whom have launched a recent and spontaneous friendship that will uproot them completely and redirect their lives. Susan, the most adventurous of the three, has enticed them to subvert expectations of staid retirement by taking a lease on a big, beautiful house in Tuscany.
In the well-heeled milieu of New York's Upper East Side, coolly elegant Philippa Lye is the woman no one can stop talking about. Despite a shadowy past, Philippa has somehow married the scion of the last family-held investment bank in the city. And although her wealth and connections put her in the center of this world, she refuses to conform to its gossip-fueled culture. Then, into her precariously balanced life, come two women.
With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history - culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives.
Laura hails from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, born into old money, drifting aimlessly into her early 30s. One weekend in 1981 she meets Jefferson. The two sleep together. He vanishes. And Laura realizes she's pregnant. Enter: Emma.
A mind-expanding dive into a lost chapter of 1968, featuring the famous and forgotten: Van Morrison, folkie-turned-cult-leader Mel Lyman, Timothy Leary, James Brown, and many more. Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is an iconic rock album shrouded in legend, a masterpiece that has touched generations of listeners and influenced everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Martin Scorsese. In his first book, acclaimed musician and journalist Ryan H. Walsh unearths the album's fascinating backstory - along with the untold secrets of the time and place that birthed it: Boston 1968.
In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself - shadowed and luminous at once - we follow the story of 14-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war.
Throughout the 10 stories in You Think It, I'll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided. With moving insight and uncanny precision, Curtis Sittenfeld pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life. Indeed, she writes what we're all thinking - if only we could express it with the wit of a master satirist, the storytelling gifts of an old-fashioned raconteur, and the vision of an American original.
As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived. And as he guides us around the city, delighting in its cultural, architectural, political, and social history, he interweaves the memories that are attached to particular places and moments.
They meet at a local tavern in the small town of Belleville, Delaware. Polly is set on heading west. Adam says he's also passing through. Yet she stays, and he stays - drawn to this mysterious redhead whose quiet stillness both unnerves and excites him. Over the course of a punishing summer, Polly and Adam abandon themselves to a steamy, inexorable affair. Still, each holds something back from the other - dangerous, even lethal secrets. Then someone dies. Was it an accident or part of a plan? By now Adam and Polly are so ensnared in each other's lives and lies that neither one knows how to get away.
A sparkling, propulsive new novel from the best-selling author of The Imperfectionists
Rome, 1955. The artists gather for a picture at a party in an ancient villa. Bear Bavinsky, creator of vast canvases, larger than life, is at the center of the picture. His wife, Natalie, edges out of the shot.
From the side of the room watches little Pinch - their son. At five years old he loves Bear almost as much as he fears him. After Bear abandons their family, Pinch will still worship him, striving to live up to the Bavinsky name, while Natalie, a ceramicist, cannot hope to be more than a forgotten muse. Trying to burn brightly in his father's shadow, Pinch's attempts flicker and die. Yet by the end of a career of twists and compromises, Pinch will enact an unexpected rebellion that will leave forever his mark upon the Bear Bavinsky legacy.
A masterful, original examination of love, duty, art and fame, The Italian Teacher cements Tom Rachman as among this generation's most exciting literary voices.
I remember reading Loving Picasso, then seeing Surviving Picasso, and then Experiencing Picasso...that is...trying not to let my new found perspective of his soul-sucking ego affect my appreciation of his paintings when I saw them. At first, I didn't picture the battered women or recall their shattered spirits, the suicides, the depression...not while looking at such unworldly talent . But, I wondered about Francoise Gilot, a beautiful young woman and an accomplished artist herself, to whom Picasso said when Gilot told him she was also a painter, [quote]That is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Girls who look like you could never be painters.[end quote] She was 21, and the great Picasso was over 60.
How did she survive Picasso?
In the huge shadow cast by such staggering greatness, how does anyone catch and hold enough sunshine to thrive, and not just fade out and blow away?
Rachman, adeptly captures that struggle from the perspective of a child living with a father that is an artist as big as his reputation, a charismatic expressionist known as much for his womanizing persona as his art, Bear Bavinsky. Reminded me a little of Picasso, with all of the narcissism, but without the intentional cruelty. Bear is a better artist than father and a better father than he is a husband, but he is a great painter. Is that enough? The characters in The Italian Teacher will either find a way out of Bear's shadow, or be swallowed into him.
The story begins in Rome where the artist lives with his current delicate-artist-wife, Natalie, and their 5 yr. old son, Pinch. Little Pinch adores his Papa, always experiencing him in the incandescence of his fame. The mother makes pottery under such encouragement from Bear as, *Not everyone is an artist,* and other supportive bon mots. [All those cuts sound so pretty when said with a pat on the shoulder and a wink.] Pinch learns to pity his poor mother, seeing her and her clumsy art only through Bear's disapproving eyes as he brushes by her, off on his way to some opening or gala in his honor, and into the arms of another adoring young sycophant, with cute little Pinch by his side, performing like a well-trained parrot. And so Pinch grows up, an unnourished seedling without individual context or safe harbor, thinking his mother weak and his father nothing less than a god. But Bear quickly moves on to the next event, the next woman he fancies, the next canvas, spreading his charms (and his seed) and eventually totaling a dozen or so wives and 17 children; all whom he loves, skittering about his feet, calling him Papa -- until he doesn't. Once the littles are grown and with needs or wants, Bear moves on abandoning responsibilities to chase fame, leaving another broken family struggling in the wake of his ego.
Pinch stays in the closest orbit to Bear through the years of changing sceneries and families.
As if unable to stand on his own, he bends himself and his life to fit into a relationship with his father, twisting and turning further from his own desires and needs to fit into Bear's. From a child, he had dreamed of following in his father's steps and being a painter -- until his father ridiculed his work. Like a puppy kicked aside, he gathers himself up and settles on the next closest thing he can think of, being a writer/art major, with dreams of writing about his father and his illustrious career. Bear scoffs, giving a hardy laugh at this modified ambition. After telling Pinch his writing is no better than the painting he attempted, he finally growls at the young man, *You work for ME!*
This is the novel's pivotal point and Rachman handles this moment with the turn toward a clever benevolence. *Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep,* said Milton. Seeds have been planted and Bear will continue to finally encourage something in Pinch. I wasn't a big fan of The Imperfectionists, but I recall the talent of the author. The Italian Teacher struck me as Rachman's better book, even feeling a bit Shakespearean at times. There are weaknesses, plausibility, characters or events that are close to something you recall in history or literature that weaken a strong narrative into an echo, or caricature. But those are teeny little personal gripes that didn't affect my overall satisfaction and enjoyment.
In an interview, the author said he has always been fascinated by art and the artists, [quote] What is the nature of creativity? How do they come up with these ideas? Do they have a separate sort of vision? Are they people who deserve to have a different set of rules than the rest of us? [end quote] Who of us haven't entertained that discussion after an art gallery stroll and a few nibbles of cheese chased by copious glasses of free cheap Pinot? This book offers some exploration of that inquiry, but tilts that focus more toward whether or not that *different set of rules* translates to family and accountability. I believe Rachman gives us his answer as to whether or not *any people deserve a different set of rules than the rest of us* by serving up one of the tastiest and most satisfying dishes of revenge I've come across in a while. Subtle but with the slightest undertones of sarcasm, finishing with a bitter bite.
It's a satisfying, intelligently written novel that gifts a reader with avenues of possible mental meandering, and what more can you ask of an author than to trust his reader's and give them something excellent to chew on. BTW: *Can you separate an artist from their art? I can look at a Picasso (love doing so), but I can't watch House of Cards, I wouldn't eat a jello pudding pop with a gun against my head, and if the Pope kicked my dog, there would be a rumble. And, I would personally knit Ms. Gilot one of those dreadful but wonderful P*ssy Hats.
I really enjoyed this book. It is well written, but moves along quite quickly, spanning a full lifetime, while commenting on the relevance of legacy and the intrinsic value of art.