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Search tags: epic-proportions
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review 2016-01-18 01:32
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
East of Eden - John Steinbeck

 

Description: Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity; the inexplicability of love; and the murderous consequences of love’s absence. RE-VISIT via BBC R4:



http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tq9r4

Episode 1/3: An epic tale exploring the nature of good and evil, inspired by the story of Cain and Abel. Cathy Ames is a young woman who has always filled her parents with a deep sense of unease. Adam and Charles Trask are brothers whose relationship veers dangerously between love and hate. Their lives are about to collide in a dark and febrile drama about familial love. Starring Holliday Grainger, Robin Laing and David Yip.

2/3 Adam has fallen under the spell of the enigmatic Cathy - a woman who has murdered her parents and now, on the run, has married Adam. He's captivated by her. But on their wedding night it was Adam's brother Cathy slept with. The newly-weds are about to start a new life in California, but it's not the one Adam imagines in this dark and febrile drama about familial love.

3/3: In order to protect the twins, Adam has always maintained that their mother is dead, but Cal, after listening in at a door, now knows the truth.

Of course it is always to have a re-visit via a spanking new production in another medium, however I can tell you this for sure, nothing is as good as the book, no siree.
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review 2015-02-05 22:53
Islands by Dan Sleigh
Islands - Dan Sleigh

Translated from Afrikaans by André Brink.
Withdrawn from Waltham Forest Public Libraries.

Description: A major work of literature, Islands is one of the most important novels to come out of South Africa. Crammed with characters and events, staggering in the scale of its adventures, this epic tale covers the first half-century of Dutch settlement at the Cape.

Opening: Seven of us, or at least seven, carried in our hearts the same woman, from before her birth until after her death.

Johan Anthoniszoon "Jan" van Riebeeck (April 21, 1619, Culemborg, Gelderland – January 18, 1677) was a Dutch colonial administrator and founder of Cape Town.

Feb 2015: It took me four years to get this one done and dusted. I would have preferred a straight forward history, as it was I had to wheedle out nuggets of information in much the mode of river gold-siever.

Pieter van Meerhof was from Copenhagen, Denmark. He arrived at the Cape on the ship Princess van Royael. He was an adventurer, traveller and surgeon. He also served as the superintendent on Robben Island. He went on th slaving ship Westwout. He got killed on this slaving expedition at Antogil Bay in Madagascar before 27 February 1668. This ship arrived back at the Cape on 30 September 1668. Meerhoffskasteel was named after him.

He got married to the khoikhoi Eva Krotoa on 26 April 1664. She was baptised as an adult at the Fort on 3 May 1662. She was raised in the Governor van Riebeeck"s home. - Source


Robben Island




 
 
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review 2015-01-23 21:25
Sunset Song
Sunset Song (Canongate Classic) - Lewis Grassic Gibbon

 



REVISIT VIA BBC: Listen here

Description: Divided between her love of the land and the harshness of farming life, young Chris Guthrie finally decides to stay in the rural community of her childhood. Yet World War I and the changes that follow make her a widow and mock the efforts of her youth.

Episode 1/2 (1 hour): Chris is torn between the love of the land and her ambition to be a teacher.

Episode 2/2: After her father's death, Chris is determined to work the farm, alone if needs be.

watch a dramatised production. Not the best of quality but hey! who's going to be so picky at this stage. There is, allegedly, a new film in production as we speak.




PAPER READ: fireside, sipping scotch and toasting Rabbie Burns.

Edited with an introduction by Tom Crawford. Map of Kinraddie

Dedication: To Jean Baxter

Arbuthnott is the real Kinraddie

Opening - KINRADDIE lands had been won by a Norman childe, Cospatric de Gondeshil, in the days of William de Lyon, when gryphons and such-like beasts still roamed the Scots countryside and folk would waken in their beds to hear the children screaming, with a great wolf-beast, come through the hide window, tearing at their throats.

Dunnottar Castle.

I know there are many historical-fictionistas out there who dislike dialects and there is a further modernist warning:

Gibbon's style is one of the great achievements of the trilogy and should be seen in relation to Scottish forerunners like John Galt as well as in the context of modernist innovators such as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and William Faulkner (Tom Crawford, Canongate Books)
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review 2014-08-03 08:20
The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen, Kenneth Steven (Translator)
The Half Brother - Lars Saabye Christensen,Kenneth Steven

bookshelves: translation, one-penny-wonder, norway, families, epic-proportions, summer-2012, tbr-busting-2012, published-2001, teh-demon-booze, teh-brillianz

Read from April 13 to June 26, 2012

 

Translated from the Norwegian by Kenneth Steven

Opening: Thirteen hours in Berlin and I was already a wreck.

Came across this author/translator combination in the menacing short story about a barber in The Norwegian Feeling for Real

Page 19: 'Like a Sphinx,' I replied. 'Like a blue sphinx that has torn loose from a floodlit plinth.'

Page 29:  'Now I'll tell you word for word what that wretched creature wrote! We, his close followers, now bow our heads at his death.' (This refers to the afternoon edition of Aftenposten 7th May 1945.)

 

"Chocolate Girl  pulls Arnold down beside her and puts her arms around him. Arnold grows in her arms and she explains just about everything to him."

page 141:
Mundus vult decipi - The world will be taken in
Ergo decipiatur - thus it is deceived

Page 159: 'He talks like a novel we once threw in the stove.'

 

Page 177: Røst ö, a fullstop in the sea "

Page 179: 

'And besides, they haven't tarmac-ed over the Moskenes whirlpool yet.'

 

Page 239: "  Cliff Richard - Living Doll Mum and Dad danced in the living room and for the remainder of the night they were equally loud in bed."

 

Page 332: 'Why is it called Greenland when there is only ice there?' I asked. 'Because the first people who reached it found a beautiful flower called convallaria, Barnum.'"

Page 335: I skipped supper and went to bed before ten, even though I wasn't especially tired and I actually loathed the slow movement before you fell asleep, when you just lie there and time stretches like an elastic band, like round brackets, like a blue balloon.

Page 475: And Lauren Bacall looks at Bogart - she glows, glows in black and white, and her nostrils flare like an animal's, the nostrils of a lioness. And she laughs - Bacall's laughter - she mocks him, You're a mess, aren't you? And Bogart just answers, I'm not very tall either. Next time I'll come on stilts.

 

Page 531: Sinnataggen, Frogner Park. Famous statue of an angry child."

IMHO The defining moment of this story comes on Page 686: 'What's your favourite film?'

'Hunger,' I told her.

She smiled, pleased with the answer. 'So your script is a kind of response to Hamsun?'

'You could well say that,' I agreed.

'And your description of this farm, which is almost synonomous with a penal colony, is a kind of revolt against Hamsun's fascism?'

 

"

The best summation I can come up with is that this documents the Norwegians return to Hamsun's body of work in these years since he wrote that damnable obituary and this story is Hamsun-esque with a modern makeover. Truly astounding.

 

 

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