Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. Rudyard Kipling
When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me ny
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. Rudyard Kipling
When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and cousins. Least of the lesser goddesses, our powers were so modest they could scarcely ensure our eternities. We spoke to fish and nurtured flowers, coaxed drops from the clouds or salt from the waves. That word, nymph, paced out the length and breadth of our futures. In our language, it means not just goddess, but bride.
I was first held captive by Madeline Miller’s voice a couple of years ago when I had the good fortune of reading The Song of Achilles. I knew then that I wanted to hear that voice again.
As legend has it, Circe, due to her wilful ways, is banished by her father Helios ( Titan god of the sun) and confined by his will to the island of Aiaia.
The next morning I stepped into my father’s chariot and we lurched into the dark sky without a word. The air blew past us; night receded at every turning of the wheels. I looked over the side, trying to track the rivers and seas, the shadowed valleys, but we were going too fast, and I recognized nothing. What island is it? My father did not answer, his jaw was set, his lips bled pale with anger. My old burns were aching from standing so close to him. I closed my eyes. The lands streamed by and the wind ran across my skin. I imagined pitching over that golden rail into the open air below. It would feel good, I thought, before I hit. We landed with a jolt, I opened my eyes to see a high, soft hill, thick with grass. My father stared straight ahead. I felt a sudden urge to fall on my knees and beg him to take me back, but instead I forced myself to step down onto the ground. The moment my foot touched, he and his chariot were gone.
But Circe did not wilt within her exile, she explored her new island prison, honed her art of witchcraft; employing the islands flora and fauna and fungi to fuel her burgeoning powers. She learned to live alone and in harmony with the islands abundant wildlife. Then one day, while tending her garden, she hears a voice and sees a young man leaning against her house. It is the Olympian god, Hermes, emissary and messenger of the gods. He will not be the last god or mortal to visit these shores.
I am not ashamed to admit I was completely swept away by this tale, by Circe’s coming of age, her tales of family feuds and rivaling gods. Circe’s is a tale of love and loss and discovery, of learning the art of restraint, of celebrating life and embracing her inner strength. I found myself rooting for her every step of the way despite her many flaws, like the fact that she transformed Odysseus’s men to pigs.
Honestly I have never read anything like this. Madeline Miller not only held me captive but had me thirsting for more knowledge of the Olympian gods and Titans alike, not to mention the mortals, those Greek heroes, and their many monsters like Scylla and Charybdis. I cannot believe she has left me wanting to read The Odyssey. How else will I ever slake this thirst?
Oh and yes, Madeline, I most assuredly do want to hear your voice again. Please.
My sincere thanks to Pamela Brown and Lee Boudreaux Books, Little Brown and Company for this advanced readers copy. My god I loved it!
First of all the physical; the book I see looking up at me from my coffee table. It looks worn, well thumbed, wel Hands Down my Favourite Book in 2014
First of all the physical; the book I see looking up at me from my coffee table. It looks worn, well thumbed, well read, pages and cover alike, beginning to curl up, and soiled by use. Well that and all the casual (I take books with me) acquaintances, to the one, they all had to pick it up, look it over. It may look well rode, but it still feels soft, warm and pliant in my hand. The stars twinkle up at me from the cover and I wish, I wish, I wish it wasn’t over. I long to go back…….
When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake – not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over. The sow had it by the neck and the shoat by the tail.
“You pigs git” Augustus said kicking the shoat. “Head on down to the creek if you want to eat that snake.” It was the porch he begrudged them not the snake. Pigs on the porch just made things hotter and things were already hot enough. He stepped down into the dusty yard and walked around to the springhouse to get his jug. The sun was still high, sulled in the sky like a mule, but Augustus had a keen eye for sun, and to his eye the long light from the west had taken on an encouraging slant.
And so it begins. I have read a number of different reviews; many of which discuss how long it took for them to get invested in the story. Not so for me, I gotta say that I latched on to Augustus McCrae pretty early on and even though I can feel, quite acutely, Captain Call’s presence every time he crosses the page with Hell Bitch, it is Gus’s company I seek on this trail. Makes sense I guess, I met him first, back in 1876 in Lonesome Dove, Texas.
It has been quite a journey. Make no mistake; I spent time with all of the Hat Creek Cattle Company, not just the ex-rangers, as they drove their herd out of Texas and across the Great Plains, bound for Montana. I pined with Dish, listened to the Irish sing, and the remuda nicker and whinny. I ate dust with Newt on the heels of the herd and scouted for water and crossings with Deets. I was there for the water moccasins, the grizzlies and the cloud of grasshoppers, not to mention Blue Duck, one of the most frightening, sinister men ever; he made the hair on the back of my neck, my arms and everywhere else stand, stock still at attention. I seethed at Jake, swam with Pea Eye and felt Lorena’s despair way down deep in my bones. I am just skimming the surface here, there are others with tales to tell, like July Johnson, the painfully shy sheriff from Arkansas, searching for his wife and Clara, the dark haired beauty with the scorching tongue in Nebraska, who may just sear you with her words.
But back at the fire I would curl up and listen to Gus talk, reassured by his very presence, as we have a drink, play a hand or two and prepare to bed down. Amid all the words, in all the books, on all of the pages I have ever travelled, never before have I met a man so damn finely crafted, so carefully rendered, so agonizingly authentic as Augustus McCrae. It is as though I know him for real. Honestly. I enjoy his company and even now, miss his conversation. Yes, I want to go back……….. Ride one more time with the Hat Creek Cattle Company, who don’t rent pigs.
I god, folks, seriously, what is happening here? I do not read westerns. Fact is, were I not a member of this wonderful on line community of book lovers, chances are pretty good that I would never have read this book. Do not make that mistake and yes, I Thank You one and all! ...more
Yowsers, there are over twenty thousand reviews of this book on this site alone, so no, cannot say that ex ovo omnia: everything comes out of an egg.
Yowsers, there are over twenty thousand reviews of this book on this site alone, so no, cannot say that I’ve read them all, but it does get me to thinking ………..
I enjoyed this book way more than I expected. And yet my expectations were misinformed by assumptions, most of which were my own, not the least of which was about the title.
Sometimes when reading I feel compelled to slow down, take my time. Such was the case with this book. It’s a marathon, not a sprint and I was fine with that. I felt comfortable with the pace and manner in which Eugenides chose to tell this story.
This story affected me deeply. It is funny and tragic Rich and abundant Tender and expansive
In fact I love what Andrew O’Hehir said: “A heart breaking tale of growing up awkward and lonely in 70’s suburbia.”
It is as much a historic and social novel of Detroit as it is about immigration and assimilation on a much grander stage and it is narrated by one of the most complex, engaging and memorable characters I have ever encountered. I will not soon forget you Cal.
Some would say that this is an American story. And it is. It is also a very human one.
Pssst book junkies I found this at one of my city's used bookstores in the downtown core. It is a beautiful hard cover, with a magnificent jacket. Love the cover design and, and , and, it is in pristine condition. Definitely leave laying about worthy!...more
I walk these streets of New York City with Mrs. Frances Osgood ( 1811- 1850), an American poet and one of the most popular woman writers of Breathless
I walk these streets of New York City with Mrs. Frances Osgood ( 1811- 1850), an American poet and one of the most popular woman writers of her time, also famous for her exchange of romantic poems with Edgar Allan Poe. It is 1845 and Mrs. Osgood is en route to Miss Anne Charlotte Lynch’s conversazione, where none other than Mr. Poe, whose poem, ‘The Raven’, has reached fever pitch adulation here, is expected to attend.
Earlier when Mrs. Osgood was reading this poem out loud to her daughters, she shared her own thoughts:
“That’s it!” I dropped the magazine. “What Mamma?” asked Vinnie “This silly alliteration – it’s clinkering, clattering claptrap.” Ellen’s face was as straight as a judge’s on court day. “You mean it’s terrible, trifling trash?” I nodded. “Jumbling, jarring junk.” Vinnie jumped up, trailing shawls like a mummy trails bandages. “No it’s piggly, wiggly poop!” “Don’t be rude, Vinnie,” I said. The girls glanced at each other. I frowned. “It’s exasperating, excruciating excrement.”
She was completely unprepared then for her feelings, when having once met this author, whose work she ridiculed, she learns that he admires her own work.
I was still quite young when I first read and loved Edgar Allan Poe’s work. In fact I credit him, even today, with my love of poetry. Truly, he made me want to read more and so I did. Just as I now follow Frances Osgood and Edgar Poe through the streets of this incredible city, captured so breathlessly; it’s political climate and historic events, changing, evolving, shaping life and further defining this time and place. Cullen does not shine the light on Edgar here, after all this is titled ‘Mrs. Poe’, but allows him some shade in which to command this stage, as Frances tells us her story, and the air about me sizzles and snaps every time Mr. Edgar Poe steps onto and owns the page.
Eliza, in Mr. Bryant’s circle with her husband, saw Mr. Poe enter with Miss Lynch. She sought my gaze.
“I see nothing wrong with the Irish, Reverend Griswold,” I said. “They are good people, doing the best that they can in spite of their poverty. In fact, my girls spend much of their time with the Bartlett’s Irish maid and they do not speak ‘Hibernian trash.’ ”
I could feel Mr. Poe looking my way. I turned as does a flower to the sun. When our eyes met, I felt the heat of his intensity. Exhilaration poured through my veins like hot nectar.
I can feel my cheek flush as his gaze lands softly upon her from across the parlour, or later as I recall the touch of his hand upon her arm. Shaken to my core with heady anticipation, I read on; these pages simply saturated in gothic romance stain my fingers, leaving their tips thirsting for more.
Virginia, Mr. Poe’s wife and first cousin, whom he married when she was but thirteen and who clearly idolizes him, invites Frances Osgood to her home, and proceeds to pursue her friendship. Mrs. Poe is frail, childlike and unwell. She believes that Frances has a restraining effect on her husband’s vices; he has after all given up alcohol since having made her acquaintance. What possible good can come of this?
With it’s darkly, gothic poetic prose, twisted clandestine affairs and flirtatious literary delights, this sirens song is a warm blanket tossed softly over my savaged soul.
I have sat down several times now to write a review and each time I get caught up once again in this story. I swoon, and then I stall, unable to form a coherent thought. Fear perhaps, that my words could somehow diminish this work.
My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.
So begins the story of the Wingo family of Melrose Island in Colleton County, South CMy wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.
So begins the story of the Wingo family of Melrose Island in Colleton County, South Carolina. As told by Tom Wingo.
To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open you an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, “There. That taste. That’s the taste of my childhood.” I would say, “Breathe deeply,” and you would breathe and remember that smell for the rest of your life, the bold, fecund aroma of tidal marsh, exquisite and sensual, the smell of the South in heat, a smell like new milk, semen, and spilled wine, all perfumed with seawater. My soul grazes like a lamb on the beauty of indrawn tides.
Tom has a twin sister Savannah and as the story opens Savannah, a successful poet, who lives in New York City has just attempted to end her life by slashing her wrists with a razor blade. This is not the first time. He also has an older brother Luke who he idolizes, but Luke is not there as this story opens and to understand why, why his sister is barely clinging with frightening, frailty to life, why his big brother is not present; well, then we have to go back. Back to when they were children, Back to when Lila and Henry, their parents, controlled the great tides of their life.
It is not a pretty picture. The Wingos of Melrose island were an intensely disturbing, dysfunctional family. Their three children survived a brutal upbringing, one that they were not allowed ever to discuss or even acknowledge; isolated from the neighbouring community of Colleton, with only each other to turn to for strength, support and comfort. Their bond seemed unbreakable.
Still there is beauty here:
It was growing dark on this long southern evening and suddenly, at the exact point her finger had indicated, the moon lifted a forehead of stunning gold above the horizon, lifted straight out of filigreed, light-intoxicated clouds that lay on the skyline in attendant veils. Behind us, the sun was setting in a simultaneous congruent withdrawal and the river turned to flame in a quiet duel of gold…...The new gold of moon astonishing and ascendant, the depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks. The moon then rose quickly, rose like a bird from the water, from the trees, from the islands, and climbed straight up - gold, then yellow, then pale yellow, pale silver, silver - bright, then something miraculous, immaculate, and beyond silver, a color native only to southern nights.
These days Tom Wingo is a family man himself with a beautiful wife and three beautiful daughters but he can feel it all slipping away. He used to be a teacher and a coach, work that he loved, but that was before Luke. Now he cannot seem to bring himself to give his wife the intimacy she craves, he wants to, but it is like he is frozen, unable to get himself in motion. He knows even before his wife confirms it, that he is losing her. Perhaps their time apart, while he is in New York City trying to help his sister will give them both an opportunity to reflect and come to terms with what they really want. It is in New York that Tom meets Susan Lowenstein, Savannah’s psychiatrist and at her urging turns back the hands of time as he relates the events of their childhood in a last ditch effort to help Lowenstein understand the trauma that may go a long way in explaining Savannah’s suicide attempts and her current mental state.
It is the beginning of a long and uncanny season in the house of Wingo. There will be honor and decency and the testing of the qualities of our humanity, or the lack of them. There will be a single hour of horror that will change our lives forever. There will be carnage and murder and ruin. When it is over, we will all think that we have survived the worst day of our lives, endured the most grisly scenario the world could have prepared for us. We will be wrong.
Violence sends deep roots into the heart; it has no seasons; it is always ripe, evergreen.
There will also be Luke, our Prince of Tides. Luke’s story however is one you would be well advised to read for yourselves.
But there is also a Bengal tiger and whales and a rare white porpoise and the South Carolina low country. There is sadness and brutality yes, but also adventure and mirth and heart swelling love; all wrapped up in Conroy’s luscious, lyrical, haunting prose.
Later when we spoke of our childhood, it seemed part elegy, part nightmare.
I am sure a great many of you have likely already seen the movie with Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte, which was great. I loved it! You may be thinking why should I read the book when I already know the story? Why? Because there is so much more story here and because it is so beautifully written that it brings tears to my eyes and my chest feels oddly swollen, just remembering some of Conroy’s passages. The movie cannot even begin to compare or compete.
Take a look at that cover. It is the stuff of dreams and so is this story.
It was Charles that found Sophie.
On the morning of its first birthday, a baTake a look at that cover. It is the stuff of dreams and so is this story.
It was Charles that found Sophie.
On the morning of its first birthday, a baby was found floating in a cello case in the middle of the English Channel.
The baby was found wrapped for warmth in the musical score of a Beethoven symphony. It had drifted almost a mile from the ship, and was the last to be rescued. The man who lifted it into the rescue boat was a fellow passenger, and a scholar. It is a scholar’s job to notice things. He noticed that it was a girl, with hair the color of lightning, and the smile of a shy person. Think of nighttime with a speaking voice. Or think how moonlight might talk, or think of ink, if ink had vocal chords. Give those things a narrow, aristocratic face with hooked eyebrows, and long arms and legs, and that is what the baby saw as she was lifted out of her cello case and up into safety. His name was Charles Maxim, and he determined, as he held her in his large hands - at arms length, as he would a leaky flowerpot - that he would keep her.
Miss Eliot (from The National Childcare Agency) is also concerned about the baby’s (whom Charles has named Sophie) care.
Miss Eliot did not approve of Charles, nor of Sophie. She disliked Charles’s carelessness with money, and his lateness at dinner.
She disliked Sophie’s watching, listening face. “It’s not natural, in a little girl!” She hated their joint habit of writing each other notes on the wallpaper in the hall.
“It’s not normal!” She said, scribbling on her notepad. “It’s not healthy!” “On the contrary” said Charles. “The more words in a house the better, Miss Eliot.”
Among the many lessons Charles has given Sophie, he has taught her not to ignore life’s possibilities.
Sophie did remember her mother, in fact clear and sharp. She did not remember a father, but she remembered a swirl of hair, and two thin cloth-covered legs kicking to the beat of wonderful music, and that wouldn’t have been possible if the legs had been covered in skirt.
When they began to play the music was different. It was sweeter and wilder. Sophie sat up properly and shifted forward until only half an inch of her bottom was on the seat. It was so beautiful that it was difficult for her to breathe. If music can shine, Sophie thought, this music shone. It was like all the voices in all the choirs in the city rolled into a single melody. Her chest felt oddly swollen.
This is such a beautiful story told in a very distinct voice. There are times when you just know you are reading a classic and this is one such time.
This would be a beautiful gift for a mother to give to her young daughter, but it goes deeper and is so much more than that, unwritten, unspoken, unbroken bond. It is about the power of love, in all its many forms, all of them fierce and loyal.
Embrace possibility and let Sophie’s music take you to the rooftops of Paris. It is about hope and belief, about following your inner voice, listening to your senses and letting the music play on, play on, play on. All wrapped up in luscious, chocolaty prose.
Here is a story that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. It is the stuff of dreams and it is delightful.
I think that this was a very courageous book for Stephen King to write.
And I loved the casual, conversational tone as King shares with us, glimpse’s I think that this was a very courageous book for Stephen King to write.
And I loved the casual, conversational tone as King shares with us, glimpse’s into his life both before and after his initial success. He doesn’t pull any punches either; we see the good, the bad and the ugly.
It is somehow, not at all, and exactly what I expected. In truth, I loved the memoir part best but even those parts that are instructional in the art of writing are very engaging.
Is it not incredible, that such a gifted, successful writer would willingly open up his own private chest, remove the tools hidden within and share his thoughts on each of them with, well anyone? No doubt about it, this guy has chutzpah.
Here are the bits I loved:
The anecdotes from his childhood
Where ideas come from
His struggle and first big break
On Carrie
The love of his life
His brush with death
Practical advice (very accessible)
A challenge
I swear this man could write a book on how to boil water and make it interesting.
But don’t listen to me ………. listen to King:
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.
If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There���s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.
Words have weight.
Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.
Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.
I’m a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don’t read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read. ...more
And after we stood whispering in the underbrush – one last look at the body and a last look round, no dropped keys, lost glasses, everybody got everytAnd after we stood whispering in the underbrush – one last look at the body and a last look round, no dropped keys, lost glasses, everybody got everything? – and then started single file through the woods, I took one glance back through the saplings that leapt to close the path behind me. Though I remember the walk back and the first lonely flakes of snow that came drifting through the pines, remember piling gratefully into the car and starting down the road like a family on vacation, with Henry driving clench-jawed through the potholes and the rest of us leaning over the seats and talking like children, though I remember only too well the long terrible night that lay ahead and the long terrible days and nights that followed, I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through the saplings, a picture that will never leave me.
Donna Tartt had me from the first page. This was a story that I wanted to hear.
Some where, inside, a door opened Onto a room I quite like it here I’m comfortable I belong Of course they are all here
Henry, Francis, Charles, his sister Bunny And me.
The dishes lay waiting to be washed The bed to be made The floor to be cleaned The cat to be fed Life’s detritus, tangled underfoot I read.
I am complicit.
I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.
Take a walk in the park perhaps of an evening, moonlight dancing lightly through the swaying branches of the willow, reflected off
Age vitam plenissime
Take a walk in the park perhaps of an evening, moonlight dancing lightly through the swaying branches of the willow, reflected off the water, where the heron feeds, Illuminating our path.
There is a slight breeze a welcome silence later we will have a fire and listen to the music of the night.
I am humbled to remember that poetry is after all everywhere. It envelopes us. It is in the words we read and those we speak to each other. It is in the very air I breathe, deep and slow.
I love poetry so it seems that I was destined to find S. Penkevich’s review of this work. If you have but a moment, then leave this page at once and read his review. It is after all what brought me here.
And so I sail, around the room, while bits and pieces of this cling to me. They move about my head. I am a sinner, not a scholar and rearrange them as it pleases me. They clutter my windshield and call forth my senses. I cannot seem to stop. Perhaps this is disrespectful but I think not.
How easy he has made it for me to enter here, to sit down in a corner; cross my legs like his, and listen.
I walk through the house reciting it and leave its letters falling through the air of every room.
I listen to myself saying it, then I say it without listening, then I hear it without saying it.
And later when I say it to you in the dark, you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you
But today I am staying home, standing at one window, then another, or putting on a jacket and wandering around outside or sitting in a chair watching the trees full of light- green buds under the low hood of the sky.
And when I begin to turn slowly I can feel the whole house turning with me, rotating free of the earth. the sun and the moon in all the windows move, too, with the tips of my fingers this is the wheel I just invented to roll through the rest of my life
Why do we bother with the rest of the day, the swale of the afternoon, the sudden dip into evening,
This is the best- throwing off the light covers, feet on the cold floor, and buzzing around the house
Until the night makes me realize that this place where they pace and dance under colored lights,
is made of nothing but autumn leaves, red, yellow, gold, waiting for a sudden gust of wind to scatter it all into the dark spaces beyond these late- night, practically empty streets.
Then I remove my flesh and hang it over a chair. I slide it off my bones like a silken garment.
Such is life in this pavilion of paper and ink where a cup of tea is cooling, where the windows darken then fill with light.
A book like this always has a way of soothing the nerves, quieting the riotous surf of information that foams around my waist.
But it is hard to speak of these things how the voices of light enter the body and begin to recite their stories how the earth holds us painfully against its breast made of humus and brambles how we who will soon be gone regard the entities that continue to return greener than ever, spring water flowing through a meadow and the shadows of clouds passing over the hills and the ground where we stand in the tremble of thought taking the vast outside into ourselves.
Still, let me know before you set out, come knock on my door and I will walk with you as far as the garden.
My fingertips thirsty, absorb this ink and intoxicated, leave my stain all over these pages.
Thank you Billy!
All of the words in italics are Billy’s. They have moved themselves around shamelessly to feed my unbridled pleasure....more
We go to England in the 1800’s, a time of the Tired of your workaday lives,
Need to get away for a while?
Come, sit a spell
Let Susanna tell you a story.
We go to England in the 1800’s, a time of the Napoleonic Wars, a time when most people believe magic to be dead in England. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell are two magicians attempting, each in their own way, to change that and restore magic to England.
I can admit that it took me a while to find my legs here, acquire my own rhythm with the writing and the story. In many ways this reads like a history lesson... The entire aspect and nature of magic and its history are all carefully and explicitly laid out, fully annotated with historical references that appear as footnotes (which while bitter at first, soon became delicious little bits that nourished and enriched). I came to crave them. Lord Byron and the Duke of Wellington, both, put in an appearance here, casually lending their historical pertinence, as England’s Prime Minister and his cabinet employ the magicians to assist in the battle against Napoleon.
Susanna so deftly describes the two main protagonists, the magicians, so intricately, as to impart an intimate understanding of each of them. As opposite in character as they are in appearance Strange & Norrell command this stage, but along the way they share the spotlight, with a whole cast of others, people, that step right off the page:
The man extracted himself from the hedge. This was no easy task because various parts of it – hawthorn twigs, elder branches, strands of ivy, mistletoe and witches broom – had insinuated themselves among his clothes, limbs and hair during the night or glued themselves to him with ice. He sat up. He did not seem in the least surprised to find he had an audience; one would almost have supposed from his behaviour that he had been expecting it. He looked at them all and gave several disparaging sniffs and snorts.
He ran his fingers through his hair, removing dead leaves, bits of twig and half a dozen earwigs. “I reached out my hand” he muttered, to no-one in particular. “England’s rivers turned and flowed the other way.” He loosened his neckcloth and fished out some spiders which had taken up residence inside his shirt. In doing so, he revealed that his neck and throat were ornamented with an odd pattern of blue lines, dots, crosses and circles. Then he wrapped his neckcloth back about his neck and, having thus completed his toilet to his satisfaction, he rose to his feet.
“My name is Vinculus”, he declared.
What I loved most, as I listened to Susanna’s story was that it took me away, where a slow and curious sort of calm came over me. A kind of a hush, seemingly impenetrable, descended about me. A strange sense of quiet fell, like one might find in the wee hours of the morning. I relaxed, shook off the shackles of day to day and settled in, wholly immersed now and in no particular hurry, on this long, long journey. I stretched out my legs, met the man with the thistle-down hair and considered the colour of a heartache. I visited ballrooms and battlefields, travelled faerie roads, and searched for the Raven King. I watched the birds as they came to my feeder and fell away, to lost-hope house and all the mirrors of the world, utterly enchanted, and I believed.
It was as if a door had opened somewhere. Or possibly a series of doors. There was a sensation as of a breeze blowing into the house and bringing with it the half- remembered scents of childhood. There was a shift in the light which seemed to cause all the shadows in the room to fall differently. There was nothing more definite than that, and yet, as often happens when some magic is occurring, both Drawlight and the lady had the strongest impression that nothing in the visible world could be relied upon any more. It was as if one might put out one’s hand to touch any thing in the room and discover it was no longer there.
A tall mirror hung upon the wall above the sopha where the lady sat. It shewed a second great white moon in a second tall dark window and a second dim-mirror room. But Drawlight and the lady did not appear in the mirror room at all. Instead there was a kind of an indistinctness, which became a sort of shadow, which became the dark shape of someone coming towards them. From the path which this person took, it could clearly be seen that the mirror room was not like the original at all and that it was only by odd tricks of lighting and perspective – such as one might meet with in the theatre- that they appeared to be the same. It seemed that the mirror room was actually a long corridor. The hair and coat of the mysterious figure were stirred by a wind which could not be felt in their own room and though he walked briskly towards the glass which separated the two rooms, it was taking him some time to reach it. But finally he reached the glass and then there was a moment when his dark shape loomed very large behind it and his face was still in shadow.
Susanna Clarke tells a story that spills over with wonder.
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in lThe circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. The towering tents are striped in white and black, no gold and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black- and- white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought- iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick. But it is not open for business. Not just yet.
If I could use but one word to describe The Night Circus that word would be ENCHANTING. From its dark depths and mysterious secrets to its breathtaking illusions this story will awaken and astonish all of your senses. Come on in folks, and experience Le Cirque des Reves for yourselves! I have no doubt that you will be exquisitely entertained.
Morgenstern’s circus is the undisputed star of this story. Full of magic and wonder; dreamlike and dazzling, the circus pulls you in and holds you in awe of it’s many spectacles; from sparkling ice gardens, acrobatic kittens and complicated clocks to dark forests of softly glowing, poem covered trees, this circus is sure to engulf you in abundant, richly layered, mystic atmosphere.
Add to this magical place, two young illusionists caught up in a duel, each with the other, neither fully comprehending the rules. A duel spawned by their own maleficent masters in an ancient game between age old sorcerers. A duel that impacts all of those, tied in any way, to this circus.
I was completely mesmerized by this fantastical creation of Erin Morgenstern’s, with an opening line not soon forgotten. The circus arrives without warning.
I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking - a precious yet poingnant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking - a precious yet poingnant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.
To read Jane Eyre is to drink from this well, to imbibe a nectar that will reawaken all your senses, to the pure delight and artistry of the written word. This work, for me, shall hold court over every love story I have ever read. To say anything seems, somehow, to demean the absolute beauty and brilliance of this work.
Suffice then to say that I feel forever changed by the experience. Am I gushing? I should be. I absolutely adored it! Have no doubt that I will drink from this well again and often....more
There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run
There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole, God only knows. He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell; Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Daw- son trail. Talk of your cold! Through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail. If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see; It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee
And that very night as we lay packed tight in our robes be- neath the snow, And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe, He turned to me and “Cap” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess; And if I do I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”
Well he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no, then he says with a sort of moan: “It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone. Yet ‘tain’t being dead – it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains; So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”
A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail; And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale. He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee; And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror- driven, With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given; It was lashed to the sleigh and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains, But you promised true and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code. In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load. In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring, Howled out their woes to the homeless snows – O God! how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow; And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub, was getting low; The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in; And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay; It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.” And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum; Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “ is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire; Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher; The flames just soared, and the furnace roared – such a blaze you seldom see; And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee
Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so; And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow, It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why; And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear; But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ven- tured near; I was sick with dread, but I bravely said; “I’ll just take a peep inside. I guess he’s cooked and it’s time I looked”; . . . then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar; And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door. It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm – Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”
There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.
There are very few books that I remember the opening line of. This is one I can assure you I will never forget. "Last night I dreamt I went to ManderlThere are very few books that I remember the opening line of. This is one I can assure you I will never forget. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."
The characters come alive, page after page. I found myself getting totally frustrated with the narrator and then realising why? Such is the magic of this story. That and of course Manderley. Manderley, Manderley. I have been there.I've seen the rhododendrons and strolled through the Happy Valley and felt the mist of the ever present sea upon my skin. I'm sure I have met Rebecca and the unnamed I, often.
Arah-Lynda
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