Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter: A Novel

Customer Reviews:

A story about storytelling.......2006-05-01

Vargas Llosa is a writer's writer, and here he has crafted a clever and witty story about story-telling.

I loved the frenetic pace of the book - the sound of Pedro Camacho (the script-writer) and his Remington typing away as his stories and the story of our Marito and his affair with Aunt Julia comes to a dramatic head.

I loved the pacing: pairing the chapters of radio serial fantasy and "real life" one by one.

I loved the characters, but especially the mysterious little Pedro Camacho and his disguises and his tea and his work ethic and most of all, his imagination, with all of those stories that come so easily to him.

What I didn't love was the ending. The story lost momentum and fell apart. The frenzy of building up the stories and chapters worked like a symphonic crescendo, and then it disentegrated, as if half of the orchestra switched instruments with each other, and the other half just got up and walked off stage.

It seems Vargas Llosa just wanted to end it and was lazy about doing so.

The last chapter was the most disappointing. I won't reveal the details, but the information presented was completely deflating and I stopped caring about any of the characters.

The last chapter clearly should have been one of the serial stories, to follow the structure of the previous nineteen chapters. If it were my chapter to write, I'd have told the entire story of Marito and Julia in the melodramatic style of Camacho, using all of his usual plot devices and details, but much clearer than his last few, as if he might have been writing it and the time in the asylum was helping. Or as if Marito wrote it and was borrowing from Camacho's style.

We'd never know and we'd leave the book on a higher note.

A great novel of the Spanish American Writer's "Boom".......2005-11-11

These are the Seventies in Spanish-America, and an explosion of writers surged. An "all boys club" (no Isabel Allende in those years) struggling for finding themselves, found that writing novels (or romances) will be, maybe, the best way. Mario Vargas Llosa, a then young and (very handsome) middle-class Peruvian wrote this satirical, funny, and witty novel where he laughs at himself, family values, modes and above all, men-women relationships.
The setting: a radio station where the most popular genre were radio soap operas("radio-novelas" in Spanish, and from which he is taking the model for the construction of his writing).
Interesting and moving, the afternoon strolls between Aunt Julia and Marito (he is her junior).
If you are interested in Spanish Grammar (and/or culture) the usage of names and slang words at the diminutive should be noticed(Very Hispanic usage indeed). A reading in Spanish is highly recommended).

Life as soap opera.......2003-12-29

This entertaining and humorous novel by the well known Peruvian/Spanish writer Mario Vargas Llosa is a thinly disguised account of his eighteenth year of life during the 1950's in Lima, Peru. The author, nominally a law student whose physical absence from classes is matched only by his lack of interest in same, begins a madcap romance with his 32-year-old "Aunt" Julia (related only by marriage, not blood), recently divorced from her Bolivian husband and returned to Lima to live with her family. The two must keep the "affair" secret from their extended family and his violent and domineering father who resides in the U.S. For help they turn to a cousin, the coquette Nancy, and her devoted would-be boyfriend, Javier. Young Mario ("Marito" or "Varguitas to his friends and Julia) works in the news department of the local radio station in the last years before television, and there meets Pedro Camacho, the station's new director and writer of over-the-top soap operas, also recently arrived from Bolivia. Camacho is a prolific and eccentric hack who lives only for his "art," while Mario is a would-be short story writer whose ambitious work product ends up in the waste basket because it fails to meet his own artistic standards.

As the plot unfolds Mario's life and Pedro's art spiral out of control, and both their lives come to resemble Pedro's fantastic on-air creations. Julia and the under-age Mario fall in love, their affair is discovered, and they begin a frantic search for a corrupt and/or ignorant magistrate who will marry them before the arrival of his revolver-toting father hell-bent on separating the two and sending Julia packing. Pedro develops a series of super-popular soaps (the 10:00 o'clock, the 11:00 o'clock, the 12:00 o'clock, etc., etc.) only to see his success threatened when the exhaustion brought on by his 24-7 work schedule causes him to confuse the characters and the plot lines.

Will the lovers-on-the-lam find a sympathetic magistrate somewhere in Peru before our hero's fire-breathing father catches up with them? Can Pedro Camacho sort out his soaps before outraged listeners deluge the station management with so many complaints that they fire him? Will Mario ever realize his life's goal of becoming a real artist? Can Pedro "get a grip" or will he descend into madness? For answers to those and other pressing questions, tune in tomorrow! . . . . No wait. You'll have to read the book.

A funny read.......2003-11-16

What a wonderfully structured book!. I don't want to go into detail about this as it would give away the game. It is a very funny book about a peruvian radio station in the 50's and the characters who inhabit it. Gives a wonderful flavour of the place .

Life as soap opera, life as art.......2003-08-08

At its most basic level, Vargas Llosa's most famous novel is a portrait of the writer as a young man. The semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical Mario is a young student and would-be writer whose careers and aspirations are disrupted when he falls in love with his aunt-in-law, much to the horror of their many friends and relatives living in Lima. Pedro Camacho, an eccentric (to say the least) Bolivian scriptwriter, has been hired at the radio station where Mario works, and the youth envies the prodigious output of Pedro's intricate soap operas and hopes to learn from his new mentor the secrets of being an artist. The chapters alternate between descriptions of Mario's amusing and increasingly complicated life and Pedro's formulaic and decreasingly coherent scripts, as each character is gradually overwhelmed by the burdens and expectations they've created for themselves.

On a deeper level, "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" is about artistic failure: Mario's writing suffers because he is too busy living life to the fullest, while Pedro's well-being deteriorates because he barely experiences life at all. While Mario's life is the stuff of literature, his various attempts at short fiction are too concerned with artistic affectation: heavy symbolism and laborious overwriting doom his every effort. In contrast, the scriptwriter is so overwhelmed maintaining the pace of the scripts for ten different serials that he can't keep track of his own sense of reality, much less his fictional characters and elaborate plots. The final chapter, which some readers have found disappointing, actually completes this theme: the writer who balances a passion for life and devotion to art is the one who ultimately succeeds.

Customer Reviews:

El libro suramericano mas comico.......2006-05-20

Este es un libro extremadamente divertido. El trama salta del cuento (verdadero?) entre Varguitas y la tia Julia por una parte y las "radio-novelas" cada vez mas ridiculas por otra (del escribidor).

Hay escenas inolvidables como cuando Varguitas y Julia buscan a un alcade corrupto para consagrar su matrimonio (menor de edad, documentos falsos, etc.). Tambien, la manera en que el esbridor se burla de su audiencia con sus historietas (personajes muertos que reaparecen, etc.), nos hace pensar que Mario Vargas Llosa hace lo mismo con el cuento autobiografico de su amor con Julia con nosotors, los lectores.

Un libro estupendo -- quisiera conseguir la version de Julia ("lo que Varguitas no dijo", ed. Khana Cruz, 1983, Julia Urquidi Illanes, Lccn #84120106" -- por favor me avisen si tienen mas informacion).

I found it excellent........2001-09-17

I couldn't stop reading it eventhough they were too many names I really found it interesting,fast to read and with a lot of humor.What I need is that I have to talk about this book at school and I'm not very good at doing this.Can some one help me?I've got to get the best grade because I'm a little low in grades right now.Thank you very much.
I hope someone understand my English because it has been a long time since I've spoken it.Bye.

this novel is a stroke of genius.......1999-06-15

Although this novel has been termed "Flaubertian" by more than one writer (and not only as a compliment, at least in some cases), my opinion is that Gustave Flaubert was never even close to portrait the untangible spirit of everyday love, hate, lust, greed, gossip, fanatism and passion the way Vargas Llosa does in this novel. Perhaps people from more temperate societies could have a difficult time understanding how all the forementioned characters interact to form everyday life in Latin America, but if anybody could show it to them, it is Vargas Llosa. In this novel a demented,compulsive chauvinist, racist(anti-Riverplateans) and diminutive radio soapopera scriptwriter is nevertheless redeemed by an unconquerable zeal to portray what are just small exagerations of what really happens aroud him; and even serves as an inspiration for a budding writer and his forbidden love. How all this twists and turns is fascinatingly complex, and beyond any possible synopsis.

Excellent, entertaining, captivating and hard to put down........1997-10-30

I never thought I could get so much reading pleasure out of a Latin American writer. I am hooked and will try to read all of Mario's books. This book took me to a fascinating culture in Lima, and the life and tribulations of a young and aspiring , latin writer and lover and the characters of a decade long gone in the world

Average customer rating:

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
Mario Vargas Llosa
Manufacturer: FSG
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Book Description

Robin Schone's debut romance was an immediate sensation and a perfect introduction to her groundbreaking style. In this new edition of her classic tale, unavailable until now, she offers her trademark blend of suspense and passion...with a surprising twist.

Fantasy Made Flesh

When thirty-nine-year-old Elaine Metcliffe awakens one morning, she is astounded to find herself in a strange bed, in another century--inhabiting the body of another woman. In this, her "new" life, she is married to English baron Charles Mortimer--dark, breathtakingly handsome--and bent not only on seducing the resentful young woman he believes her to be, but educating her in practices of physical pleasure Elaine has never dared to imagine. Torn between fidelity to the passionless husband she left behind and the exquisite temptation Charles offers with every touch, Elaine will discover that the dark magic responsible for her transport to this time and place is no match for the carnal delights that make her want to stay...

"Robin Schone knows how to write sizzling erotic love scenes." --Romantic Times on The Lover

Customer Reviews:

Just not my favorite book .......2007-02-19

Awaken, My Love by Robin Schone is a 1995 historical time travel sad book. It doesn't leave the reader happy but almost releived that is over. Elaine finds herself back in late 1800's in someone else body. Instead of being a strong 1990's women she is upset and lost. Lots of evil and sadness - it had potential just wasn't great.

not to bad.......2006-12-12

has the authors typical style. very earthy, adds alittle humor and allows the reader to feel the confusion of a woman dropped back in time. nice romance asw well.

Strangely compelling, yet poorly written trash.......2006-11-30

This is supposed to be the new and improved second reworking of this novel...but if that is the case then why is it so full of errors? There are typos, repeated sentences and mistakes galore. For instance, perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that western movies have cow rustlers in them, not cow wrestlers as this book states. Also, try this quote from the book on for size: 'Elaine swallowed, wondering if her Adam's apple bobbed as ridiculously as the footman's.' Er, since when do women have Adam's apples? Then there's the bit where Elaine tries to work out what day it is, and decides that since six days have elapsed since Monday then it must be Saturday. Actually, six days after Monday should be Sunday, shouldn't it? Also, even though Elaine has no idea of the age of the old woman who is watching over her, the old woman is referred to from thereon as a sexagenarian. How does Elaine know that the woman is in her sixties? And if the woman is in her sixties, then why does Elaine, who is 39, refer to her as being old enough to be her grandmother? I didn't know someone in their sixties could be the grandmother of an almost 40 year old. And then there's the part of the book where the heroine takes her nightie off, but the next moment is wandering round the house with her nightie ON, with no explanation of how that happened. In fact, many characters do things and end up in places without adequate explanation of why and how. Often, too, it is unclear which character is being talked about. I mean, if one female character is being talked about, then the story switches to what another female character is doing, it helps to give the second female's name, rather than just saying 'she' and hoping the poor reader will eventually work out who's doing what. And so the errors go on and on...

And then there are flaws with the logic of the plot, too. I mean, why does Elaine wake up in another time, in another body, and assume that she has swapped bodies with someone else, that the person who used to occupy the body she is in now has taken over her body? No one told her that that was what happened, and she has no evidence of it. Yet she jumps straight to that conclusion, and doesn't even consider any other explanations for her predicament. And why does she fancy Charles, given that he's mean and insulting and pushes her around and calls her derogatory names? Seriously, the guy is a control freak, and yet there is Elaine thinking constantly about how wonderful he is. A lot of other reviewers described Charles as delightful and adorable. I had no idea women found rude, pushy, controlling men who force their will on women and even lock them up and hold them down so attractive! Ugh! Also, Charles laments that he is stuck with his wife, since he does not qualify for an anulment. Er, as far as I was aware, in 1883 divorces were possible. Why was that not an option for him?

I really loathed the characters in this book. Elaine was a dumb doormat and Charles was a boor and a brute. But what I really hated was the thing that pretty much all of the 'evil' or 'mean' characters had in common, the thing that gave me an insight into the prejudices and mindset of the writer herself. And what was that thing? I hear you ask. Well, I'll tell you...ALL OF THE BADDIES WERE OVERWEIGHT. Apparently, this author thinks that if you're overweight, you must be a bad person. The aunt, the cousins, the lecherous uncle and the abusive nurse Hattie were all obese. And the author made mention of this at every opportunity...these characters never just pointed a finger, they pointed a fat finger. They never just ate a meal, they always stuffed their faces. Every opportunity was taken to poke fun at the fat people, and call them names, and point out what revolting people they were, looking so fat. The only evil character who wasn't fat was Morrigan...but then, I guess the author couldn't make her fat, because it was Morrigan's body that Elaine got switched into, and obviously this writer didn't want to write about an overweight heroine. The heroine's former body was fat, however, which the author implies is why, when she was in that body, she was never properly kissed, never taken out on a picnic, never had a real lover or experienced decent lovemaking or romance. That made me mad. I know a lot of overweight people who are well loved...I resent the implication that fat people are unloveable. Look around you. A lot of people are fat thesedays, and most of them are loved, and are good people. I really hate stereotypes, especially grossly incorrect and unfair ones...

This book was full of faults and annoyances. And yet, I will say, it was VERY hard to put down. It was a real page turner. I don't know exactly why, but I suspect it was because it was such a warped and bizarre little tome...it was like a freak show that I just couldn't look away from. I would have rated it lower if it weren't so compelling, and I hate myself for getting so addicted to such trash. This book was like most things, I guess: the worse they are, the more addicted we get to them.

One final thing about this book: be warned, the author decided to go for realism, and went a bit too far. I mean, talking about periods and chamber pots and unshaven legs is okay, in moderation, but did those subjects have to DOMINATE the book? And can anyone please explain to me what this line from the book meant: 'How could he face her with such sangfroid, having felt her menstrual heat?' That made me laugh. I have NO idea what menstrual heat is, but I do hope it isn't catching!

Great story, but left me wishing for a little something more.......2006-09-24

I am a big Robin Schone fan. I have thoroughly enjoyed every book of hers that I have read - and this in no exception. I was drawn in from the first unconventional page of this book. I really found myself drawn in by the parallel experiences of the main characters. The loneliness and desperation that they are both experiencing in different times. From the very first page you really want these two to find their way to each other and find real happiness. Once Elaine (heroine) wakes up in the late 1800s, I found myself even more entertained. Mrs. Schone does not sugar-coat the time. She confronts head on the reality of living in the 1800s (from using a chamberpot, to what do women do when they have their periods, to how do those corsets and clothes really feel?) And I immediately really liked Elaine. She experiences all of these 1800-era things with humor and in a way you can almost imagine yourself doing.

Once the story really picked up speed, both in the interaction of the hero (Charles) and heroine, as well as a mystery of time travel, I turned the pages quickly, eager to see what happened next.

By the time I had gotten to the end, I found I had enjoyed the book, but with only one complaint. Because I had been so drawn to both main characters from the beginning, I was hoping for more of an emotional payoff in the end than was provided. I wanted to cry with them when they finally found what they had both been waiting so long for. And instead I was left with what I experienced as a lukewarm emotional ending.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read, though. Robin Schone continues to provide stories that have unique characters, sizzling passion, and a love story to boot.

Disgusting, not romantic at all.......2006-06-09

I read two of Ms. Schone's stories in the Erotic Anthologies Fascinated and Captivated and thought that they were written with deep felt feelings for the main characters and rather intense, enjoyable love scenes. So I bought this book, and it truly revolted me in places. The heroine is sent back in time to occupy another's body. She is surrounded by an incredibly cruel nurse, abusive family and was sexually molested for several years by an uncle. Once the story line delved into these sober and disturbing themes, I quickly lost interest. How can one think of steamy sex involving the leading lady, when a sexually abusive uncle keeps turning up??? Ick

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Awaken, My Love
Robin Schone
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Binding: Hardcover
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Product Description

Modern woman Elaine Metcliffe desired more passion than she was receiving from her prudish husband. But she never imagined waking up in the arms of another man. And that's just the beginning. Elaine finds herself in 1883 England, in another woman's bed, another woman's body, married to another woman's husband. Believing Elaine to be his unresponsive bride, handsome Baron Charles Mortimer is eager to seduce her and show her passion she's never imagined. Elaine finds her reserve weakening at his magnificent touch, but knows she should give up this fantasy and uncover the mystery that has transported her here.

The Golden Transcendence: Or, The Last of the Masquerade (The Golden Age)
Average customer rating:

Not Free SF Reader

A solid ending to a great story

Boring

Wait for the Reader's Digest version

A great conclusion!

The Golden Transcendence: Or, The Last of the Masquerade (The Golden Age)
John C. Wright
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Begun with The Golden Age, continued with The Phoenix Exultant, and now concluding in The Golden Transcendence, The Golden Age trilogy is Grand Space Opera, an SF adventure saga in the tradition of A. E. Van Gogt, Roger Zelazny and Cordwainer Smith. It is an astounding story of super-science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the elan of SF's golden age writers in the suspenseful and passionate tale of Phaeton, a lone rebel unhappy in utopia. The end of the Millennium is imminent, when all minds, human, posthuman, cybernetic, sophotechnic, will be temporarily merged into one solar-system-spanning supermind called the Transcendence. This is not only the fulfillment of a thousand years of dreams, it is a day of doom, when the universal mind will pass judgment on the all the races of humanity and transhumanity. The mighty ship Phoenix Exultant is at last in the hands of her master, Phaethon the Exile is at her helm and his dream of starflight in alive once more. He is being hunted by alien agents, the eerie and deadly Lords of the Silent Oecumene, who would steal the Phoenix Exultant and turn it into a weapon. The all-encompassing Mind of the Golden Transcendence is waking. Will it endorse Phaeton's dream or face the first interstellar war?

Customer Reviews:

Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-03

You are in danger of having your head hurt if you don't like the tech overload sort of thing, for the first 60-70 page. It even had me scratching my head for a bit. Then Wright skewers that, literally, as near the end of that confrontation, out come the samurai swords! He does slip in a few Golden Age references and jokes here and there, of course. For example, in the last part of the novel, when the conflict between the Silent and Golden Oecumenae has been going and going : "Emphyrio took out a tablet from his garb, and held it up. Ã¢â,¬Å"Here is my prophecy: This New College, at least for a time, is dominated by Dark-Grays and Invariants. A warlike spirit grows. Ã¢â,¬Å"The Bellipotent Composition forms again. Other war heroes, Banbeck and Carter and Kinnison, Vidar the Silent and Valdemar the Slayer, are recompiled out of archives, or constructed, or born." Then, a lighter style prevails as before, while the machine intelligence infiltration situtation is sorted out. Conversely, the last part, post conflict with the Nothing Sophotect might seem to drag a little bit, but it is worth getting to the end part. A handy appendix, too, explaining all the mental structure, stuff.

A solid ending to a great story.......2007-05-12

I was really quite disturbed by the negative reviews listed on the book page and by one or two readers. If you enjoyed the first book of this series then it makes sense to read until the end. As a professor of Human Computer Interaction I found the ideas and discussion quite compelling, although this book is not as exciting as the first two it does round off a superb story overall.

Boring.......2007-01-22

Too esoteric, even for a sci-fi lover. The jargon and characterization is so dense and bizarre in the early pages that I could not finish this book.

Wait for the Reader's Digest version.......2006-10-31

"Is not `not' not `is'?"

This is the logic bomb launched against the enemy of the Golden Oecumene in the final installment of The Golden Age trilogy, the secret weapon that brings down the Nothing Sophotech, a rogue computer from the Silent Oecumene and cousin to those controlling the cocooning reality within which humanity lives its utopian existence.

Our hero Phaethon, by inserting a virus to undo the conscience redactor inhibiting the evil computer from carrying its assumptions to logical conclusions (which would result in moral behavior and a cessation of hostilities against the Golden Oecumene), asserts the supremacy of organic life and human logic and in so doing follows in a long line of science-fiction heroes who defeat world-conquering machines, one of the most recent being the Matrix' Neo.

As in that cinematic trilogy, The Golden Age's beginning holds so much promise, the ending so much disappointment. This third chapter opens much like the first, with Phaethon having lost his memory, basically doing away with any need for the reader to have spent time with the second book. Once he regains it and we find out where we are, the stage is set for the final confrontation, a chain of events that without all the speculation on motives and discourses in Objectivist logic would probably take less than half the book's 400 paperback edition pages.

Like the universe of the Nothing Sophotec, a black hole in which infinite worlds exist within infinite worlds, the mystery of the evil computer's plans and motivations circle back again and again, plan within plan, plot within plot, until its impossible to keep up with all the possibilities. Well, not impossible. But it sure would take a lot of time to keep notes and try to keep things straight. By the end you're willing to accept whatever Wright throws at you just so you can find out what the end is.

And the end is this, that all life must at some point end, that deeds of great renown are born of great risk, that humans must be allowed to fail, even to die.

I don't mind that Wright bangs the drum for Objectivism. At least he's got a drum to bang. If he had done so in an entertaining manner, I could simply ignore that aspect of the book and enjoy the story. Unfortunately, the latter tends to get lost in the former, so much so that you begin to suspect the writer's motivation is to teach, perhaps even to propagandize.

Is not disquisition not storytelling?

A great conclusion!.......2006-08-12

Continuing the excellence of the first two volumes, The Golden Transcendence, the third and final installment of John C Wright's Golden Age trilogy, provides a very satisfying conclusion to the far future epic and is even more cerebral and philosophical than the earlier two chapters. Phaethon's convictions and resulting adventures are fascinating and the futuristic technology and intelligent beings that spring from it continue to amaze. The author's imagination is mind boggling and his ability to tell a cohesive narrative in such a bizarre and unfamiliar world is remarkable. In fact, I love the world that he created and eagerly await its inevitable arrival (too bad I will be thousands of years dead by the time that happens). The author is a very fine writer, keeping the suspense constant but not leaving the reader hanging for 50 pages or more while he narrates some other aspect of the story. The epic is essentially a mystery thriller in the vain of Asimov's best Foundation and Robot novels. In fact, I believe John C. Wright is the new torch bearer for the science fiction mystery, resuming where the great Isaac Asimov left off. He makes the reader stretch their imaginative abilities in order to wrap their mind around the concepts, ideas and situations that spring forth from the advanced technology. Reading these books are like taking your mind to the intellectual gym. I look forward to reading his other works.

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Golden Transcendence :Book 3
John C Wright
Manufacturer: TOR BOOKS ST MARTINS MASS
ProductGroup: Book
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Awaken from the Dream
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A brilliant overview of A Course of Miracles

Awaken to reality

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A wonderful myth for understanding "A Course In Miracles"

Awaken form the dream

Awaken from the Dream
Gloria Wapnick , and Kenneth Wapnick
Manufacturer: Foundation for a Course in Miracles
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This presentation of the basic ideas of "A Course in Miracles" serves both as an introduction for those new to the Course, as well as offering its long-time students a unique approach to the Course's teaching of "not making the error real." This important principle cautions the student against using pseudo-problems as a defense against the true problem: separation. Beginning with an original cosmological myth, Awaken from the Dream emphasizes the application of this central teaching -- the foundation of forgiveness -- to our everyday lives, in a spirit of non-opposition and love.

Customer Reviews:

A brilliant overview of A Course of Miracles.......2007-08-28

This book should be a required reading for early students of A Course in Miracles. The mythological story unfolds the awakening horror of the supposed separation from God. This work brilliantly defines the territory that is ruled by fear as well as how that fear is undone.

Awaken to reality.......2006-11-10

As a Course student, I was looking for a simple book I could hand off to any other potential students who might be interested in taking the complete Course. So I bought this book and read it. To my amazement I finished this book with even greater perception of "Reality". I bought more and of course I will keep a copy for my library! Basically anything from the Wapnicks is worth the time and money exponentially. This book helped me alot.

This helped me with understanding ACIM.......2005-06-21

I have now started studying ACIM, but this book along with Disappearance of the Universe, helped me to understand the thinking that is to be applied to ACIM. This is truly for the serious seeker - someone who is willing to open their mind to new thoughts and a new way of preceiving EVERYTHING. Please read and decide for yourself.

A wonderful myth for understanding "A Course In Miracles".......2004-01-09

AWAKEN FROM THE DREAM is co-authored by Gloria and Kenneth Wapnick, the founders of the Foundation for A Course In Miracles -- http://www.facim.org/. (A COURSE IN MIRACLES, for those unfamiliar, is a three-volume self-study book about spiritual psychotherapy.) The Course teaches that this physical universe is ultimately an illusion - an illusion not created by God but made by the ego as an attack on God. The Course says that we believe we entered into this physical universe after "the separation from God."

The separation described in A COURSE IN MIRACLES could be roughly seen as akin to the downfall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. (Though in Course theory the original state of communication with God is purely abstract and non-dual. In the original state our individual identities did not exist and God did not perceive us as separate from Himself.) Unlike the Bible, the Course does not have a myth to dramatize its version of the downfall. AWAKEN FROM THE DREAM present such a myth, based on the psychic and auditory experiences of Gloria Wapnick - experiences that helped her better understand this aspect of Course theory.

This is not an easy aspect of Course theory (as if there is any aspect of the Course that is easy). And, by the way, the Course says that ultimately the separation from God never even occurred. We merely believe it has occurred, and the physical world with all its multiplicity of problems arose in our minds to block against our belief in the separation. In reality, we only have one problem: this belief in the separation. AWAKEN FROM THE DREAM helps us, well, awaken from the dream that we have separated.

Andrew Parodi

Awaken form the dream.......2001-05-28

This book was and still is very helpful to me. I have always been attracted to the Courses' message, but would go in and out of reading it, because it would bring up fear in me. This book explained for me where that fear comes from, and for this reason alone I now want to continue to make A Course In Miracles my way of living in this world.

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AWAKEN FROM THE DREAM

Manufacturer: Published By the Author
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000H28VD4

It is a sleep from which I will awaken ; it is a dream I will not dream again

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It is a sleep from which I will awaken ; it is a dream I will not dream again
Henry Rappaport
Manufacturer: s.n
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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