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Francine Prose may never surpass Joyce Carol Oates in the Prolific Olympics, but she is one of those omnipresent writers whom failed writers hate. And surely she'll make new enemies with her hilarious and cruel 10th novel, Blue Angel, a satire of academia, specifically of English and writing departments. The setting is Euston College in rural Vermont, a place kids go to if they don't get into Bennington; a place where desperate novelists teach creative writing to rich kids who don't seem to read. Prose, who has taught at all the hotshot workshops, skewers both teachers and students in the way only a true insider could.
Swenson, her writing-teacher protagonist, once published a well-received novel but is now consumed by neuroses and repressed lust, and instead of writing tends to get drunk or morose, or both. But when a gifted student named Angela Argo enters his class, he feels like he is coming back to life. His resurrection into "believing" in writing again, and his eventual disappointment, form the core of the novel.
Prose's gift for satire is stunning as she directs her caustic wit at all the current academic debates: sexual-harassment policies warning against all manner of "touching"; deconstructionists versus Old School fuddy-duddies; women's studies teachers who bring everything back to the phallocentric Man killing us all. But Blue Angel's best passages come when the author is describing truly rotten writers. Here's a Connecticut rich girl, a member of Swenson's workshop, who likes to write about all those poor unfortunate nonwhite people. Her story is called "First Kiss--Inner City Blues" and is written from the point of view of a Latino woman who lives in a trash-strewn neighborhood full of gunfire and bad people. Here's the opening line: "The summer heat sat on the hot city street, making it hard for it to breathe, especially for Lydia Sanchez." It's a sentence so bad, it's almost a revelation. --Emily White
Book Description
It has been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. . . .
Deliciously risqué, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.
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It's been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel.It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...
Deliciously risque, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.
Customer Reviews:
An entertaining and ambiguous cautionary tale........2007-08-16
Sort of in the tradition of David Mamet's "Oleanna," but far more humorous, the talented Francine Prose introduces us to Ted Swenson, a 47 year old tenured writing professor with a seemingly story-book life: attractive adoring wife (Sherrie), one time author of a successful book, and a cushy easy career teaching a small fiction writing seminar at a small Northeastern college. But there are chinks in the armor. After two years of futility, Swenson realizes that the new novel he tells everyone (including his publisher) that he's "working" on is going nowhere, his college aged daughter (Ruby) hardly speaks to her parents, and he realizes that he's fairly useless as a professor with a bunch of talentless wannabe writers as students at what's a rather mediocre school. Enter Angela Argo, one of his students, a punky morose young woman with a certain degree of seductive skills, who stirs something in Ted when she demonstrates real writing ability. Careful though, Ted, with her seemingly innocent flirtations! Angela (and this really was no surprise at all) may have her own agenda.
Some of the scenes in the book are superb. First, there's Ted Swenson's writing seminar, and the way the students interact and comment about each other's hackneyed puerile stories (anyone who's been in a college writing seminar can certainly relate). Second, there's dinner at the Dean's house for the English Department (with some wonderfully drawn, though perhaps cliched, characters) where an inebriated Swenson acts rather unprofessionally. Third, there are the surrealistic scenes at the end where Swenson becomes completely unraveled. Perhaps the weakest link is the private scenes between Swenson and Angela.
I love the way Prose foreshadows her story with other works of fiction, and the way "Blue Angel" always keeps the reader slightly off balance, yet consistently amused and interested. I honestly can't understand the negative reviews here. I suppose there are those who demand that a book is wrapped up at the conclusion, with all the loose ends neatly tied, but I don't see why this is necessary given that real life is seldom like this.
One minor quibble: I found about a dozen spelling errors, including, in one instance, one of the character's names. But for me, all one has to know is that I'm definitely going to read other works from this fine novelist.
Engaging light read .......2007-07-22
I liked this book a lot. I thought a lot of its strength came from Prose's ability to make us feel sorry for the main character, despite scolding his stupid actions throughout the book. How could Swenson be so dumb? I liked a lot of the dialog too.
I can understand people's problems with the book "answering questions nobody asked because everyone knew the answer already". Its still a quick, engaging read. Worth the $2 at the very least.
Funny if you've ever taken Creative Writing classes.......2007-06-01
The best parts of this novel are the scenes in which the students are workshopping each other's stories. Anyone experienced in workshopping will find these scenes humorous because Prose captures the awkward tensions involved with trying to find good aspects of a bad story. I took a dark pleasure in her examples of bad prose: "The heat on the city streets made it hard for it to breath, especially Lydia." When you're presented with a line like this in a workshop, you find it almost impossible not to cringe. Here, you can laugh.
The rest of the novel is bland. After worrying about being tried for sexual harassment for discussing student stories that involve bestiality, the professor is ultimately accused for sexual involvement with a student. His worrying was a lot funnier than the actual case. Really, the book drops somewhat at the end, after he is accused, for it skips large periods of time in few pages and doesn't really present the reader with anything new.
If you've ever been a creative writing student, though, you should read this book, just for the laughts. I wish it had been more about the workshop.
The Age of the Antihero.......2007-05-30
Literature has entered the age of the antihero. Modern works that feature bona fide heroes are damned to mainstream, or if they are sufficiently lacking in big words, they may have a place in the Young Adult section. Today the only licensed guide for true literature is via the antihero. It turns out that while the antihero is an excellent chap for pointing out society's blemishes, he is pretty shabby at resolving them. For all of you reviewers who complained about the third act, this may be why it left you feeling unsatisfied. Showcasing those who right wrongs has become the preserve of the biographer.
Meet Swenson Swenson, Ms. Prose's Nabokovian style antihero who, though willing to joust with the sexual conceits of university life, only spurs his charger down the lists at a tepid ho-hum trot and ends up forfeiting horse, armor, and title. Battered, but none the wiser, he walks off the last page a pauper with no means of support, no squire, no page, and probably still mired in writer's block.
I believe SS's flaw is in his habit of real-time editing his social interactions. He obsesses over what others may think of his most trivial statements and actions. Come to think of it, this behavior probably accounts for why he's been unable to complete his third novel for the last twenty years. He is so uptight about how others regard him (though in reality it may be how he regards himself) he could pass for British.
The story's villainess, An-GEL-a, a pity that the tip of the tongue only requires two not three steps off the palate, was suspected of being a pathological liar by SS. This was wrong. She was a sociopath. Lying is only one of the many tools used by sociopaths. When confronted by their crimes, liars can be made to feel badly about their behavior. Angela suffered no such compunctions. Interesting how the little vixen was so willing to sell her `innocence' for literary gain, only to become the poster girl for the sexual harassment harpies--nice touch.
Though Ms. Prose's intent was to skewer the sexual harassment crowd such as they existed on American campuses ca. 2000, I think she did an even better job skewering the publishing industry. Look at the diabolical act Angela had to commit to get her book published. A student, her talent unknown but to herself, she knew she was facing the impossible. And look at the despicable self-serving character of Len Currie, SS's big city editor. SS is, or was, an author of some renown, he hadn't bothered his editor in many years, and now he wants to pitch a student whom he believes can really write. Instead, Currie ignores SS's obvious credibility and remarks that student writers are beneath him. I found myself detesting the editor even more than I did, Lauren Healy, the leader of the local femme-Nazis. [Word of the day: `misandry', meaning hatred of males, handy opposite of misogyny. Everyone knows what misogyny means--comes up often in cocktail conversations--but you need a really big dictionary to find misandry.]
All in all, this was a book with a mission, which is to say Ms. Prose didn't write it to be entertaining. If you were disappointed in the outcome, ask yourself how you felt when you read the last page. Were you angry? Ready to take up the lance in righteous indignation? Then Ms. Prose accomplished her mission.
--Ejner Fulsang, author of "A Knavish Piece of Work", Aarhus Publishing, 2006
possibly the worst book i've ever read..........2007-01-11
i'm not exactly sure why i bought this book. something about the blurb and first couple paragraphs caught my eye... not to mention the vintage photo on the cover. but, ultimately, i'm disappointed. the story plays out in the first 75 pages and consequently drags through another 225 until it finally ends in glazed-over, lamely symbolic scene that involves a doe serenely staring down the main character across the snow-covered Vermont campus. The authors use of question marks in her younger characters' dialog was mildly amusing the first time, but quickly grew old with over use. And she had lots adjectives that didn't add anything but ambiguity to otherwise clear and concise descriptions. I'd like to get her address and mail her this horrible failure of a novel... so I don't have to look at it on my bookshelf and be reminded of the time i wasted reading it.
i give it two stars only because it kept my disgusted attention... just like a multiple car crash on the highway.
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The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, The Blue Flower (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
Penelope Fitzgerald
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1400041260
Release Date: 2003-09-23 |
Book Description
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Penelope Fitzgerald, who died in 2000, emerged late in life as one of the most remarkable English writers of the last century. She began her writing career in 1975 at the age of fifty-nine, and over the next two decades she published three biographies, nine novels, and a collection of short stories. Now three of her acclaimed novels are gathered here in one volume.
The Bookshop is a postwar tragicomedy of manners, set in an isolated seaside town where an enterprising woman opens a bookstore only to find it beset by poltergeists, weather, and hostile townsfolk. The Gate of Angels is an Edwardian romance within a novel of ideas: a young doctor devoted to science and to his all-male Cambridge college finds his life and views disrupted by a nurse named Daisy. The Blue Flower, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, revitalizes historical drama through the story of Novalis, an eighteenth-century German romantic poet and visionary genius, and his unlikely love affair with a simple child-woman.
These three novels all display Fitzgerald’s characteristic wit, intellectual breadth, and narrative brilliance, applied to an array of traditional forms into which she breathed new life.
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- ONE TOUGH COP!
- HARDER THAN A 10-MINUTE EGG
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Hard Boiled Angel: Blue Angel Book 1
Hyun Se Lee
Manufacturer: Central Park Media
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1586649167 |
Book Description
Four dark stories set in a city where the only thing tougher than a gun to the head is the woman pulling the trigger! "The Autumn of Men": Jiran is stalked by a high-level executive with "friends in high places." "School Ties That Bind": A high school friend asks Jiran to investigate her husband who she suspects is cheating on her. "Master of Hell": A series of seemingly unrelated murders terrorize the city. At every murder scene the police find messages of "Ah Voh Puc," the master of Hell. "Kids of Fear": Jiran is asked to find the "missing" son of an old acquaintance. Little does she know that the friend already knows where he is...
Customer Reviews:
ONE TOUGH COP!.......2006-01-10
Hard-Boiled Angel Book one is a Korean Manhwa (Manga) that follows the cases of a tough as nails female detective Jiran Ha. Ha is with the Hard Crimes unit and this book presents four separate stories by Hyun Se Lee who doubles as writer and artist. The stories all have that gritty, American crime drama feeling to them that fans of Cop shows will recognize and enjoy.
There are four stories and they are all exceptional. Ha is as stoic and tough as any male cop and keeps the others on their toes with firm slaps to the groin, adding some comic levity to the tales. All of the stories are exceptional but the first and last truly stand out. In "Autumn of a Man", Ha finds herself being stalked by a degenerate creep who has no idea that she is a cop. He watches her night and day from his building, seeing her leaving at all hours of the night and getting the VERY wrong impression. When he tries to molest her in a park, Ha turn the tables on him and arrests him. But evidently the creep has friends in high places and works for a senator and is soon out on the streets. He lures Ha in a deadly game of cat & mouse into a remote wilderness for a final confrontation.
In the last story, Detective Ha pays a visit to an old teacher of hers only to find him bed ridden from Palsy. His wife tells Ha that their son, Hawsung, who is now in high school, has run away from home. Ha is determined to find the boy. Her investigations lead to the discovery of a young gang of vigilantes that Haesung may be involved with coupled with organized crime who are forcing under-aged girls into slavery unless their families can buy their freedom.
Hyun Se Lee obviously seems to have been influenced by American film as his tough Detective Ha seems to be a female cross between Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis. Lee's course but gorgeous artwork fits perfectly with the types of stories he's telling. The book contains bios of all the main characters as well as Lee's own notes. Very enjoyable!
Reviewed by Tim Janson
HARDER THAN A 10-MINUTE EGG.......2005-07-11
As a big fan of Frank Miller's SIN CITY and DC Comic's 100 BULLETS, I was looking forward to HARD BOILED ANGEL, and I wasn't disappointed.
The lead character is a female detective in Korea, and she's a kick-ass, no-nonsense cop who'd give Dirty Harry the jitters. This is an amazing book with just the right amount of dialogue, and if you've seen any other books by Hyun se Lee, you'll know that his pictures speak louder than words.
Although the entire book revolves around the lady cop, the individual chapters are like little, self-contained detective stories. This book is well over 300 pages, and is a great value for the price.
A very recommended, exciting read.
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- THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM
- GIRLS and GUNS...WHAT COULD BE BETTER?
- IT'S A WOMAN'S WORLD, MAN!
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Hard Boiled Angel: Blue Angel Book 3 (Hard Boiled Angel)
Hyun Se Lee
Manufacturer: Central Park Media
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1586649485 |
Book Description
A crazed hypnotist creates a small army of unknowing murderers! His hypnotic message is simple: "Kill my enemies or you will die!"
Customer Reviews:
THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM.......2005-07-11
This continuation of Hard Boiled Angel is an interesting one. It involves two criminals who are hypnotized to do dirty work for a dead man whose daughter was kidnapped and sold into a sex trade. At the same time these men want to redeem themselves, but in order to do so they must now become criminals again.
The question is then, are they the good guys or the bad guys?
An interesting tale I must say because it proves that good and bad has a gray area. At the same time conveying this message takes the entire book, wishing the story would end to move onto another. While this was a long case to solve for Jiran, it was the most creative.
GIRLS and GUNS...WHAT COULD BE BETTER?.......2005-07-11
This second volume shows us a more personal side to lady cop, Jiran Ha. The first story is actually rather comedic and rather moving...I don't want to give away the details because it's a nice read.
The second story is really violent, and more in the spirit of the 1st book. We get to know more about Ha's past and why she became a cop in the first place. The third story combines the humor of the 1st story and the dark creepiness of the second. It's all very tragic, and yet there is a very strong pro-feminist message throughout all of the work, which I found very, very interesting.
This book continues to be action-packed with suspenseful adventure and definitely a must read.
IT'S A WOMAN'S WORLD, MAN!.......2005-07-10
Korean cop Jiran Ha is a strong woman. While not seeing men as equal to women, (she constantly punches one of her male co-workers in the crotch), in the first story in the book she does try to overcome male prejudice toward women officers. A temp juvenile counselor in the department whose name is also Jiran Ha is mistakenly sent an invitation to give a speech at a police ceremony. It's up to the Hard-Boiled Angel to shine a light on the important and hard work this person does. The other two stories are more of the crime noir style. In "The Song of the Hungry Ghost", Jiran Ha must track down an escaped convict, a man who only seems to kill rapists, causing quite a moral dilemma for Jiran because of her pro-woman stance. And plus she finds herself oddly attracted to his purity. In the last story in the volume, an engaged couple are found dead in a sea cave, the only witness the woman's ex-lover, who is suffering from a mental disorder and losing touch with reality. Jiran Ha's superiors naturally pin it on the rejected lover but Jiran is not so sure.
I think it is very appropriate that underneath the title this manhwa is called "A Crime Novel". These are very long stories and are very detailed in their characterization. I admire it simply for the gritty and lengthy storytelling alone. Having the great art to go along with it makes it even more special. I especially like how Jiran Ha pushes all the men around in the stories and turns the tables on them. Some sequences can be a little melodramatic but nothing beyond reason. Great read, though inferior to the first volume.
Product Description
Incredible Raijin Comics Issue 0. The first of the reknowned Raijin Comics series. A must have for any anime collector. Stories include:
City Hunter
Fist of the Blue Sky
Baki the Grappler
Guardian Angel
Product Description
Incredible Raijin Comics magazine from 2003. Stories include:
Slam Dunk
City Hunter
Baki The Grappler
Fist of the Blue Sky
Bow Wow Wata
Guardian Angel Getten
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Raijin Comics Issue 28
Manufacturer: Raijin Comics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Comic
ASIN: B000VL9IBA |
Product Description
Incredible Comic with stories that inspire and art that thrils. Gorgeous graphics! Authentic Japanese Style...turn pages from right to left! Featuring Keiji, City Hunter, Baki the Grappler, Slam Dunk, Fist of the Blue Sky, Guardian Angel Getten, Bow Wow Wow, The First President of Japan.
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V.I. Warshawski Series: Indemnity Only, Deadlock, Killing Orders, Bitter Medicine, Blood Shot, Burn Marks, Guardian Angel, Tunnel Vision, Windy City Blues, Hard Time, Total Recall, Blacklist, Fire Sale (Set of 12 Mystery Novels)
Sara Paretsky
Manufacturer: Dell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000R0E7IE |
Customer Reviews:
inheritor, foreigner series.......2005-08-07
Like one other reader, I had read CJ Cherryh's foreigner series and then later read Ursula K. Leguin's Left Hand of Darkness (actually I am currently reading it). They are interesting books to compare, because they both deal with a human agent trying to relate to an alien culture in which people think so differently that it is hard to follow their meaning, and dangerous misunderstandings can result.
I like Ursula K Leguin's book better. CJ Cherryh's character, Bren Cameron seems to be afraid to be a person. A lot of her characters, for example, her main character in the Faded Sun Trilogy, give up their own souls in order to survive in an alien culture. Also, Tully in the Chanur books. All her characters are always walking on eggshells to avoid offending.
The envoy in Left Hand of Darkness has his own life and agenda, and you begin to think as you read that he is wrong in his assessment of Estraven, but you can respect him. I don't have a lot of respect for Bren Cameron. He is a pain in the neck.
The aspect of CJ Cherryh's Foreigner Series that does fascinate me is the idea of humans getting so far away from Earth that they don't know where Earth is and having the opportunity to start a whole new culture not dependent on Earth. I don't buy the lack of curiosity the Mospheiran's seem to feel for their origins. But the concept is interesting.
one world where HUMANS are the alien threat.......2005-02-28
An accelerated pace and 3 months have passed since the end of "Invader".
Jase has settled in, the emissary from the orbiting space ship "Phoenix" which, like the bird of legend, returned from the unknown & unexplored reaches of deep space.
For a little history:
Cherryh sets her world with imposing aliens(Atevi) who are united by a single ruler, the aijii, under whom lords & council govern. Humans, lost on a space colonization mission, have settled on the Atevi world and exist in an uneasy truce, co-operating & trading only through one diplomat; Bren Cameron.
As the only contact between two species, Cameron is constantly protected by an extraordinary security force but his family is not so fortunate.
In a turbulent political climate on the human governed island, Camerons' family is endangered by radical factions & Yolanda Mercheson, the ships emissary has been threatened.
Against this background he must somehow train (Jase)the new Atevi ship-human diplomat in the tangled Ragi tongue, which has no word for trust, or love or even like. Yes, human and Atevi are biologically different, and a man alone in an alien culture must constantly rethink his most basic suppositions.
Jase & Cameron have made little headway after the initial friendliness of their contact & arrangements, but luckily Cameron's Atevi security have become his family.
Against the backdrop of the stars, and one alien homeplanet where HUMANS are the alien threat, the `space opera' plays out.
Well written, fast paced & enjoyable, an increasingly involving series. .
Kotori ojadis@yahoo.com
Incredibly slow-paced.......2005-01-12
This 3rd book from the Bren Cameron series is actually worse than the first two from the series. The diplomatic minutia reaches stifling heights, making the book virtually unreadable... I ended up having to skim the last third of this book - and I NEVER do that (I read about 4 books a month).
Working my way through this book reminds me of when I was a kid, and was made to force down food I didn't care for... sure it was edible, but it wasn't enjoyable.
There are just too many good science fiction books out there to deal with the sluggish pace found here... and I've still got three more books from this series to go!
Jase: The perfect foil for Bren.......2002-04-17
I am a huge fan of C.J. Cherryh's science fiction works; she is my favorite author despite my not being a science fiction reader. Next to Cyteen and Finity's End, this series is my favorite of Cherryh's science fiction work.
That said, the first time I picked up Inheritor, I had recently finished reading the first books in the series. As other reviewers note, Bren's point of view and overanalysis can be claustrophobic. His agonizing over small details is obsessive and the habit builds, one detail on top of the next, until it begins to seem almost humorous, and at the same time worthy of the reader's pity (for Bren, not the author). When yet another book in the series started along the same thread, I couldn't take much more. I put it down after the first two chapters, and took a break from the series.
I still retained a fondness for Bren, though, and recently I read Cherryh's newest in the series, Defender. I decided to go back to Inheritor and see what I had missed (particularly after one of Cherryh's writing colleagues, Jane Fancher, encouraged me to do so), and to my surprise, when I had finished it I found it to be my favorite novel in the Bren series.
First, this novel was the deepest of all the Bren novels in terms of human interaction. Jase doesn't drop from the skies, marvelously close to Bren's age, and fit right into the expected "friendly companion" role. They disagree. They miscommunicate. Bren isn't always dealing with a full set of informational cards when he tries to interpret Jase; Jase can't fathom Bren's atevi-habits, even when spoon-fed these mannerisms in plain language. It's one thing to understand something from the mind, another to understand it in the gut.
Which leads to the most outstanding feature of the book... Jase's role as perfect foil for Bren. Jase brings out that which Bren worries over in himself, and shows Bren's knowledge and experience off to advantage. As another reviewer points out, we only see this world through Bren's eyes. An author at Cherryh's level would be hard put to use that tired device, "Bren looked into the mirror and noticed he had blond hair, and that his face seldom had any expression." (Having a constant poker face in this society ensures one's survival, a fact made plain in previous novels in the series.) Instead, during an argument with Bren, Jase brings subtleties like Bren's lack of facial expressions into the light for the reader to notice more closely: Jase understandably can't read Bren well without facial expressions to go on, and understandably Jase doesn't believe that a person without facial expressions really cares about him or his adjustment difficulties.
A side note: One oddity which had me bemused upon reading the first book of the series, and which continued into subsequent books including Inheritor, later won me over. This oddity is the astonishing similarity, technology-wise, of this alien world to today's Earth. Imagine! So far away in the galaxy that no one on the planet knows where they are in relation to Earth, so far into the future that man is folding space as easily as a t-shirt, on a distant planet... they are using windshield wipers. These windshield wipers are on the windshields of cars just like ours, and the rain that falls is just like the rain falling outside my window now.
Later, though, I began to appreciate this tendency of Cherryh's (it appears in Cyteen as well) deeply. Why? Because when one reads other science fiction novels, one spends a great deal of concentration just trying to figure out what the heck that device is in the character's hand, and in what kind of facility is the character standing? Much of one's focus is, by necessity, on decoding just the basic surroundings and tools of the era. By using technology, tools, and settings familiar to us, Cherryh puts the spotlight squarely on the characters and the subtlety of their thoughts and interactions -- what she does best, and exactly where the spotlight should be.
A good read, but a couple of flaws.......2000-12-12
Readers of the first two books in the series will find this one pretty familiar. The strength of the series has always been character and setting - the culture and politics of an alien race and its effect on a human protagonist caught in the middle of it all. This remains true in this book, where it's all thrown into sharp relief through the arrival of another human - this one an ambassador from space with no background in the race or culture who struggles to learn on the job as best he can. Though Bren remains the protagonist, the complex and baffling nature of atevi society is highlighted once more through the eyes of the newcomer, and the effect of Bren's immersion in atevi culture on his relationships with humans becomes increasingly apparent. All good stuff, and if you enjoyed it in the earlier books you'll enjoy it this time as well.
I did feel that the book had a couple of weak points. The first is Bren's tendency to analyze everything endlessly, including himself - often several pages will be taken up simply with a conversation happening inside Bren's head. Apart from frequently slowing things down a lot, this (in my opinion) takes away some of the subtlety and depth from the writing. Any subtext won't remain sub- for long, as Bren will notice it soon enough and agonize over it. I understand that this is a stylistic thing, and that this device may be necessary to some degree to establish the level of setting and character detail that the book requires. Still, after recently reading 'The Left Hand Of Darkness' (Ursula Le Guin) in which profound details of society, culture and character emerge from the most mundane conversations and actions, it's hard not to feel a bit shortchanged by this approach.
The second weakness, in my opinion, was the plot, which is becoming rather predictable and formulaic as the series progresses. The endings in particular all seem very similar and involve similar plot devices every time, to the point where they become little 'machimi plays' of their own based on established conventions. At the end of this book I kept feeling that I was re-reading one of the other two.
I enjoyed the first two books, and I enjoyed this one as well. However, after finishing it I did feel somewhat less inclined to keep following the series.
Customer Reviews:
A contagious passion for worship.......2006-08-09
"The natural object is always the adequate symbol." Joyce Rupp embodies Ezra Pound's famous quote by using diverse images as springboards for spiritual transformation; in elevating the ordinary, she reveals an extraordinary God.
These meditations and seasonal reflections include prayers of all kinds: from call and response to blessings to holy day invocations. Drawn from her years as a spiritual director and retreat leader, her work gives voice to our common losses and aspirations, our longings and celebrations. Forthright poems emulate traditional religious poetry, and her prose is direct, insightful, and heartfelt.
This is one generous soul. "Use the rituals and prayers as seeds or as whole plants," she writes. "Either way is fine with me." She requests that her poems be preserved intact but graciously offers the other materials in her book -- including the music -- for adaptation for personal or liturgical use. The user need only include the appropriate acknowledgement, as explained in her introduction.
"Must" reading for all Joyce Rupp fans!.......2000-03-05
Out Of The Ordinary features more than 125 thoughtful compositions drawn from author Joyce Rupp's treasure trove of unpublished work. Herein contained are attentive prayer resources for a wide spectrum of needs and times, including resources for groups, individuals, prayer rituals, guided visualizations, reflections, and poems -- suitably for open or closed meetings, prayer sessions, and days of recollection. When used within the context of worship and small group prayer, they can be duplicated without cost or written permission. Out Of The Ordinary is further enhanced for students of spirituality with a collection of prayerful, Taize-like chants that Rupp composed to accompany the many rituals outlined in her book. The musical notation of these chants is contained in the Appendix, and are also available on CD or cassette.
Books:
- Brazzaville Beach
- Cadillac Jack : A Novel
- Ciudad de las Bestias, La
- Clear Light of Day
- Cloudstreet : A Novel
- Collected Short Stories: Volume 3 (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
- Colossus of Maroussi
- Dragon Seed (Buck, Pearl S. Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck.)
- Dreams Of My Russian Summers: A Novel
- Fencing the Sky: A Novel
Books Index
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