Amazon.com
Fifteen is a year of clarity; you're still one of the kids, but you're finally beginning to unlock the mysteries of adult behavior. In her luminous novel Child of My Heart, Alice McDermott's narrator is a 15-year-old girl who has two qualities that give her access to the secret lives of adults: she's beautiful, and she looks after their children. Her beauty has already shaped her life. Her parents have moved the family to the east end of Long Island in hopes of finding her a wealthy husband, or at least a fancy crowd to run with. Here she babysits the children of the rich, whose fathers demonstrate their relative decency by making passes at her, or not. The novel spans a dreamy summer as our heroine spends her days with her various charges at the beach, happily leading her crew on home-grown, rather sweet adventures. Among the kids she looks after is a toddler whose father is a famous, aging artist. The narrator's preternatural acuity is apparent in this exchange with a new client: "Mrs. Richardson learned by direct inquiry that I lived in that sweet cottage with the dahlias (interested) and went to the academy (more interested) and babysat for this child of the famous artist (most interested) down the road." Child of My Heart is a pretty straightforward coming-of-age novel, but it's marked throughout by this beautifully honed, wry, knowing tone. McDermott's narrator reminds us that our lost innocence might not have been so innocent after all. --Claire Dederer
Book Description
In Alice McDermott's first work of fiction since her best-selling, National Book Award-winning Charming Billy, a woman recalls her fifteenth summer with the wry and bittersweet wisdom of hindsight. The beautiful child of older parents, raised on the eastern end of Long Island, Theresa is her town's most sought-after babysitter-cheerful, poised, an effortless storyteller, a wonder with children and animals. Among her charges this fateful summer is Daisy, her younger cousin, who has come to spend a few quiet weeks in this bucolic place. While Theresa copes with the challenge presented by the neighborhood's waiflike children, the tumultuous households of her employers, the attentions of an aging painter, and Daisy's fragility of body and spirit, her precocious, tongue-in-check sense of order is tested as she makes the perilous crossing into adulthood. In her deeply etched rendering of all that happened that seemingly idyllic season, McDermott once again peers into the depths of everyday life with inimitable insight and grace.
Download Description
In her fifteenth summer, Teresa is her town's most sought-after babysitter--cheerful, poised, an effortless storyteller, a wonder with children and animals--but also a solitary soul already attuned to the paradoxes and compromises of adult life. While coping with the challenges presented by the tumultuous households of her emplyers, Teresa's precocious, tongue-in-cheek sense of order is put to the test as she makes the perilous crossing into adulthood.
Customer Reviews:
Incredibly Moving.......2007-05-10
This powerful and very moving novel centers on Theresa, a 15-year-old beauty on the cusp of adulthood who spends one almost imaginary summer hovering between the worlds of childhood and the world to come.
An only child raised by loving devout Catholics, Theresa has become the superstar babysitter/pet sitter in the quiet Long Island town where her naive parents have moved in order to put her in the "correct society" so that she can eventually marry well. Because of her beauty, and because of her very real connection to children and animals, Theresa is a major hit among the summer-dwellers, none of whom has a clue what their children are doing or thinking. Indeed, their benign (and sometimes not so benign) neglect of their offspring is a major theme in the novel.
Enter dear, fragile Daisy, the doomed 8-year-old cousin, child of a very large family, whom Theresa takes under her wing for a few magical weeks during this special summer. Daisy, who is dying of as-year-undiagnosed leukemia that her parents and other adults have not even noticed, is the metaphor for Theresa's fast-fading childhood. She clings fiercely to Daisy in love and protection, holding on to her ever more tightly as Daisy inexorably fades away before her very eyes.
And when Theresa finally steps a toe into the sea of the world to come, the time-out-of-mind state she has managed to create dissolves as inexorably as the tide at the beach she visits with her charges every day.
This is a brilliant book. I wish I had not read it so that I could experience it all over again for the very first time. Highly recommended.
A Spiritual Journey.......2007-04-11
Deeply effected by the terrorist attack to the Twin Towers of September 11th 2001 (the book was published in November 2002), it portraits the life of a teenager who refuses to accept the world the way it is. Theresa, the main character of Child of My Heart, reinvents it for the children she baby-sits and dedicates an entire summer to her favourite cousin, Daisy, and the toddler child of a local artist, Flora.
The world as Theresa sees it is not acceptable to her. She does her best to reinvents another one of love, fun and optimism. She is also the internal narrator who tells the story of the summer of her fifteenth year of age, during which she was in charge of "four dogs, three cats, the Moran kids, Daisy, my eight-year-old cousin, and Flora, the toddler child of a local artist".
The novel is once again set in Long Island, during a hot summer. The dialogues take place outside, on the beach or in the streets, while the few interiors are Theresa's home and Flora's. The summer and Long Island are a common trend for all McDermott's novel, except for A Bigamist Daughter, set between Manhattan and Maine.
However, Long Island, in Child of My Heart, does not suggest the idyllic location of At Weddings and Wakes, where Lucy's children can cut themselves off reality and off the vicissitudes of their mother's family, or of Charming Billy, where Billy meets his love, or even of That Night in which Sheryl and Rick live a passionate yet fleeting relationship.
Here, Long Island, is the only setting and embodies vision and reality at once. Theresa is "Titania among her fairies ", and it is not unintentionally that A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) is mentioned, as if that bucolic summer represented for the young girl a sort of reverie, with all its incredible, rutilant nuances and the discoveries of adolescence, like in That Night.
"Pretty, intelligent, mature in speech although undeveloped physically, well immersed in my parent's old-fashioned Irish Catholic manners (inherited from their parents, who had spent their careers in service to this very breed of American rich), and, best of all, beloved by children and pets", Theresa is the baby-sitter "par excellence" since the tender age of ten. In great demand, in Long Island, where her parents moved to offer her more opportunities, she throws herself into the fantastic world of children, relishing them and giving them all her attentions.
The novel is set in the 50's, "in those Marilyn Monroe/Jayne Mansfield days" .
The novel is disclosed, as a flash-back, by Theresa, who by then is an adult and, while chatting with Daisy's sister, Bernadette, she tells her the story of that surreal summer of June when "Daisy arrived, the middle child of my father's only sister"...
Theresa compares herself to Titania in relation to a world of daydream. However the metaphor resides also in the fact that, like Titania, Theresa will experience a sexual adventure in the forest. Flora's aged father will, in fact, seduce the young girl.
The seventy year old artist, who is always called just "Flora's father" (his name or his last name are never revealed) is "an unremarkable old man, [with] glasses, khaki pants, a stoop, a long thatch of white hair that seemed to rise over his head like a pure white tongue of smoky fire [...] it seemed to me that his hair moved constantly like a flame".
He does not share many characteristics with clumsy Bottom. Unlike him, he did not get lost in the woods, he does not find himself there by coincidence and surely is not lured by Theresa. He is an experienced old man, he is well-off and has built his fame around aesthetics and the magnitude of arts. With his long ashy hair, he resembles a magician, a wizard who tempts and bewitches, who reminds us of Oberon, the king of shadows. Even his studio is made of lights and shades, as "it was full of the filtered sunshine of the skylight".
Overt references to Shakespeare emerge throughout the novel, for Theresa is an enthusiastic admirer of the Stratford playwright, but there are also veiled allusions to other Elizabethan authors, like Spenser. The choice of the name Flora, for example, finds its raison d'être in the Faerie Queene (1590).
Thus being entred, they behold around
A large and spacious plaine, on euery side
Strowed with pleasauns, whose faire grassy ground
Mantled with greene, and goodly beautified
With all the ornaments of Floraes pride,
Wherewith her mother Art as half in scorne
Of niggard Nature, like a pompous bride
Did decke her, and too lauishly adorne,
When forth from virgin bowre she comes in th'early morne . (SPENSER 1978: 373)
In the XIIh Canto, we uncover the Garden of Acrasia, the artificial garden, which counteracts the incorruptible Garden of Adonis. In the aforementioned stanza, we see how "mother Art" works against "Nature". Mother Art, which symbolises the elderly artist in Child of My Heart is positioned, in the text, not unexpectedly, right next to Flora (Floraes), the appellative that McDermott chooses for his daughter. The artist also recalls the two geniuses of the Garden of Acrasia and the Garden of Adonis. The latter, eternal locus amoenus, where the souls pre-exist before being sent to the world, represents the realm of change and renewal, where immortality becomes possible through a continuous regeneration.
The good Old Genius, who appears in Book III, Canto VI, gives chaos an order, and has a wicked copy in Canto XII of Book II.
Adonis is the creative, imaginative nature, while the Garden of Acrasia symbolises art and imitation. It is a refuge for the lovers, it is sensual almost as much as its Genius. And it is this character that, the artist that enchants Theresa, seems to resemble. Nevertheless, we cannot declare he is an iniquitous figure. He is more like an initiator and his sexual intercourse with the fifteen year old girl seems to signify a ritual that has to be consummated. He is, after all, the only one who can penetrate her soul, who understands her anxiety, her fear of death and her awareness that Daisy will pass away.
To the heart of this enthralling novel, there is the utmost necessity of art and imagination, which stand for the only answer to combat the brutality of life. Theresa embodies the weaver of fantasy, the creator of stories and tales that brings joy and anticipation to the world of children, while Flora's father represents art and the significance that it comes to assume in daily life. Because the world, as a whole, cannot be changed and sufferance and death inevitably leave their mark in it (as McDermott shows us in her novels), the only way to portray a different universe to the one we live in, is through the mind, the fascination of memory, make-believe and the art of story-telling.
The structure of this narrative is cyclical. The books opens and ends with the same subject: the finding of three little new born rabbits, whose destiny is not revealed in the last page, as we would expect, but right from the beginning, to anticipate that strand of death that we will come to accept during the reading of the book: "Not meant to live, as my parents had told me, being wild things, although I tried for nearly a week to feed them a watery mixture of milk and torn clover".
The message is a positive one, as the protagonist does not stop fighting for them and for her little cousin and never cease to believe in a better world. With this, McDermott is shouting her encouragement for peace, inner strength, love and memory.
Alice McDermott explores a ground that she knows well and to which she belongs, the world of Irish-American households, gatherings, traditions and enchanting tales of mysticism and spiritual journeys
Maudlin Sentimentality Ahoy!.......2007-04-11
Wow, this book was so uplifting and hilarious, I think I'll go and kill myself now! Hey! If you ever wondered whether children get the shortest, sharpest, boringest end of the stick in life, this book if your proof. If you belligerently insist that people are essentially good; adultery, abuse, neglect, and disinterest in their children notwithstanding; then you too can cling to the adolescent narrator for comfort. She introduces fantasy and love into the lives of all the sad little children she knows, and she knows only the saddest of little children. In the end, most of them survive. Survive to continue to endure the effects of their parents' ignorance and selfishness! Hooray!
SOME GOOD; SOME REALLY DULL.......2006-09-19
A sluggish evocation of a teen ager's summer in the Hamptons. Theresa is an unworldly 15 year old. She spends the summer months caring for a younger cousin, Daisy, who is on the edge of a fatal illness. Together they work at minding the children and pets of the rich, Some passages come to life, but there are many pages of dull minutiae. This should have been a short story, told in 12 pages of the New Yorker.
A spiritual journey.......2006-08-31
Deeply effected by the terrorist attack to the Twin Towers of September 11th 2001 (the book was published in November 2002), it portraits the life of a teenager who refuses to accept the world the way it is. Theresa, the main character of Child of My Heart, reinvents it for the children she baby-sits and dedicates an entire summer to her favourite cousin, Daisy, and the toddler child of a local artist, Flora.
The world as Theresa sees it is not acceptable to her. She does her best to reinvents another one of love, fun and optimism. She is also the internal narrator who tells the story of the summer of her fifteenth year of age, during which she was in charge of "four dogs, three cats, the Moran kids, Daisy, my eight-year-old cousin, and Flora, the toddler child of a local artist".
The novel is once again set in Long Island, during a hot summer. The dialogues take place outside, on the beach or in the streets, while the few interiors are Theresa's home and Flora's. The summer and Long Island are a common trend for all McDermott's novel, except for A Bigamist Daughter, set between Manhattan and Maine.
However, Long Island, in Child of My Heart, does not suggest the idyllic location of At Weddings and Wakes, where Lucy's children can cut themselves off reality and off the vicissitudes of their mother's family, or of Charming Billy, where Billy meets his love, or even of That Night in which Sheryl and Rick live a passionate yet fleeting relationship.
Here, Long Island, is the only setting and embodies vision and reality at once. Theresa is "Titania among her fairies ", and it is not unintentionally that A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) is mentioned, as if that bucolic summer represented for the young girl a sort of reverie, with all its incredible, rutilant nuances and the discoveries of adolescence, like in That Night.
"Pretty, intelligent, mature in speech although undeveloped physically, well immersed in my parent's old-fashioned Irish Catholic manners (inherited from their parents, who had spent their careers in service to this very breed of American rich), and, best of all, beloved by children and pets", Theresa is the baby-sitter "par excellence" since the tender age of ten. In great demand, in Long Island, where her parents moved to offer her more opportunities, she throws herself into the fantastic world of children, relishing them and giving them all her attentions.
The novel is set in the 50's, "in those Marilyn Monroe/Jayne Mansfield days" .
The novel is disclosed, as a flash-back, by Theresa, who by then is an adult and, while chatting with Daisy's sister, Bernadette, she tells her the story of that surreal summer of June when "Daisy arrived, the middle child of my father's only sister"...
Theresa compares herself to Titania in relation to a world of daydream. However the metaphor resides also in the fact that, like Titania, Theresa will experience a sexual adventure in the forest. Flora's aged father will, in fact, seduce the young girl.
The seventy year old artist, who is always called just "Flora's father" (his name or his last name are never revealed) is "an unremarkable old man, [with] glasses, khaki pants, a stoop, a long thatch of white hair that seemed to rise over his head like a pure white tongue of smoky fire [...] it seemed to me that his hair moved constantly like a flame".
He does not share many characteristics with clumsy Bottom. Unlike him, he did not get lost in the woods, he does not find himself there by coincidence and surely is not lured by Theresa. He is an experienced old man, he is well-off and has built his fame around aesthetics and the magnitude of arts. With his long ashy hair, he resembles a magician, a wizard who tempts and bewitches, who reminds us of Oberon, the king of shadows. Even his studio is made of lights and shades, as "it was full of the filtered sunshine of the skylight".
Overt references to Shakespeare emerge throughout the novel, for Theresa is an enthusiastic admirer of the Stratford playwright, but there are also veiled allusions to other Elizabethan authors, like Spenser. The choice of the name Flora, for example, finds its raison d'être in the Faerie Queene (1590).
Thus being entred, they behold around
A large and spacious plaine, on euery side
Strowed with pleasauns, whose faire grassy ground
Mantled with greene, and goodly beautified
With all the ornaments of Floraes pride,
Wherewith her mother Art as half in scorne
Of niggard Nature, like a pompous bride
Did decke her, and too lauishly adorne,
When forth from virgin bowre she comes in th'early morne . (SPENSER 1978: 373)
In the XIIh Canto, we uncover the Garden of Acrasia, the artificial garden, which counteracts the incorruptible Garden of Adonis. In the aforementioned stanza, we see how "mother Art" works against "Nature". Mother Art, which symbolises the elderly artist in Child of My Heart is positioned, in the text, not unexpectedly, right next to Flora (Floraes), the appellative that McDermott chooses for his daughter. The artist also recalls the two geniuses of the Garden of Acrasia and the Garden of Adonis. The latter, eternal locus amoenus, where the souls pre-exist before being sent to the world, represents the realm of change and renewal, where immortality becomes possible through a continuous regeneration.
The good Old Genius, who appears in Book III, Canto VI, gives chaos an order, and has a wicked copy in Canto XII of Book II.
Adonis is the creative, imaginative nature, while the Garden of Acrasia symbolises art and imitation. It is a refuge for the lovers, it is sensual almost as much as its Genius. And it is this character that, the artist that enchants Theresa, seems to resemble. Nevertheless, we cannot declare he is an iniquitous figure. He is more like an initiator and his sexual intercourse with the fifteen year old girl seems to signify a ritual that has to be consummated. He is, after all, the only one who can penetrate her soul, who understands her anxiety, her fear of death and her awareness that Daisy will pass away.
To the heart of this enthralling novel, there is the utmost necessity of art and imagination, which stand for the only answer to combat the brutality of life. Theresa embodies the weaver of fantasy, the creator of stories and tales that brings joy and anticipation to the world of children, while Flora's father represents art and the significance that it comes to assume in daily life. Because the world, as a whole, cannot be changed and sufferance and death inevitably leave their mark in it (as McDermott shows us in her novels), the only way to portray a different universe to the one we live in, is through the mind, the fascination of memory, make-believe and the art of story-telling.
The structure of this narrative is cyclical. The books opens and ends with the same subject: the finding of three little new born rabbits, whose destiny is not revealed in the last page, as we would expect, but right from the beginning, to anticipate that strand of death that we will come to accept during the reading of the book: "Not meant to live, as my parents had told me, being wild things, although I tried for nearly a week to feed them a watery mixture of milk and torn clover".
The message is a positive one, as the protagonist does not stop fighting for them and for her little cousin and never cease to believe in a better world. With this, McDermott is shouting her encouragement for peace, inner strength, love and memory.
Alice McDermott explores a ground that she knows well and to which she belongs, the world of Irish-American households, gatherings, traditions and enchanting tales of mysticism and spiritual journeys.
Book Description
A Child Will Change Everything.
MOTHER AT HEART
by Joan Elliott Pickart
Tessa Russell had promised to raise her sister's beloved baby as her own, with no interference from the baby's father -- but it was not a promise she would be able to keep. For into both her and little Jason's life stormed Dominic Bonelli. The darkly handsome, if impossible, man was making great inroads into Tessa's peace of mind, until she didn't know which would be the greater threat -- that he wouldn't admit he was the child's father . . . or that he would.
BABY MY BABY
by Victoria Pade
Their passionate marriage was over, their precious dreams in ashes -- when Beth Heller and Ash Blackwolf realized that the swelling in her belly meant that one of their dreams would yet see the light of day. But could one tiny baby really bring headstrong Beth to her senses -- not to mention her proud, beloved Blackwolf to his knees?
Book Description
No woman could resist Julian Dane. Except Lady Claudia Whitney. Julian had known her since childhood, but the headstrong lass had grown into a beautiful woman. Julian vows to teach her everything he knows about passion. But Claudia, in her most innocent ardor, promises to challenge him to the most dangerous emotion of all: wild, all-consuming love.
The rogue met his match in the woman he was forced to wed....
Customer Reviews:
The story could have been better...........2007-02-19
I just finished reading this book and I have to say that I agree with almost everyone here. Although the social issues showed a lot of realism, the love story between Julian and Claudia just dragged on. I like Julian better than Claudia who came across as "bratty" and "whiney." There were a few times that I wanted to hurl the book across the room because she was always jumping to the wrong conclusions. Yes, she was hurt that Julian had forgotten the 2nd waltz he promised when she was 17 yrs old. Instead of acting like the 25 year old lady that she was, she came across as a teenager. Not only that, I just couldn't stand Sophie even though I truly felt sorry for her and her plight. Overall, I like the story. I just wish that the author didn't have to torture the reader(s) too much!
Not that ruthless or charming.......2006-01-12
Julia London's Ruthless Charmer is neither ruthless, nor particularly charming. I gave it a C.
Centering on Earl and guardian Julian Dane and Earl's daughter and woman's activist Lady Claudia Whitney. While both characters are initially compelling both suffer from a variety of issues that are never fully flushed out. He ends up being overbearing in things that make no sense to even himself and she becomes a whiney, shortsighted brat.
Having known each other for years, one night they are compromised into a marriage neither of them want. They both love the other but believe the other hates them, then convince themselves that they hate the other. With no one main issue dividing them, it becomes a mishmash that you ultimately don't care much about.
In the background is a tragic story with Julian's youngest, self-conscious sister Sophie. She runs off with a terrible man who ends up extorting money from the family and beating her. The helplessness felt by the entire family is too big a thing to be a background to Julian and Claudia's bickering.
While Sophie is saved in the end, things are wrapped up too quickly and suddenly for the main couple.
A Shame, the characters if they would have remained true, rather than wishing washing between strange fights and long romantic and self effacing monologues, they might have been a good couple.
The heroine never really owned her own mistakes.......2005-08-16
This is was the primary problem for me. Julian is quite wonderful, but it is primarily his attempts to keep from being hurt by her that cause him to contribute negatively to their relationship. Claudia, however, makes huge mistake after serious erroneous assumption, often dating back to childhood and teenage slights, and repeatedly makes hasty judgments wihtout thinking them through first. These things inevitably lead to her hurting Julian, putting someone else in harm's path, etc. The worst thing is that she never truly learns or admits just how wrong she was. Oh, she does somewhat, but it's never enough to be convincing. Julian, on the other hand, makes this discovery and admission, but he allows Claudia too much credit in his changed perceptions.
These neverending problems and misunderstandings drag down an otherwise good book. The look at domestic violence and historical gender inequalities is realistic and eye- and heart-opening (even if you already know the facts). Claudia's youthful insecurities are understandable, but they are taken too far here. There are many good things in this book, and the slightly messy ending of Sophie and the rest is realistic. I wish London had not taken the couple's difficulties so far; they hurt each other so much (especially Claudia hurting Julian), that forgiveness came much too easily and quickly.
A charmer yes - but certainly not ruthless.......2003-11-28
Eagerly, I purchased the three books that make up The Rogues of Regent Street series. I had absolutely loved both The Devil's Love and Wicked Angel and rated them both five stars when I reviewed them on this site. But this series has not lived up to my expectations. The first in this series, The Dangerous Gentleman, was quite good but lacking when compared to her those first two London books I had read. I easily rated it a solid four stars when I reviewed it. However, The Ruthless Charmer, barely holds on to a four star rating. I would rate it a three and one-half if that option was available.
Julian Dane is the roguish hero who is tiring of that lifestyle. The suicide/death of one of his closest friends, Phillip, has left him shaken, even two years later, and he blames himself for his friend's death. He believes he could have prevented it had he just paid more attention. We don't really see Julian in full rogue mode. He has become increasingly interested in a long time friend, Claudia Whitney, and wants to pursue a relationship with her. However, she doesn't seem the least bit interested.
Claudia is a nineteenth century feminist. She is quite happy with her life as a single woman who spends her time and efforts on helping women. She is constantly attempting to raise funds for both a woman's shelter and a future girl's school for the less fortunate. She had been involved with Phillip prior to his death and blames their mutual friend, Julian Dane, for his death. If only Julian hadn't always encouraged Phillip's rakish ways, he probably would still be living. There is a lot of history between Claudia and Julian. She had grown up as a close friends to his many sisters and had a crush on him as a teenager. Although she is still attracted to him, she would never be foolish enough to hope for his love because she believes him to be too corrupt to ever be faithful. It seems Claudia is one very judgmental heroine. And she is one of the more belligerent and hateful ones I have read as well.
Julian proves to be a very likable character with much more patience than the average hero. The leads argue most of the book and don't even seem to like each other all that much. They each hold affection for the other but neither seems able to comprehend this glaring fact. Their continued conflicts become old quickly and it becomes tiresome, as we are privy to their insecure thoughts again and again and again. This is one story that is based largely on The Big Misunderstanding but in this case it should be referred to as The Big Misunderstandings. This couple has so many of these misunderstandings between them as one determines to show their love to the other only to give up just as the other has determined to show their love in return. There is so much angst between the two and they both appear a little stupid to not recognize or believe actions or actual words of love from one to the other.
Despite these conflicts, I still managed to be entertained and there are certainly some tender moments between the two. The sensual scenes are infrequent and rate about a 3.75 out of 5.0 (see More About Me for rating guidelines). This is a story that is primarily about the romance. There is a villain but thankfully, he only occupies a little of the story.
As I mentioned earlier, this is the second in a series of three. Although I was aggravated with the leads' interactions, I still recommend this series for some enjoyable reading. I am currently reading the third, The Beautiful Stranger, and it looks like it will be a five star rating. Julia London is an author I will continue to follow as her new books are released and I look forward to reading the remaining books on her backlist.
2nd in the series of Rogues.......2003-02-14
I loved the first book and couldn't wait to read this one. I was really disappointed. I finished it but it did not capture me as the first one. I have yet to read the 3rd in the series do to being so disappointed with this one.
Product Description
3 Book Set of paper backs
Average customer rating:
- Non-Stop
- Absolutely great
- Future world/corporate control freaks
- Perfect Dark near close to perfect
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Perfect Dark: Initial Vector
Greg Rucka
Manufacturer: Tor Books
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Perfect Dark: Second Front (Perfect Dark)
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Perfect Dark Zero
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A Fistful of Rain
ASIN: 076535473X
Release Date: 2006-05-30 |
Book Description
Continuing the epic storyline featured in the Xbox 360TM game Perfect Dark ZeroTMThe year is 2020: Corporations control everything. In the name of domination, these sprawling organizations have recruited their own military forces to fight clandestine battles against one another---a war fought in the boardrooms and won in the shadows, with the public none the wiser. Ex--bounty hunter Joanna Dark has unwillingly seen the front lines of this war. Her run-in with dataDyne, the world's most powerful hypercorporation, has left her with a wound that only vengeance can heal. Daniel Carrington, the charismatic founder of the Carrington Institute, has been locked in an ongoing war with dataDyne for years and sees Joanna's deadly skills as the key to victory over their mutual enemy. But Joanna is young and lost, unable to accept her abilities as virtues or fully trust Carrington's intentions.But when an explosive secret is unearthed---one that could finally bring down the threat of dataDyne once and for all---Joanna finds herself thrust back into the fight, one that brings her face to face with her past . . . and the forces shaping her future.
Customer Reviews:
Non-Stop.......2006-03-26
Perfect Dark: The Initial Vector is a great story if you love sci-fi or the Perfect Dark games. Joanna is pitted against a fierce enemy who has skills nearly equal to hers. It is a great story of battling corporations. I reccomend it to fans or sci-fi freaks.
Absolutely great.......2006-03-22
If you liked Perfect Dark Zero, you'll definitely love PDIV, it's absolutely great and fast paced! You won't stop reading!
Future world/corporate control freaks.......2006-03-12
Greg Rucka's PERFECT DARK: INITIAL VECOR (1593978820, $29.95) continues the saga featured in the Xbox game PERFECT DARK ZERO: this narrated deftly by Orlach Cassidy with Scott Sowers as it tells of a future world in which corporations control everything and use their own military forces to fight each other without public knowledge. Joanna Dark is an ex-bounty hunter who has seen this war for herself: she finds herself in the center of a conflict which brings her face to face with corporate and personal evil in this riveting thriller, which comes deftly to new life in a powerful audio format.
Perfect Dark near close to perfect.......2005-12-08
I have been interested in the xbox 360 game for a while, so when I saw the book, I had to get. Well, I bought it, read it, and enjoyed it. The only problem that I had with the book was that I felt that some of the conflicts were solved too simply. Other than that, I am hoping for a continuation within the Perfect Dark universe. As for a side note, if you have not played the game yet, the book will reveal some spoilers.
Average customer rating:
- You can probably do better...
- Go to a quiet place to read...
- A momentous journey...
- You'll end up feeling better about Mankind
- Fantastic Collection!!
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The Essential Mystics : Selections from the World's Great Wisdom Traditions
Andrew Harvey
Manufacturer: HarperOne
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Religion & Spirituality
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Mysticism
| New Age
| Religion & Spirituality
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Mysticism
| Other Practices
| Religion & Spirituality
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General
| Spirituality
| Religion & Spirituality
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ASIN: 0062513796 |
Amazon.com
Mystical experience, Andrew Harvey explains in his introduction to The Essential Mystics, is that "direct, unmediated experience of ... an almost unfathomable mystery," a mystery beyond name or form that draws the mystic toward its presence into a relationship of rapturous, awesome, ecstatic love. But this experience is not the exclusive domain of a few chosen beings; it is "always available--like the divine grace it is--to any who really want it." Harvey speaks of the urgent need for humans to look to this grace as the best hope for addressing pressing social problems. His collection, a "feast of the greatest and wisest mystical texts," presents the most precious testimonies to this divine relationship from all major world traditions. Included are teachings from Native American, Australian, and African visionaries as well as writings from Taoist, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and ancient Greek sources. Moving selections from Maori legends to the Upanishads, writings by Plato, and words of Mother Teresa reveal different approaches, but all echo the same longing of the soul to merge with the divine--and a simultaneous need to be fully engaged in the world to effect this union. Harvey pays special attention to the neglected role of the sacred feminine, saying that "without the balance of the knowledge of God as Mother as well as Father ... the human race will die out and take a large part of nature with it." The Mother's knowledge of unity, her powers of sensitivity, balance, and respect for life, he explains, must be invoked if humans are to overturn the damage wrought by centuries of adherence to a patriarchal vision--one that has left the external environment and our inner lives in serious need of repair. By understanding the divine in its complete masculine and feminine aspects and by looking to the great mystics, Harvey says, humans can initiate themselves into a fullness of the wisdom that inspires real action in the world. --Uma Kukathas
Book Description
From a highly popular and respected scholar, poet and lecturer and one of the nation's most celebrated authorities on mysticism comes the paperback edition of a brilliant introduction to the essential texts and themes of the great mystic visionaries.Whether it's based on the Buddhist vision of the Bodhisattva or the Christian concept of service, the mystic's journey is one take on behalf of all humanity - and that journey is the same in all traditions. This wide range of selections brings readers the essential themes and personalities of the mystic experience. Beautifully introduced with practical analysis and vital historical information, The Essential Mystics offers extras from many traditions, including Buddhist, Sikh, Taoist, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Hopi, Aborigine and Kogi.
Customer Reviews:
You can probably do better..........2005-10-18
This is an adequate survey of some of the highlights of a variety of religious writings. Unfortunately, I was looking for information on the mystics, not the author's summary of what he thought was the important mystical texts. If you're looking for this type of info, you probably already have or know a lot of the material in this book. "Cliff Notes" for mystics just doesn't makesense to me!
Go to a quiet place to read..........2004-11-11
This wide-ranging anthology collects all the essential texts and themes of great mystic traditions of the world -- from Buddhist, Taoist, Jewish, and Christian to Hopi, Hindi, Islamic, Sikh, Aboriginal, and Kogi. Provides analysis and historical information with special attention to the sacred feminine mystics. Well introduced with important historical information. This is an approachable guide to the unique and inspiring personalities that define the mystical experience.
A momentous journey..........2003-06-08
Andrew Harvey's 'The Essential Mystics' is subtitled 'The Soul's Journey into Truth'; this is a book which takes a broad approach to exploring the mystical side of religion, whatever cultural contexts it might take.
This is apparent from the basic listing of chapters:
Voices from the First World
Taoism: The Way of the Tao
Hinduism: the Way of Presence
Buddhism: The Way of Clarity
Judaism: The Way of Holiness
Ancient Greece: The Way of Beauty
Islam: The Way of Passion
Christianity: The Way of Love in Action
Drawing on the holy texts of the different traditions, and exploring the practices of the spiritualists, monastics and holy teachers of these traditions, Harvey has given us a concise volume that reaches to infinity. Harvey's ancient, native and cultural mystical experience has a choice example in the following:
'Sacred One,
Teach us love, compassion, and honour
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.'
- from a Yokuts prayer
With regard to Taoism, Harvey says, 'This vision in its sanity, lack of pretension, depth, humanity, and wise, demanding humility offers, I have found, a marvelous touchstone by which to inwardly test both the truths and the imbalances of the later mystical traditions.'
In exploring Hindi mysticism, Harvey claims that Hinduism's chief attraction to us now is that it has kept alive a very full at once majestic and tender vision of God the Mother.
'Daily existence in the heart of my extended family
is the worship beyond worship
that perceives Mother Reality
as every being, every situation, every breath.'
The way of clarity in Buddhism is exemplified by the Buddha's statements, such as, 'Be a lamp into yourself! Work out your liberation with diligence!' The buddha awoke to clarity, and Harvey introduces the four noble truths and other enlightenment texts.
Harvey's exploration of Jewish mysticism explores an extraordinary postive vision of the divine and the human life.... Yahweh is both transcendent and immanent, thus giving blessing and goodness to the world. This follows the kabbalistic tradition with insight and sensitivity.
The chapter on Ancient Greece is one of the real treasures of this book, for it is a topic which is often overlooked. We are much more familiar with the philosophical, political, and historical writings, as well as literature, but a true mystical sense has often been discounted as a side-show to the mythology. But Harvey says, 'in the great pre-Socratic philosophers such as Heraclitus and Empedocles we find maters of fearless paradox who rival the anonymous seers of the Vedas and Upanishads in their awareness of the necessity of opposites and of the unity that uses, contains, and transcends them.'
Harvey's chapter on the mysticism of Islam follows a Sufi approach; there is passion in realising reality, burning like the Flame of Love, that sees all of creation as a reflection or even incarnation of the divine.
'O My servants who believe!
Surely My earth is vast,
Therefore Me alone should you serve.'
- Qur'a
In the chapter on Christianity, Harvey states, 'one of my hopes for this anthology is that it will deepen this wonder by helping people to see the truths of the other mystical traditions reflected in the depths of the Christian messages.' Harvey knows that the primary audience for this book is the western, Christianised (if not Christian) academic readers. He also explores his own journey which recognises the spirituality of Mary and Jesus as male and female subjects of mysticism.
These chapters provide a brief introduction to the wide range of mystical paths in history. They provide much meditation material, and the brief introductory texts to each section are gracefully enlightening and blessedly brief, so as to let the texts themselves speak. Were you to get only one volume of the Essentials series, this would most likely be it.
You'll end up feeling better about Mankind.......2002-06-14
_If I was to take one book along to an isolated beach or island this summer for a serious read and reflection this would be it. You'll end up feeling better about your self, because you'll end up feeling better about mankind. This book proves that people of all cultures and all times have had the capacity to transcend the commonplace and petty and know God. This is the "golden thread" that connects all mystical traditions, all true wisdom in the world.
_Inspite of the extensive footnotes, I would not consider this to be a scholarly book. Rather, I would consider it a spiritual book- that is why it has value and is worth the reading. Here is the mystic heart of native cultures, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddihism, Judaism, Classical Greece, Islam, and Christianity all in one beautifully designed book of 236 pages. What better use could you find for your reading time?
Fantastic Collection!!.......2001-10-04
This is a beautiful book that is really well put togetther. I love that it opens with "voices of the first world" - native american poems. It then moves into Taoist poetry from the Tao Te Ching, then into Hindu poems, the Judaic writings, then writings from ancient Greece, then Islamic poems, and finally christian passages and poems. The book is marvelous in the way that it shows that all religions are talking about the same things, just using different words/concepts to express them. Too bad more people don't realize this - there'd be fewer wars. Great book, really nicely pulled together. Glad I bought it.
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