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- Un libro para esos que emigran de sus paises...
- Long, boring and pathetic
- Amazing story
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El Sindrome De Ulises/the Sindrome of Ulises 5 Edicion
Santiago Gamboa
Manufacturer: Editorial Seix Barral
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Los Impostores (Seix Barral, Biblioteca Breve)
ASIN: 9584211900 |
Customer Reviews:
Un libro para esos que emigran de sus paises..........2006-10-02
Si nunca ha leido a Gamboa, mi recomendacion es comenzar por "Perder es Cuestion de Metodo," que es un libro mucho mejor. Pero "El Sindrome de Ulises" no es un mal libro.
Como el nombre de la novela lo sugiere, este es un libro sobre emigrantes. Aquellos que se van a otros paises, dejando su tierra natal atras y deciden montar toldo en lugares totalmente extranos. La trama ocurre en Paris, pero muy bien podria ocurrir en culquier parte del mundo, pues las historia de los imigrantes/emigrantes es universal.
El personaje principal es un Colombiano que va a Paris a estudiar literatura. Y por consiguiente pasa de ser de la elite intelectual de su pais a la mas baja escala social de Paris; se hace amigo de otros imigrantes a los cuales generalmente mira con pesar - a pesar de todas sus experiencias, el personaje nunca parece sentir a gusto con su posicion social en Paris.
Pero en los ojos del personaje, Gamboa describe sutilmente sentimientos familiares para aquellos que viven lejos de sus paises. Algunos personajes son desarrollados a cabalidad, y las historias estan bien atadas de principio a fin. Y sin ser su mejor obra, en esta ocasion Gamboa parece mas maduro y seguro de sus habilidades como escritor.
Long, boring and pathetic.......2006-05-04
Unfortunately, this is one of the worst pieces of literature I have ever read. To my surprise Gamboa falls into a boring an unnecessary overextended autobiography of his life in Paris and his experiences with other immigrants. It does depict a more obscure Paris, but it doesn't elucidate on anything new or alluring to the globalized culture of this century. His stream of consciousness becomes boring after the first 50 pages. For being such a famous writer, his style is too basic and relies too much on extremely detailed descriptive prose, delivering a novel very predictable for an amateur reader. The plot is spiced up by Paula's nymphomaniac practices that start to get boring by page 120.This is as bad as reading Marquez's "Memorias de mis putas tristes" with the difference that Marquez's novel is less painful to read just because is shorter.
Amazing story.......2005-09-07
Being a Colombian immigrant in the US, thos story really touched me. If you have a friend from Bogotá living abroad, send him/her this book. I can guarantee that they'll love it (even if they get a little shocked with all the sex in the book...).
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Sindrome de Ulises (Extasis / Ecstasy)
Arsenio Rodriguez Quintana
Manufacturer: Linkgua US
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 8496428176 |
Book Description
"Conocí por pura casualidad a Arsenio Rodríguez en un lugar nada poético de mi barrio, un barrio que no sé si sigue siendo el suyo también. Tal vez por el carácter nada poético de aquel lugar, entablamos inmediatamente una breve conversación sobre poesía, nostalgia, cubanidad y laberintos. Y acabamos hablando de ciertas dificultades que la vida plantea. Al despedirnos, pensé en el poeta Lezama cuando decía que sin dificultad no hay estímulo. Pero ya no tuve tiempo de decírselo, se lo digo ahora. No hemos vuelto a vernos Arsenio y yo, pero hemos mantenido una correspondencia que me ha permitido leer algunos de sus escritos, donde he podido apreciar el alto y muy justo sentido de su prosa musical, siempre entre el derroche y la serenidad, siempre en pleno baile, comunión y combate con el arte verdadero, es decir, con el serio arte de lo difícil." - Enrique Vila-Matas
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Epoca, published by Difusora de Informacion Periodica, S.A. (DINPESA) on May 14, 2004. The length of the article is 938 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: El síndrome de Ulises: psiquiatras del Servicio de Atención Psicopatológica y Psicosocial a Inmigrantes y Refugiados de Barcelona (Sappir) han diagnosticado una nueva depresión que afecta exclusivamente a inmigrantes. Se la ha denominado síndrome de Ulises, trastorno sobre el que se ha interesado el Parlamento Europeo y que será un tema a debate en el Fórum 2004.(Joseba Achotegui, psiquiatra)(Entrevista)
Author: Pilar Hierro
Publication:
Epoca (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 14, 2004
Publisher: Difusora de Informacion Periodica, S.A. (DINPESA)
Issue: 1004
Page: 56(2)
Article Type: Entrevista
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Thomson Gale on June 26, 2005. The length of the article is 407 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Santiago Gamboa: un completo narrador.(El síndrome de Ulises)(Reseña de libro)
Author: Juan José Reyes
Publication:
Siempre! (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 26, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 52
Issue: 2715
Page: 69(1)
Article Type: Reseña de libro
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
One A Thief...
The renowned theif Livak employed her great courage and cunning to escape the evil, mindbending sorcery of the Elietimm -- with the help of Ryshad, the noble swordsman who stole the beautiful bandit's heart. Now a fortune awaits her and her beloved, if Livak can secure a powerful, ancient, and forgotten magic that the Empire seeks to defend itself from its enemies.
But there are others who covet the secrets of these lost arts....
Customer Reviews:
Tales of Forest Folk and Mountain Men.......2003-03-06
With each new installment, McKenna's reason for subtitling her series as "tales of Einarinn" becomes increasingly evident: the world itself shares center stage with events and characters. There's ample action in The Gambler's Fortune, but like its predecessors it's best appreciated by readers whose taste for adventure includes a hunger to explore new places and cultures in addition to a thirst for intrepid exploits.
Livak has returned as first-person narrator, like a welcome breath of fresh air. She seems much more natural than currently-absent associate and lover Ryshad. Maybe that's the nature of her personality, or maybe a female point of view just comes more naturally to McKenna. Livak's storyline is intercut with three others told in third-person: an in-depth view of life among the Mountain Men, or Anyatimm, as they call themselves; the most revealing look to-date at the elusive Elietimm; and glimpses of Archmage Planir's ongoing machinations back in Hadrumal.
Livak has entered the pay of Messire D'Olbriot, Ryshad's patron prince, who continues to pool resources with Planir against the Elietimm. One thing they've learned is that the ancient magic now being called "Artifice" is deeply rooted in the oldest races still living on Einarinn. Livak has convinced D'Olbriot to send her on a fact-finding mission among two of those reclusive groups, with wizard Usara along to represent Planir. Figuring her mixed blood will gain entrée among the Forest Folk, she recruits a pair of old friends, brothers Sorgrad and Sorgren, to help with the Mountain Men. She's angling for a discovery big enough to net a fortune in bonus money from D'Olbriot and Planir. Incidentally, she expects her quest to take her well away from further confrontation with the Elietimm, but there she's proven abysmally wrong. In fact, while the most obvious "gambler's fortune" here is Livak's hoped-for bonus, the book's title applies equally well to her changing fortunes on the road.
The time among the Forest Folk is interesting, productive, and not without its tense moments, but the Mountain Men really drive The Gambler's Fortune. Livak has remarked in previous books on the strong resemblance between the Elietimm and her friends Sorgrad and Sorgren. The storylines here tie both peoples firmly together. Through the Anyatimm, McKenna also tells a tale with echoes common to aboriginal peoples of any time or place: heedlessly overrun and gradually supplanted by empire-building outsiders. She declines to let the blame be entirely one-sided, however; if the Anyatimm are indeed doomed, it's due as much to their own tradition-bound inflexibility as to outside influences.
As always, McKenna's writing is rich and colorful. Her characters continue to evolve. She's settled into a measured pace rather slower than some readers might prefer, but there's plenty to see along the way between crises. The incidence of minor basic writing glitches has increased slightly since McKenna's first book, but that's fairly common and not particularly noticeable here. The Gambler's Fortune leaves readers with much to think about and even more to look forward to.
The worst of the three, but still not bad........2002-09-14
I like Ms. McKenna's style of juxtaposing first and third person. It add a distinct flavor to the books that I found quite enjoyable.
The Gambler's Fortune was inconsistent. It took me a long time to warm up to Jerrian, Kiesyl, and the other Mountain Men and Women. I found McKenna's treatment of Shiv in this book to be wholly out of character for him. In the previous episodes, he was a strong, decisive character, eager for more responsibility and interaction with Archmage Planir. Here, he is reduced to an uncomprehending and nervous wreck who distrusts some of Planir's motivations. Not at all the same Shivvalyan we came to know.
That said, the plotting of the evil Eresken kept things lively -- who knew what he would do next -- and the concept of evil deceiving good people to do its bidding is an ages-old idea that is still relevant today.
I am looking forward to the fourth installment, but hope that it is closer in quality to the first two books than the Gambler's Fortune.
A good continuation of the series.......2002-04-11
I wasn't going to write a review but the first one on this page was so awful I felt I had to put in my two cents. I have really been enjoying this series and the third entry is no exception. I am very picky about writing and read different books for different reasons. I don't read this type of sf/f looking for inspiring literature- I read it for a rousing story and fun charactors. McKenna's series is just that: a lot of fun to read. I really enjoy her use of differing perspectives. At one point in the third volume, we actually switch to the villain's point of view during the last hours of his life, before his comeuppance. I anticipate that the fourth book will be back to Ryshad's viewpoint, dealing with his activities while offstage during this third book. I agree with an earlier reviewer that I prefer Livak's viewpoint, mainly because she is such a strong and interesting charactor. One of the enjoyable aspects of the third book is the chance to get to know her better as well as the chance to meet her friends Sorgrad and Sorgren and the mage Usara.
If you like a good, well written tale with practical, earthy charactors and a very detailed and believable world of magic and the mundane, you will enjoy this series. If you're looking for Guy Gavriel Kay, go elsewhere.
Oh please.......2002-01-29
This is a mediocre book, in a mediocre-to-poor series.
McKenna made a huge mistake from the very beginning, messing with point of view and not building characters who were particularly endearing. The second book was a bad rehash of the first story from a different,if not interesting. perspective.
There is an amateurish feel to all of Ms. McKenna's books, which for some reason we have read in our SFF readers' group. This is bad mass market paperback stuff; if your taste runs to that, you may enjoy it. If you prefer some talent and some skill in your writers, well, look elsewhere.
and they just keep getting better.......2001-08-22
I just finished this book, which I devoured very quickly, since all of Juliet McKenna's books cannot be put down.
The story now returns to Livak, the spunky female thief from the first book in the series. The Livak-Ryshad romance is put by the wayside, as they go their separate ways. One can only hope that we will see their relationship to fruition in future books.
Livak is again on a quest to find out more about aetheric magic, the new magic that we have been learning about since the very first book. The hope is that they will be able to use the magic against the Elietimm threat. However, Livak's simple goal is to make enough cash on this job so that she can settle down with Ryshad. I've always praised this series' character goals, which always seem realistic, not always altruistic. Some charming new characters are introduced - Sorgren and Sorgrad. In addition, there are some new "villains" on the scene. As usual, they are fleshed out so that we understand their motivations and we can almost sympathise with them.
The third book doesn't seem to conclude the story, although all of McKenna's books feel complete at the end. And so far, the characters and stories are staying fresh - something I cannot say of other writers who continue with the same characters and world for several books.
As usual, I am eagerly awaiting the next one. You may enjoy this book and series if you have enjoyed the work of Terry Goodkind or Robin Hobb.
Customer Reviews:
A Very Different Book.......2006-10-09
I can see why the reviewers are pretty much split down the middle on this one. The set-up is extraordinary, the writing style is unusual, and the payoff is less than the reader hopes for. Even so, I really enjoyed this novel. There are more ideas in this book than in a dozen average SF novels, so I can look past the fact that many of the ideas are never fleshed out. It is the first "James Tiptree" novel (or short story) that I've read, and now I will definitely search out some of her earlier and more highly regarded works to see what I think of them.
Poor writing, plot, characters..........2004-08-17
Cardboard characters, High School level writing, poor plotting, unremarkable prose, "Brightness Falls from the Air" is a book that confounds the reader who has earlier read the superlatives and the cover blurb by the New York Times. Was Gerald Jonas high that day?
The setup is fairly interesting: sixteen characters gather on a planet to witness the arrival of a visually spectacular nova front. This front is all that remains of a star destroyed along with an entire race of beings during an interstellar war. Our story opens as sixteen characters both human and alien arrive on the planet to witness the phenomena.
The story is needlessly melodramatic and constantly dragged down by incidental minutiae. The much lauded sexuality of the novel turns out to be a child pornographer and his troupe of pubescents, whose depiction is about as sexy and subversive as "Calendar Girls." Praise has been heaped upon Sheldon for her short stories. I saw no writing in evidence here that would cause me to go seek any of them out.
Here is one frustrating event that characterizes the failure of the novel: an alien bounty hunter, the last of his race, has spent the better part of his life tracking down the person who activated the device that destroyed his people's star. When he finally finds the person (one of our characters) he does a complete turnabout, realizes that the destruction of the artifact (which in turn destroyed the star) was a good thing since it had been psychologically destroying his people over the years (she must have hit the alien cable network), changes his mind and blows his head off (after a cliche hostage standoff). Some might say that this is an interesting and even shocking twist. I had to pinch myself from falling asleep. One question blows the entire construction out of the water: has this alien never thought about these things before? How can it be that only at the very end of his search does he wake up and realize that she did them all a favor? In plain language, a steaming heap of...BS.
And the relationship between Kip and Cory seems like some idealized autumn years marriage but with the woman (Sheldon perhaps?) 'deepened' by her 'dark' past. Hooey. And overall, could there be any more boring representation of a relationship between two people? Isn't everything just perfect? They don't use the bathroom, they don't stink, and they don't use harsh language - and they have really boring lovely sex: how enlightened!
You would be well advised to try one of her short stories first before launching into this C-grade affair.
Strong Premise; Poor Writing.......2004-06-09
In Brightness Falls from the Air, Ms. Triptree has written a rich yet unsatisfactory novel. Ms. Triptree's characters are an interesting collection and the general backdrop of the novel is well staged. Yet the novel is consistently hindered by the short-sighted and outright unintelligent attitudes of the characters. As such, what might have been a sophisticated novel soon becomes tedious and trite. Ms. Triptree does provide a final, dark revelation that proves eerily satisfying -- but ultimately it is the writing, not the plot, that prevents this novel from ever taking flight.
Delicate little novel, not fully realised........2002-04-09
A strange group of characters gather on a forbidden world to watch and experience the effects of a dying planet. It seems, however, that some of them come with an agenda that involves harm to the natives of the world-- natives who have already been harmed enough...
Tiptree introduces a wide variety of characters-- probably too many characters for the 270 pages of the book. They are developed enough to be interesting, but not enough to be even. It is not your run of the mill science fiction novel, and doesn't shy away from some fairly explicit sexuality and violence.
If you can find a copy of this book, I do recommend a read. Despite the flaws, it's both compelling and thought-provoking.
Beautiful novel by one of SF's greatest short story authors.......2000-08-01
One of the most surprising announcements in science fiction history was when award-winning but reclusive science fiction writer James Tiptree, Jr. revealed that she was actually Dr. Alice Sheldon.
Sheldon wote some of the best short fiction of the 70s, including such classics as "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" (which anticipated many cyberpunk themes years before William Gibson), "The Women Men Don't See", and "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?".
Brightness Falls from the Air was Sheldon's second (and final) novel. Although Sheldon's best work was certainly in her short stories, my favorite thing about this novel was seeing Sheldon express many of her recurring themes in a longer form, weaving several seemingly disparate plot lines into one. The novel works well both as a mystery and as science fiction, and offers a nice helping of excitement as well.
This is one of my favorite science fiction novels of all time, and is an excellent introduction to the work of James Tiptree, Jr.
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- Where are the pictures?
- What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
- How It Might Have Been
- True Crime Merges With Poetry
- A haunting read.
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Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World
Emlyn Williams
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Philosophy
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ASIN: 0060607750 |
Customer Reviews:
Where are the pictures?.......2006-08-15
I was hoping that there would be pictures whether black and white or color. SOmetimes, the pictures aides in helping me understand the crimes by giving a face to the criminals and victims. I'm not saying that this is a bad book. NO, it's quite fascinating to read but it's slow at times. I prefer reading real crime books and that's why I ordered it second hand. THe writing is interesting and I never heard of Emlyn Williams but he does an excellent job in describing and helping us understand one of the most horrific crimes in recent years. Myra Hindley died in prison while Ian Brady is still very much alive. I think people are generally interested in why a woman would get involved with such unspeakable crimes but then it's not new.
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?.......2005-05-06
Millions of words have been written about the horrendous Moors Murders, which took place in England in the early to mid 1960's. Only this book, 'Beyond Belief ' by Emlyn Williams, uses poetry and wry humour to elevate the pathos already induced by the subject.
We will probably never know the true total of lives taken by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. When Emlyn Williams wrote Beyond Belief in 1967 there were three known victims: 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, 12-year-old John Kilbride and 17-year-old Edward Evans. Emlyn Williams accurately predicted in the book that 16-year-old Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, 12, were also victims of Brady and Hindley. This is now an established fact although the body of Keith Bennett has yet to be found.
Other children are known to have almost fallen prey to the evil pair but had the good fortune to slip through their net.
Williams gives a brief account about the death of Michael Higgins, a shy and fragile 13 year old boy who drowned in a reservoir when Myra was 15. The pair had been inseparable. Hindley was devastated and became inconsolable. She dressed in black and went to the church nightly to pray and to light a candle for Michael. She was burdened with a huge sense of guilt because she had turned down his request for her to go swimming with him that day. Myra was a strong swimmer and believed that had she been there she could have saved him. But if the two were so inseparable later events make you wonder if she really wasn't there when the boy drowned. If she was not and her grief was genuine, the incident is a poignant reminder that our prayers are sometimes answered in mysterious ways.
Brady, whom Hindley had yet to meet, was at that time taking his pleasure in burying cats alive and chopping the legs off live frogs. His heroes were Hitler and the Marquis de Sade. He read Nietzsche and listened to Wagner.
Beyond Belief charts the ebbing away of a nations innocence and records the beginning of a downward spiral in Englands morality. It leads you on a journey over Saddleworth Moors inside the minds of two of the most perverted and subsequently reviled people in England, and alongside the dedicated officers of The Greater Manchester Police Force who located the victim's remains.
The almost lyrical writing style and the use of northern dialects are juxtaposed to the dark events so you are constantly reminded that the apparently ordinary couple-next-door didn't have the word 'monster' tattooed on their foreheads.
Myra Hindley died of a chest infection in November 2002. The name 'Myra' quickly went out of fashion in the Christening records of England after 1966.
Ian Brady is in a mental institution and has repeatedly said he does not want to be released - his only wish is to be allowed to die. When you have read Beyond Belief you will hope his wish is granted.
How It Might Have Been.......2004-07-31
The Moors Murders probably shocked Britain more than any other crime of recent years. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, two twenty-something lovers from the Manchester suburbs, were convicted of murdering a twelve-year-old boy, a ten-year-old girl and a seventeen-year-old youth between 1963 and 1965. (We now know that they also murdered two other young persons during this period). The name "Moors Murders" derives from the fact that they buried their victims on the desolate moorland outside the city. What made these crimes so shocking, apart from the youth of the victims, was that Brady and Hindley were an outwardly respectable young couple and that they had no motive for killing their victims, all of whom were complete strangers to them, other than a Sadistic delight in killing for its own sake. (I spell the word with a capital letter because Brady was a devotee of the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade). The nation was particularly shocked to learn that they had made a series of photographs and tape recordings documenting the sufferings of some of their victims.
"True Crime" books are normally written either by journalists or by academics specialising in criminology or psychology. Whether the author's interest is journalistic or academic, however, the books tend to be dry and factual in style. Emlyn Williams's book, however, is very different. He was neither a journalist nor an academic, but an actor and playwright, and "Beyond Belief" shows the clear hallmarks of the creative writer.
Whereas most "True Crime" writers stick to fact and the interpretation of fact, Williams, as he states in his introduction, adds a third element, "surmise". By this he means that it is his intention to write an imaginative recreation of the crimes, speculating on the thoughts and feelings of the two murderers and on conversations that they might have had with each other and with third parties. Williams believed that this method would enable him to tell the story with what he called "dual accuracy"- the accuracy of history and the accuracy of imaginative understanding. The result is that the book reads more like a novel, with Ian and Myra as the principal characters, than it does the traditional non-fiction book.
This method certainly allows Williams to create a vivid picture of the two murderers. The portrait of Brady is particularly memorable. The illegitimate son of a Glasgow waitress, he was fostered by a local couple as a young boy and moved to Manchester as a teenager to live with his birth mother and her new husband. He had three names; Ian Stewart (his mother's maiden name), Ian Sloan (the name of his foster-parents) and Ian Brady (the name of his stepfather). Williams suggests that these changes and the lack of a stable background might have led to him suffering an identity crisis. He was a strange, obsessive loner, whose main interests were cinema going (mostly watching violent crime thrillers) and reading about sado-masochistic sex and Nazi atrocities. He had neo-Nazi political sympathies, but never joined any organised political party. He was involved in petty crime during his teens, with the result that he spent time in Borstal, but by his late twenties, when the murders were committed, he was, to the outside world, a reformed character, holding down a white-collar job with a respectable firm.
Myra Hindley, who worked for the same company as Brady, was, before she met him, even more ordinary, with little to mark her out from thousands of other working-class girls. Williams suggests that she may have been deeply influenced by an incident in her teenage years, when a childhood friend died in a drowning accident, and that this left her with a deep sense of grievance against the world. As a result, she may have been an easy convert to the nihilistic philosophy of Brady, particularly as she had fallen obsessively in love with him.
The book was originally published in 1967, the year after the trial. As a result it gives not only a vivid picture of its main characters but also a vivid picture of the era in which it is set, a decade in which trams still ran through the streets, LPs were the latest in musical technology, tower-blocks were still trumpeted as the solution to the nation's housing problems and "Bonanza" was one of the most popular programmes on television. There were, of course, other books published about these crimes, but Williams's is, I believe, the only one still in print, forty years after the events it describes and nearly twenty after the author's own death. The reason is probably his aim of pursuing "accuracy of imaginative understanding"; his imaginative technique means the book reads much more easily than do many dry, factual accounts of true crimes.
The exact motive for these murders was probably never known to anyone except Brady, Hindley and their Maker, and now that Hindley is dead and Brady is confined in a hospital for the criminally insane, it is unlikely ever to come to light. No doubt the reason lay somewhere in their psychological makeup, but we will never know what psychological factor led them to become vicious killers when thousands of others from similar backgrounds became law-abiding citizens or, at worst, only minor criminals. We cannot, therefore, ever be sure whether Williams achieved his aim. Nevertheless, his theories are never implausible; if we can never be sure that this is how it was, we can at least think that this is how it might have been. If this were a work of crime fiction, Williams's Ian and Myra would be psychologically believable, if monstrous, characters. The book is, of course, a work of non-fiction, but nevertheless highly readable.
True Crime Merges With Poetry.......2004-06-07
Emlyn Williams was creatively gifted as a playwright and actor. His two enduring plays were "Night Must Fall" and "The Corn Is Green." A man who spent his writing life in the fictional realm provided himself a challenge and turned his prodigious talents to true crime. The result is a merger of true crime with the poetry of a true creative artist in "Beyond Belief."
Ian Brady grew up living with guardians in a lower middle class section of Glasgow. When his mother, who bore him out of wedlock, marries, he goes to live with her for the first time. His move to the English Midlands finds him leading a solitary life in which he lives for the cinema. Williams shows us how a dangerous pattern is established early on when he yens for films of violence, identifies closely with the villain Harry Lime played brilliantly by Orson Welles in "The Third Man," and abhors love story-musicals such as those with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, which he ridicules.
When he is working in a factory as a stock clerk in Gorton, a suburb of Manchester, he meets Myra Hindley for the first time. In many ways the large, voluptuous woman is more masculine than Brady. Williams brilliantly delineates a perceived identity crisis that he believes could have turned them both in the wrong direction.
William does an excellent job of showing us the lower middle class despair of young people growing up in sixties' England. He uses the dialect of the young, uneducated working class to evoke the kind of atmosphere associated with the best of novel writing. The cast of characters rings true throughout.
Eventually the couple turns to crime in a big way. Brady abducts children and perpetrates murders while Myra, who appears hypnotized by Ian, terminates her assertiveness in his case and becomes his subservient accomplice.
The author makes his sociological points without ever being preachy. His page-turning style is riveting as readers learn little by little about these two young people whose lives become living hells for themselves and those they encounter.
A haunting read........2001-06-21
Unlike many books concerning true crime, Williams' account of the Moors Murders is neither sensationalistic, nor cold in its recounting of the facts. By weaving fact with some fictional (yet highly believable) dialogue to "fill in the blanks" of what is known, Williams gives the reader an astonishing glimpse into the private world of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. It is simply one of the best books I've ever read. The story itself is fascinating, both as a psychological study, and for the incredible detective work that led to the couple's arraignment. Absolutely un-put-downable. Incidentally, passages from the book are woven into a song called "Suffer The Children" by Mancunian band, The Smiths.
Book Description
Beyond Belief collects fifteen celebrated, broadly ranging essays in which Robert Bellah interprets the interplay of religion and society in concrete contexts from Japan to the Middle East to the United States. First published in 1970, Beyond Belief is a classic in the field of sociology of religion.
Customer Reviews:
Honest view of Early Islamic Society.......1999-03-24
Though this book contains analysis of other civilizations , its author's insight into early islamic civilization is amazing. There are very few authors in the western world who have been able to overcome the crusade bias to depict the early Islamic society in a realistic manner. Though this is a highly specialised book in the field of sociology , it makes a good reading for an average reader interested in sociology and religion.
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