Scott needs a change of pace from the corporate offices and swanky hotels he’s been building lately and bluntly makes it clear to Claire that he only took on her house for that reason, adding that he has no patience for a pampered, damaged princess on his job site. But when she meets gruff and often-cantankerous contractor Scott Turner and realizes not all men are scumbags, Claire must decide if she’s ready to risk her heart again. Determined to rid her home of anything that reminds her of her philandering husband, Claire sets out to redesign her entire Upper East Side brownstone and make it her own. In fact, after finding out her late husband was a liar and a cheat, Claire’s convinced there’s never a good time for romantic notions. According to the recently widowed Claire Hayes, it’s very, very wrong. There’s never a bad time to fall in love in the city, right? Wrong. From New York Times bestselling author Lauren Layne comes the second delightfully charming installment in the Central Park Pact series, following a young widow whose newfound cynicism about love is challenged by a sexy, rough-around-the-edges contractor.
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Placing Jackson within an American Gothic tradition of Hawthorne and Poe, Franklin demonstrates how her unique contribution to this genre came from her focus on “domestic horror” drawn from an era hostile to women. Now, biographer Ruth Franklin reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the author behind such classics as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. A genius of literary suspense, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of post-war America better than anyone. Still known to millions only as the author of the “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) remains curiously absent from the American literary canon. In fact, the elusive dancing girls take on fantasy status, not least of all for the main character: they appear fleetingly in her mind as a swirl of colour, an exotic possibility of joy and mystery, the repressed of what her own, orderly, well-planned life excludes. Moreover, the dancing girls in question are never actually seen, and are most probably, in the opinion of the title story’s central character named Ann, “just some whores from Scollay Square” (224). It contrasts singularly with the titles of the individual stories which speak of hostilities (“The War in the Bathroom”), of confinement (“Under Glass”), of misperception of the other (“The Man from Mars”), of death (“The Grave of the Famous Poet”), of sexual violence (“Rape Fantasies”) and of undefined menace (“When it Happens”). 1 Anxiety is a recurrent term in Beryl Donaldson Langer’s article, “Class and Gender in Margaret Atw (.)ġ Dancing Girls, the first published collection of short stories by Margaret Atwood,bears a surprisingly joyful title for a series of narratives shot through with anxiety and fear, with images of death, deformity, lifelessness and contained rage. In its midst, Ekon not only encounters the Shetani-a vicious monster that has plagued the city and his nightmares for nearly a century-but a curious girl who seems to have the power to ward off the beast. But on the night of his final rite of passage, a fire upends his plans. But the night her loved ones' own safety is threatened by the Zoo's cruel master, Koffi unleashes a power she doesn't fully understand-and the consequences are dire.Īs the second son of a decorated hero, Ekon is all but destined to become a Son of the Six-an elite warrior-and uphold a family legacy. Indentured to the notorious Night Zoo, she cares for its fearsome and magical creatures to pay off her family's debts and secure their eventual freedom. Magic doesn't exist in the broken city of Lkossa anymore, especially for girls like sixteen-year-old Koffi. In my view, his point was more clearly made regarding the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident. In both cases, Baudrillard argues what we “know” is not the event itself, but a representation that has been created through fictionalized accounts and “common knowledge” with varying degrees of accuracy. One is the Holocaust and the other is the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. These two examples are very different, and I believe one is a stronger argument for Baudrillard’s ideas than is the other. To clarify, let’s discuss a couple examples of events that Baudrillard says that we don’t know, but instead we know a simulacrum of. I tended to find that there was a kernel of truth in the points that Baudrillard was making, but that he often blew that kernel up into an absurdity. A reasonable reader might conclude that much of the book consists of crackpot ideas. This is not to say that said ideas are all sound or unassailably true. The book’s strength is in suggesting outside-the-box, thought-provoking ideas. This is a collection of 20-ish essays that share as a theme the idea that we live not so much in a world of events, information, and things, but in a world of simulacra in which those things represent or symbolize something (either the true version of that object or something else altogether.) After an opening that introduces the idea of simulacra and simulations, the chapters each look at an example of illusion and simulation in our world. Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard Out of this ordinary event, Ivy Pochoda spins a web that stretches all over the City of Angels, from Skid Row to the gentrified enclaves, from the desert to the ocean, all featuring characters in some sort of disarray. This seemingly mundane highway backup turns into a seminal moment for a handful of Angelenos-people whose lives are in desperate need of a change. But what’s clearly evident is that he is completely naked. But this traffic jam is different-a runner is dodging and weaving between the cars at an astonishing clip. It’s a familiar sight in Los Angeles, traveling on the 110 during peak morning rush hour: an endless sea of commuters, with no respite for miles. From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street, a visionary and masterful portrait of contemporary Los Angeles After a steamy overnight, Tala finds herself caught between Leyla, about whom she feels she could develop sincere feelings, and her fiancee Hani, who is perfect in almost every way–except that he’s a man. Although Leyla is antagonized by Tala’s blunt questioning of her Muslim faith at their first meeting, they soon find out that they have more in common than they might have suspected, including a predisposition toward the company of women. Both women are independent thinkers who struggle to find their place among more traditional family members. Her counterpart is Leyla, a British Indian woman and fledgling novelist who is dating Tala’s best friend in London. Tala makes her home primarily in London but, as the action opens, is preparing to celebrate at her fourth engagement party in Jordan. The story focuses on Tala, a young woman of Palestinian descent whose family is among Jordan’s elite. In the interest of getting a fuller picture, I also watched the film, and I’m here to report that the book was the better of the two, thanks largely to the absence of actors It also features a cast of almost exclusively non-white characters, which I found refreshing. It was adapted from the screenplay of Sharif’s recent film of the same name, which is unusual–generally the movies are created from the books. I Can’t Think Straight, a novel by Shamim Sarif, is a rarity among lesbian romances. With each challenge, Caitlyn struggles to understand a person she never met.but it's what she discovers about herself that most surprises her. Now he's disappeared, and Caitlyn finds herself leading a reality-show-style competition to find the school's next great Paulie Fink. One thing's for sure, though: The kid was totally legendary. When Caitlyn Breen begins her disorienting new life at Mitchell School-where the students take care of real live goats and study long-dead philosophers, and where there are only ten other students in the entire seventh grade-it seems like nobody can stop talking about some kid named Paulie Fink.ĭepending on whom you ask, Paulie was either a hilarious class clown, a relentless troublemaker, a hapless klutz, or an evil genius. In this acclaimed novel by the author of the award-winning, bestselling The Thing About Jellyfish, being the new kid at school isn't easy, especially when you have to follow in the footsteps of a legendary classroom prankster. St Joseph's University (Brooklyn Voices Series). For me, by describing the house in human terms, I was able to show my empathy for the house. This is because he assumes the reader who identifies with the house may feel loneliness and imagine the pain of having one’s skin torn off. Personally, I felt that Bradbury was trying to evoke empathy from the reader. In addition to this, I was able to understand his purpose of using smiles. Bradbury poetic imagery personifies the house. I found this simile very confronting to read and helped me to identify the house as a human being. An example that created repulsion in me was when he describes the ‘nerves’ of the house were ‘revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins quiver in the scalded air’. His use of diverse literacy techniques influenced me in a positive way as it helped me to create imagery in my head. However, Bradbury’s use of similes and personifications were the highlight of my reading experience. With no human interaction and characters in the story, I imagined the story to be nothing but dull and depressing. There Will Come Soft Rains gives a glimpse of what’s to come, and for us living in 2019, 2026 is the near future. The story reflects how far the world has come to revolutionize itself, especially since the 1950s. Bradbury demonstrates a world of technology and proposes that humankind is destroyed by its own arrogance. He is convinced the plane was hijacked because of a reboot of the Satellite Data Unit (SDU) at 6.25pm, which he described as a “smoking gun”. Mr Wise has been researching the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200 since it went missing on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. “Two burly men wearing breathing apparatus block the way. He rises, stumbles, throws open the cockpit door. “The air in the cockpit is noticeable thin. “He punches in the frequency for Lumpur Radio. The co-pilot dials up the emergency frequency, 121.5. “The captain and co-pilot reach for their masks, but no air is flowing. A hull rupture? The sounds of screaming in the cabin filter through the cockpit door. Mr Wise, in a chapter titled A Speculative Scenario from his new book The Taking of MH370, writes: “Then: pandemonium. To do this, he proposes the trio used diving oxygen masks to withstand the cut-off before taking over the cabin. The CNN pundit theorises the trio flew the Malaysia Airlines plane to Kazakhstan, as part of an audacious bid to wipe Russia’s annexation of Crimea off the news radar on March 8, 2014. MH370 SCREAMS: The pilot would have heard chilling screams (Image: GETTY)Īviation researcher Jeff Wise believes MH370 was depressurised during a Russian hijack mission carried out by three rogue passengers. |