Giấc Mơ Cổ Tích - Vịt Con Xấu Xí tải về miễn phí cuốn sách

Yoseph Williams _oseph — I bury myself the best I can in old books, but somehow my old books keep dragging me back to the latest "breaking news". Take this one, for example, inspired by the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. Ten days after I finished reading it, I turned on the TV to discover the Santa Barbara beaches once more mired in oil, its seabirds blackened and endangered. Sure, it's nice to be reminded of old books I like, but this kind of deja vu I don't need. For years I recalled Sleeping Beauty as one of Macdonald's finest novels, principally for the way he combined the oil spill theme with the sudden disappearance of a possibly suicidal woman. Her family is in the oil business, and when detective Lew Archer first meets her, she is on the beach, trying to rescue a dying, oil-soaked grebe. "A handsome young woman,” Archer describes her, “with eyes as angry as the bird's." Within the novels first few pages, the central Macdonald themes of angry nature, family greed, and the haunted young are combined in one inspired metaphor. Unfortunately, what I failed to remember is that this metaphor does not remain central to the plot, which soon becomes an extraordinarily complicated collection of protective camouflage and weary masks worn by a large cast of characters, some hiding petty, and some great crimes. Don't get me wrong. This is an effective, well-constructed novel, written in elegant prose. It just wasn't the great novel I had held in memory, the novel I hoped it would once again be.