Miền Xanh Thẳm tải về miễn phí cuốn sách

Felix Ortiz fomg — I add here a second book from the much-acclaimed Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy. This novel, like Original Bliss (see below), exemplifies Kennedy’s trademark mixture of tenderness and something just this side of pornography. The plot is a bit too complicated to summarize briefly. Basically, Kennedy deals here with two themes: writers and the neuroses that both motivate and hinder (destroy?) them, and the relationship between fathers and daughters. The underlying premise of the second of these themes is a bit hard to swallow (a father was estranged from his daughter when she was very young and then establishes a close relationship with her much later without her knowing he is her father and this relationship lasts for years without her finding out the truth that everyone around her seems to know), it does allow Kennedy to explore the complexities of feelings that can exist between a father and a daughter, particularly when the daughter is the very image of a lost and much-loved wife. There is considerable warmth and passion in this story although the novel's obsession with writers and their traumas could be viewed as a bit too much navel gazing--but writers DO like to stare at their own navels! In the final analysis, though, I must raise an issue here that will surely get me excommunicated from any fellowship of serious readers. This book is 550 pages long, requiring a slow reader like me around fifteen hours to complete. Let’s arbitrarily say that this book brought me ten “enjoyment points.” That would be .67 points per hour. Now let's assume that a smaller book took me eight hours to complete and brought only six points. That would be .75 points per hour. Which would be the best investment of my readerly time? I can hear the protests, “How crude! Importing a productivity model into something as sacred as reading!” Well, damn it, I’m in Singapore as I write this and everything here is about productivity. How could the spirit of this place not infect me? My final judgment remains that this book is just too large and contains a fair number of unnecessary pages. Maybe Kennedy would justify the latter by saying that obsessions, such as preoccupy the central character in this book, need to be repeated over and over again for the sake of verisimilitude. Maybe, but “at my back I always hear times winged chariot drawing near.”