Who? Chuyện Kể Về Danh Nhân Thế Giới - Audrey Hepburn tải về miễn phí cuốn sách

Gabriel Rocha gabrielrochamotion — I loved the first half of this novel. Una, the narrator, has a solid, true voice, and the book has an essence of the Gothic novels I read as a kid. But then, everything goes terribly, terribly wrong. The narrative loses momentum when Una is on Nantucket, waiting for her husband Ahab to come home. We, of course, know that he is dead. But she doesn’t. This goes on, and on and on, until finally she receives word of his death. Phew! Okay, so now we’re anxiously reading on to discover what happens next (and hoping the pace picks back up). But sadly, the novel turns from visceral to cerebral. Una begins cavorting with various historical characters, many of whom would have been in Melville’s own circuit. She meets Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller. I am utterly yanked from the dream. Do not yank me from the dream! (Has Naslund never read John Gardiner?) The topping on the cerebral cake is when Una happens upon the “minister” (Nathaniel Hawthorne) in the woods and has a lengthy conversation with him about the first line of one of his stories, the same line that Melville used as an epigram in Moby-Dick. By this point I no longer care about Una; instead I am wondering, where is Melville? How can Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau exist without Melville? I’m fully expecting old Herman to show up. In fact, I want him to. I’m already completely out of the dream anyway, so why not throw him in and stir things up even more? But no. Melville doesn’t appear, and Naslund tries to pull us back into Una’s story, even though we no longer believe in its reality or plausibility. The ending, too, is a complete groaner. Ugh. Such promise, such a let-down. Naslund seems more concerned with exorcising her literary knowledge and playing mind-games than with telling a good story.

Hammad Hassan hammadhassanpucad — I have stopped recommending this because no one has liked it yet. I still think it's a very engrossing read.