Fernando Arquitetura từ Orikhivka, Luhans'ka oblast, Ukraine

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11/05/2024

Dữ liệu người dùng, đánh giá và đề xuất cho sách

Fernando Arquitetura Sách lại (10)

2019-03-26 07:31

Bông Mẫu Đơn Màu Trắng Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Nhiều tác giả

Set in a post-9/11, pre-Iraq war world, Saturday portrays with startling clarity a day in the life of an ordinary man and the wider world he represents. Using a partly stream-of-consciousness narration, Ian McEwan captures with a keen eye the bittersweet qualities of human relationships and the universal fear of the unknown, thereby crafting a naturalistic depiction of an Everyman—and by extension, a nation—on the cusp of a new era. The story opens within the bedroom of Henry Perowne, a British neurosurgeon, who, while he wife lays sleeping, witnesses a plane catch fire in the air while he gazes out the window one Saturday morning. This sighting provokes him to contemplate his relatively privileged life and the fragility of it; and so begins an eventful day, which involves, among other things, driving through blocked roads amid a mass anti-war demonstration, playing a game of squash with a colleague, visiting his mother in a nursing home and welcoming his grown daughter back from Paris. Throughout a series of events—some mundane, some out of the ordinary—we get to know Henry Perowne, both through his present actions and a series of flashbacks, and by the novel’s end he becomes as familiar to us as a friend or an acquaintance. At some point he ceases to be words on the page and emerges as a fully-formed human being; a character that readers would easily come to care about. The familial relationships between members of the Perowne family are portrayed with brutal honesty, which lends a painfully familiar quality to the dialogue among them. There’s the divergence between Henry’s pragmatism and those of his romantic, artistically gifted children (his son Theo is a musician, his daughter Daisy a poet); the clashing of Henry and Daisy’s political views; and the compulsive drinking of Henry’s father-in-law. Yet there exists an undeniably resilient bond between them all, as they are brought together both by causes for celebration and instances of calamity. What I found most moving was the love between Henry and his wife, Rosalind, who remain bonded by their passion for each other after decades of marriage. The glue that holds the family together is indeed the love they share, and their differences as well as their similarities. Given that Saturday is intended to capture the existential musings of the average man, rather than to tell a story with a clear beginning, middle and end, at times it seems to lack direction; the narrative may meander, leaving readers wishing for something to pin down to make it easier to follow. Ultimately the well-rounded storytelling and vivid characterizations give the impression that the story continues after the last page has been turned. Despite the frustrations they may have with the narrative, readers will most likely be left wondering what the future holds for the Perowne family, and wishing them well in their years to come. Honest, intimate and familiar, Saturday satisfies on many different levels, capturing the bigger picture of life as well as the commonplace worries of the working-class family. For an in-depth, nuanced portrayal of the human condition, complete with existentialism, pick this one up and savor the prose while some classical music, preferably piano, plays in the background. This may put a reader in the right mood for McEwan’s narration style.

2019-03-26 08:31

Hãy Mang Anh Trai Tôi Đi - Tập 1 Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: U Linh

There are two distinct story lines here and I wondered if they would have been more powerful if developed as two separate novels. In keeping with the title of the novel, we are introduced to seventeen year old Lizzy and her family and their stay at the Retreat for her mother’s “rehabilitation.” Weaving through is a more interesting story of two Native Indian brothers fighting for survival and validation in a white man’s world, and failing. Based around an event when the Ojibway occupied the Anicinabe Park in Kenora, we get to spend the summer of 1974 at the Retreat with the Byrd family: Lizzy, the doer and surrogate mother to her younger siblings, her fourteen year old brother Everett grappling with his blossoming sexuality that could tip him in either direction orientation-wise, Mrs. Byrd, the absentee mother, who is constantly looking to discover herself even if it means having trysts with the Retreat’s self-styled guru Dr Amos, Mr. Byrd who thinks the Retreat is a big joke but will do anything to keep his wife and family intact, and four-year old Fish, the youngest child, who likes to wander off and get lost and bring the family face-to-face with its deepest fissures. Surrounding the Byrds is a motley cast of visitors, permanent and transitory, to the Retreat, seeking wisdom from the enigmatic doctor on how to cope in the real world. There is even a crippled writer, Harris, who befriends the children, whose wife is making out with another guest while he likens himself to “a dull moth banging at an unlit lantern.” On the other side of the spectrum is Raymond, the eighteen year old Ojibway boy who likes white girls and constantly gets into trouble with prejudiced law enforcement officers as a result of this fatal attraction. Raymond snags his girls by being indifferent and remote, partly due to his fear of being arrested, but that cocktail is irresistible to his more privileged girlfriends from the other side of the tracks. His brother Nelson is more outgoing, but as he was once taken away from home and adopted by a white family, Nelson is more cynical about the plight of the Native Indian. Both are likely candidates to be drawn into the Ojibway occupation of the park that is to follow before the summer ends. Viewed from the perspectives of the children, we see that the adults are all screwed up and are poor role models for their progeny. As Lizzy observes, “most adults wanted what they couldn’t or didn’t have, and they would hurt people to get it.” Yet the sexuality is downplayed while the sensuality is notched up – there is a lot of touching and smelling going on, especially among the young ones. I found the style distinct: sparse prose, pronouns dropped, dialogue “told” or narrated, and sentences ending on prepositions (the English teacher’s nightmare!) What disappointed me was that there was a lot of waiting between events and I felt that I had spent my whole summer at this Retreat by the time I ended the novel. There are missed opportunities for drama between Raymond and the cops, when Fish goes “walkabout,” and when Lizzie wanders around in the woods or in town on her own, but they are all downplayed, resolved quickly or ignored. I wonder if that is something about writing a Canadian literary novel and preferring bland. And despite the major portion of the book being dedicated to the inhabitants at the Retreat and to Lizzy’s coming of age, the novel ends with a more tense sequence of events involving Raymond and Nelson. I guess, after all the waiting, some tension was called for, but in the presentation it felt like two different stories were trying to cohabit within the same book, almost like the Indian boy and his white girlfriend trying to find a life together and failing. In that sense, I wondered whether The Retreat was a misnomer and if Two Different Worlds may have been more apt?

Người đọc Fernando Arquitetura từ Orikhivka, Luhans'ka oblast, Ukraine

Người dùng coi những cuốn sách này là thú vị nhất trong năm 2017-2018, ban biên tập của cổng thông tin "Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn" khuyến cáo rằng tất cả các độc giả sẽ làm quen với văn học này.