Forty-six-year-old journalist Peter Niels, who has traveled the world since his youthful marriage ended, is touring Taiwan, a country he thoroughly enjoys, when he and his photographer, Josh Pickett, have a day free from professional responsibilities. Deciding to visit the famous Taroko Gorge, they become involved in a strange disappearance. A group of ninth grade Japanese students has come to Taroko for an end-of-the year class trip, and both Niels and Pickett hear three schoolgirls singing as they explore the area in their “sailor-suit” uniforms. Niels falls asleep, and when he awakens, he sees that Pickett has just returned from a sidetrip. Immediately afterward, he hears a Japanese boy and girl calling for some of their fellow students who have not returned from exploring. As the author deals with issues of one person’s responsibility for others (or not) and the nature of inner peace vs. guilt, the investigation shows the characters rapidly descending into mistrust and open allegations against others, raising the tension. The resolution comes naturally from the plot and ties up the loose ends without any major surprises.
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Set in 1963 in Wisla, the rural Polish town where author Jerzy Pilch himself grew up, A THOUSAND PEACEFUL CITIES a satirical, fictional retelling of life in Poland in the years preceding the Student Revolt of 1968, disguising the autobiographical memories it contains. In 1963, the Communist party is in power, and the country is under Soviet influence but not control. At the outset of the novel, the reader immediately discovers that Jerzyk’s father and his father’s friend, Mr. Traba, an alcoholic former clergyman, plan to kill First Secretary Wladysaw Gomulka in Warsaw. They had, at first, thought of killing Mao Tse-tung to make a statement but decided it was impractical: “Better a sparrow in the hand than Mao Tse-tung on the roof.” What follows is a wild ride through rural Poland in 1963, novel that is, by turns, hilarious, thoughtful, filled with metaphysical and dialectical argument, and embellished with lyrical details from the natural world. This is satire used for its most noble purposes.
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Once you enter the world of Trevor Comerford, you will not re-emerge unscathed. Formerly employed in Dublin at the Central Remedial Clinic, Trevor was empathetic and anxious to help his students in his English classes there, creating firm bonds of friendship with them by making them laugh at his vulgarity, by refusing to recognize their physical challenges as “limitations,” and by taking them on day-trips (which became shoplifting expeditions to the local shops). His departure from Dublin for a new life in New York City was made in full knowledge of the challenges he would have dealing with the chaos of that city’s street life, which, in many ways parallels the chaos in his own life. An ad Trevor finds in the Village Voice requests a companion for Ed, an extremely bright teenager with muscular dystrophy who has little time left to live, and Trevor, upon investigation, quickly learns that the typical “companion” for Ed lasts only a week. Thoughtful and often hilarious.
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First published in English in 1981, and republished in 2008, after the film “La Vie en Rose” created a whole new generation of passionate Piaf fans, Monique Lange’s biography of Piaf comes closer to capturing her personality and explaining her behavior than any other biography that I have read. An editor, writer, actress, and scriptwriter, Lange associated with some of the same Parisians who adored Piaf, especially Jean Cocteau, who persuaded Piaf to act in one of his plays. Though she does not indicate that she ever met Piaf, Lange seems to understand her and appreciate how she became who she was. Often sympathetic to Piaf’s problems, Lange never forgets that Piaf was just as often impossible to deal with–her own worst enemy. Writing in the conversational style of a feature article for a magazine or newspaper, Lange “gets inside” her characters, draws conclusions about Piaf’s life, and provides many pages of candid photographs.
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Most people who see this film are probably already well familiar with the story surrounding Lisbeth Salander, the unlikely “heroine” of the trilogy by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Director Daniel Alfredson, who also directed The Girl Who Played with Fire, apparently also assumes this, as he spends little time giving background, instead showing quick cuts of a few scenes from the two earlier films and allowing Lisbeth’s background to unfurl through her trial for murder. Unlike the previous films, there is very little dramatic violence here, though Lisbeth’s confrontation with her giant brother Ronald Niedermann (Micke Spreitz), who is unable to feel pain, is one of the film’s high points. There are no graphic sex scenes, and the only sexual abuse is done off-camera. The Swedish setting–and the mood–are dark and cold, paralleling the life of Lisbeth Salander. The final scene, subtly different from the novel, consists of Lisbeth uttering one word–a word that had as much long-term dramatic effect for me as the word “Rosebud” does in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. Ultimately, the viewer feels a kind of peace at the end of the film, a sensitive and satisfying conclusion to this trilogy.
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