In the ending of Unquiet, author Linn Ullman summarizes her feelings about her father, Ingmar Bergman, and her complicated relationship with him and her mother, Liv Ullmann. The book, which she calls a “novel,” is more like a memoir, containing descriptions of many intimate family events, the instinctive reactions of her father and mother to life’s circumstances as they face them, and her own thoughtful exploration of her own identity, which dominates the body of the narrative. Age forty-eight by the time the novel ends, Ullmann presents an honest and realistic depiction of her life from the time she was a tiny child to the present, and she is so determined to be honest with herself and her reader, and so hopeful that her commentary contains elements of universality that she does not even mention the names of her famous parents until well over a hundred pages of narrative have elapsed. Linn Ullman has created a work memorable for its authenticity, its insights into parents and children, and its forthright depictions of the struggles that even caring people have in showing love.
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“There is no thief worse than a bad book,” an Italian Proverb reads. Those who know this site know I do not review books that I do not enjoy – everyone has different tastes – and I know that a book I dislike may be someone else’s favorite book of the year. When I start a new book (very often before its publication date, when there are no other reviews), I always want to be fair, giving the book a chance to make its case and, with luck, steal my heart. Publicists and representatives of publishers with whom I have had contact sometimes know me from my reviews and can be very helpful in helping me find books that will be of particular interest to me. Sometimes, however, these suggestions fall flat, too, and a book I’ve been looking forward to for weeks fails to pique my interest, and I do not like it and will not review it. This is my story about one such book.
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The speaker of this work of “fiction,” who appears in every way to be the author himself, insists that this book is, in fact, a report – “pages intended only for my files.” Despite this assertion, the resulting work is so introspective and so intimate, and the many known “facts” of the author’s own life are so clearly identical to events of the speaker’s life that the very borders between fact and fiction, reality and imagination, and observation and interpretation are blurred. The book feels like an internal monologue by a talented writer exploring the very nature of his own being, Its Australian author, Gerald Murnane, often suggested as a candidate for the Nobel Prize, appears to be so invested in the nature of thought and its creative manifestation through writing that he is willing to sacrifice what many of us would regard as everything physical that has had meaning for him in the past to find answers to his inner questions. The book which has resulted is unlike anything else I have ever read – a book without a plot, without a real conflict, and without a clear sense of direction – yet I found it hypnotizing.
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Posted in 3-2018 Reviews, Autobiography/Memoir, Canada, Coming-of-age, Exploration, Historical, Literary, Non-fiction, Psychological study, Social and Political Issues on Dec 6th, 2018
“Over the past few decades, Emily Carr’s reputation has soared so high that it now can be argued she is Canada’s best-known artist, historic or contemporary. Her impassioned paintings of the West Coast of Canada – her depiction of the monumental sculpture of British Columbia’s indigenous peoples and of the towering trees and dense undergrowth of the region’s rain forests, executed during the early decades of the twentieth century – have superseded [every other] claim to Canadian wilderness. And to national identity.” – Robin Laurence, “The Making of an Artist,” Introduction, 2005. In this autobiography, Carr shows her superb talent as a writer and observer, concentrating on her feelings and her intense responses to life’s challenges over the seventy-four years she has lived – including her struggles to acquire the skills she needed as a painter on an island where there were few others, her trips to aboriginal villages and her desire to preserve their unique qualities, and her friendships with the Group of Seven which gave her new impetus to continue with her landscape paintings. Lawren Harris, in particular, became a mentor. Fascinating and enlightening story by a woman whose success almost did not happen.
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Sleep of Memory, Modiano’s first published work since he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014, draws together many of his never-revealed, often frightening,memories of his late teens and early twenties, some of them in fragments, which have haunted him from the mid-1960s. It is by far the most intimate picture he has ever given of his life, which feels so real here that it is hard to imagine that is “fictionalized.” He recalls these years as “a time of encounters, in a long-distant past,” admitting that he “was prone back then to a fear of emptiness, like a kind of vertigo.” Mysteries surround his characters, their lives, and their motives, and the sudden disappearance of a young woman is a warning sign that things may not be as they appear. Another woman involves him in a terrifying event for which the terms “amnesty,” “witnesses,” and “statute of limitations” creep into the narrative. People enter, then leave Modiano’s life, and years later, he seeks out some of these people and places still looking for resolution for some of the issues he has faced. Newcomers to Modiano will probably want to start with SUSPENDED SENTENCES, about his childhood, to start familiarizing themselves with Modiano’s work. Those who are already fans will want to start on this one without delay!
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