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‘When I think of autumn, I think of someone with hands who did not want me to die.’ Tenderness is in short supply in nine-year-old Claudia’s life, but as she lies ill in bed with her mother taking care of her, she is in no doubt that she is loved.
'Wide Sargasso Sea' is rightly considered by many to be one of the greatest pieces of writing of this or any time, so I naturally approach reviewing it with some trepidation. But it has to be in The Empathy Library, so here goes ...
Does it make sense to “review” great poetry? The following is from Milosz’s Campo dei Fiori:
“In Rome, on Campo dei Fiori,
baskets of olives and lemons
cobbles spattered with wine
and the wreckage of flowers.
A story about dictatorship, in this case one which occurs within the family, and a young boy so entirely in the power of his father that he cannot speak the truth.
In which an elderly woman, a music teacher, invites her unwilling students to give a musical recital at her home.
Kundera is often accused of misogyny, and this may be true of his (or his characters’) sexual fantasies. But when I first read this as teenager I was primarily moved by his female characters. In particular, he conveys the profound human sadness caused by infidelity and betrayal.
What exactly does it mean to be human? Andrew Martin, a Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, is not himself. This becomes clear when he’s found walking naked through the manicured grounds of his own college, apparently having suffered amnesia or nervous breakdown brought on by overwork.
Even the Dogs opens with the image of a man’s body being carried out of a broken-down house in the quiet days between Christmas and the New Year- but who’s the semi-homeless man, Robert, and who’s telling his story?
In the early days of the Internet, 253 (‘the story of seven cars and a crash,’ set on the London Underground) was conceived by Geoff Ryman as an online-only novel.
House Mother Normal is an experimental novel that at first seems to answer the question of what people are really thinking, though the author’s skilful use of format conceals more than it reveals.