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On the surface this is a story about an either haunted or hysterical governess who juggles words with true virtuosity, stringing them into psychologically insightful sentences. But that is all just camouflage, as is the many-layered structure of this tale. When the chips are finally down, the truth emerges, even though it is never explicitly stated --- how could it possibly have been stated explicitly in 1898? --- this is a story about pedophilia and its effects on a ten year old boy. At the core of this tale lies the relationship between the boy Miles and his uncle's servant Quint at Bly, the uncle's country estate. The housekeeper Mrs. Crose informs the new governess that the… Read more
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Judging by its title, I at first thought that Will Self had in mind the ambitious goal of writing a viable version of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" set in the age of AIDS and drugs, while at the same time daring the reader to compare his novel to the original. To set himself up for this inevitable comparison with a master like Wilde, he pulls the reader in from the very beginning with his spectacular stylistic prowess. Though quite faithful to the original, he soon transcends it and uses the Dorian Gray story as an instrument in an exploration of the uneven flow of time, and of the interplay between physical time, historical time and biological time. Youth, venerated almost religiously in… Read more
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All literary masterpieces are alike in their perfection. Each imperfect novel is flawed in its own way. Though inside "Anna Karenina" there resides a masterpiece, as a whole this novel is seriously flawed. Yet the sub-masterpiece it contains, by itself, amply justifies reading "Anna Karenina" in full. What is "Anna Karenina" about? Ultimately it is about what makes humans suffer and about what Tolstoy thinks is the right way to relieve this suffering. His brilliant ideas about the causes of human suffering start from the fact that everybody has more than one goal in life, and attaining these goals is what defines happiness for most people. The trouble is that these goals invariably… Read more
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