Emily Dickinson Face to Face
Memoirs are tricky sometimes. I only read them when I either am interested in the time period or they focus on something that I read in a literary context.
Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
The interwar period spanned from 1918 (the end of World War I) to 1939 (the beginning of World War II, starting with the invasion of Poland). Works of this period deal with a variety of new themes — including the political and social aftermath of WWI, the economic boom of the Roaring Twenties, the economic crash of the Great Depression, the rise of Hollywood, the rise of Communism and Fascism on a world-wide scale, and the changing place of women in the world (suffrage).
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Memoirs are tricky sometimes. I only read them when I either am interested in the time period or they focus on something that I read in a literary context.
When I saw Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas arrive at the local independent bookstore, I leapt at the chance to read something from a writer that my spouse loves while still enjoying the light, fun Christmas-y content.
All Quiet on the Western Front is given from the perspective of the losing side, which is still rare when it comes to war literature, especially in translation and from this era.
Graves has the unique perspective of being in the middle and a bridge between the command that used soldiers as canon fodder and didn’t fight, and those that were the fodder and lost their lives so meaninglessly.
Wharton explores eerie presences and does so with a flare that lingers in the air over your shoulder as you read. Her prose is elegant and languid, drawing the reader in with lush descriptions and then twisting each tale to a disturbing and artful ending.
It’s the subtlety that I described above that really makes this book a great selection to the spooky season — especially if you’re looking for something a bit off the beaten path.
The eleven tales contained in this collection of some of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s stories each contain a pervasive sense of the uncanny and of a narrator that exists out of step with time and space.
In a novel that occurs in single day, it can be ironically difficult to mark time and to create atmosphere. There are often limits to setting to consider, as well as how to convey the sense of hours passing without it seeming chaotic or creating too much stress in the reader experience. Guilloux is a master of atmosphere and space.
This novel was an examination of identity as Gart struggles to determine who she is and whether she is at risk of losing whatever grasp she has on herself in the face of Lowndes’ domineering presence.
The body of a young woman named Starr Faithfull was found dead on a Long Island beach on the morning of June 8th, 1931. Speculations concerning how and why she met her end inflamed the imagination of the general public and Faithfull became a tabloid sensation posthumously.