Archives by Tag '1960′s'
Review: ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ by John Fowles
Title: Author: John Fowles Published: Pan Books, 1987, pp. 399. Originally published 1969. Genre: Historical fiction Blurb:In this contemporary, Victorian-style novel Charles Smithson, a nineteenth-century gentleman with glimmerings of twentieth-century perceptions, falls in love with enigmatic Sarah Woodruff, who has been jilted by a French lover. (Goodreads.com) When, where and why: I think my mother [...]
Review: ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Title: Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, trans. Gregory Rabassa Published: Penguin, 1998, pp. 422. Originally published 1967 Genre: Latin American fiction Blurb: One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the magical story of the Buendia family, who love, lie, fight and rule for a century in Macondo, their settlement in the South American jungle. Part exotic paradise, [...]
Review: ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess
Title: A Clockwork Orange Author: Anthony Burgess Published: William Heinemann Ltd. for the Independent’s Banned Books series, 2007, pp. 158 Genre: Dystopian fiction Blurb: It’s the near future. In an unnamed city (London? Berlin? Prague?) Alex and his teenage droogs are on the prowl, spending their evenings looking for ultra-violence, rape, even murder. There’s a price [...]
Review: ‘Birds, Beasts and Relatives’ by Gerald Durrell
Title: Birds, Beasts and Relatives Author: Gerald Durrell Published: Fontana, 1971, pp. 220 Genre: Autobiographical wildlife fiction Blurb: All Gerald Durrell’s books are extremely enjoyable. My Family and Other Animals is the best, spun from his family’s five-year sojourn, before thewar, when he was in his early teens on Corfu. In Birds, Beasts and Relatives, [...]
Review: ‘A Zoo in My Luggage’ by Gerald Durrell
A Zoo in My Luggage begins with an account of Durrell’s third trip to the British Cameroons in West Africa, during which he and his wife capture animals to start their own zoo. Returning to England with a few additions to their family—Cholmondeley the chimpanzee, Bug-eye the bush baby, and others—they have nowhere to put [...]
Review: ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ by Muriel Spark
At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music master, Gordon Lowther, and—most [...]