|
|
Books > Fiction > Special features
'Vivid, memorable and beautifully crafted' - Sarah Moss, author of
Summerwater 'A brilliant collection, from a remarkable talent' -
Joseph O'Connor, author of Shadowplay Hearts and Bones is a book
about relationships. It explores what love does to us, and how we
survive it. A young woman learns to wield her power, leaving
casualties in her wake, while a man from a small town finds solace
in a strange new hobby. A watchful child feels a breaking point
approach as her mother struggles to keep her life on track, and
another daughter steps onto a stage while her family in the
audience hope that she is strong enough now to take on the world.
First-time lovers make mistakes, brothers and sisters try to
forgive one another, and parents struggle and fail and struggle
again. Teenage souls are swayed by euphoric faith in a higher power
and then by devotion to desire, trapped between different notions
of what might be true. Quiet revolutions happen in living rooms, on
river banks, in packed pubs and empty churches, and years later we
wonder why we ever did the things we did. Set between Ireland and
London in the first two decades of this millennium, the stories in
Hearts and Bones, Niamh Mulvey's debut collection, look at the
changes that have torn through these times and ask who we are now
that we've brought the old gods down. Witty, sharply observed and
deeply moving, these ten stories announce an extraordinary new
Irish literary talent. 'Astute, surprising and wholly entertaining'
- Irish Independent 'Showcases Mulvey's strenths as a writer: the
strangeness, the originality, the perfect pacing . . . highly
accomplished' - Irish Times 'Honest, daringly fresh and stunningly
written, these stories cut right to the very essence of what it
means to be young' - Jan Carson, author of The Raptures
THE JURA EDITION with new introduction by Alex Massie 'For him Jura
was home' - Richard Blair on his father George Orwell 'The book of
the twentieth century . . . haunts us with an ever-darker
relevance' - Ben Pimlott, Independent 'The greatest British novel
to have been written since the war' - Time Out 'His final
masterpiece . . . enthralling and indispensable for understanding
modern history' - New York Review of Books The year is 1984 and war
and revolution have left the world unrecognisable. Great Britain,
now known as Airstrip One, is ruled by the Party, led by Big
Brother. Mass surveillance is everything and The Thought Police are
employed to ensure that no individual thinking is allowed. Winston
Smith works at The Ministry of Truth, carefully rewriting history,
but he dreams of freedom and of rebellion. It is here that he meets
and falls in love with Julia. They start a secret, forbidden affair
- but nothing can be kept secret, and they are forced to face
consequences more terrifying than either of them could have ever
imagined. In this new edition of a modern classic, Alex Massie's
introduction highlights the importance that Jura had on the writing
of one of the twentieth century's most important works of fiction.
The perfect gift for any Bronte Sisters lover.
Each boxset contains seven books, together creating a comprehensive collection of the Bronte Sisters' best and much-loved works.
Beautifully packaged in a rigid slipcase complete with gold blocking detailing, which complements the strikingly beautiful exclusive artwork that adorns this box.
This collection includes:
- Agnes Grey - Anne Brontë
- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Brontë
- Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
- The Professor - Charlotte Brontë
- Shirley - Charlotte Brontë
- Villette - Charlotte Brontë
- Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
"The Young Pretenders" (1895) is a children's book whose
sophistication, humour and ironies are nowadays appreciated by both
children and adults. Babs lives most contentedly in a large house
in the country with her grandmother, her nanny and her brother
(their parents are in 'Inja'). Then their grandmother dies and they
are sent to live in Kensington with their uncle and his wife.
Having run wild in the country, spent hours with the gardener (very
like the gardener in "The Secret Garden") and had a great deal to
do and to think about, suddenly they are abandoned in a world of
artifice and convention and are expected to behave artificially and
conventionally. 'It all came of so much pretending. But then it was
simply impossible for the children not to pretend. It would have
been so dull to have lived their child lives only as the little
Conways, when they might be pretending that they were such exciting
things as soldiers or savages, cab-horses or mice.'Babs cannot, of
course, stop playing, and the central theme of the book is that she
has not learned how to dissemble (as opposed to playing 'let's
pretend') but must learn how to do so. However, as Charlotte
Mitchell, the Preface writer, says, this is not a solemn book, on
the contrary, 'its great characteristic is a gay malicious irony'
as Babs misunderstands the adult world and fails to conform to
adult norms. 'As anyone who has tried to bring up children knows,
you spend a good deal of time teaching them to be insincere, to
simulate gratitude or contrition, and not to repeat other people's
comments at the wrong moments. Many of the jokes depend on the fact
that Babs has yet to learn these lessons.'The focus, and the star,
of "The Young Pretenders" is Babs. She is intelligent, fun, kind,
lively and honest and it is hard to think of a heroine in
children's fiction (that is, fiction written for children but
enjoyed equally as much by adults) who is like her. Her most
touching characteristic is her openness and her complete lack of
fear. "'What was we naughty about?'" she asks her brother after
their uncle scolds them: 'The children could not know that some
very persistent tradesmen had insisted on immediate payment of
their bills.' When the news comes from India that they have a new
sister Babs thinks of a name for her - Mrs Brown. Her aunt slaps
her down, saying that it's not a name but Babs persists, "'It is, I
know it is, 'cause nurse has a sister-in-law what's called it.'"
Then she 'began to think so hard that she refused a second helping
of pudding' eventually announcing, to renewed scorn, that "'I'd
like her to be called Strawberry Jam.'"
With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd, Lecturer in English
and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and
co-editor of 'Poetry Review'. Moby Dick is the story of Captain
Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest
is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man
becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the
crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a
co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands,
each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the
crew is Ishmael, the novel's narrator, ordinary sailor, and
extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent,
the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice
of whaling, in the art of writing. Expanding to equal his 'mighty
theme' - not only the whale but all things sublime - Melville
breathes in the world's great literature. Moby Dick is the greatest
novel ever written by an American.
Pride and Prejudice, which opens with one of the most famous sentences in English Literature, is an ironic novel of manners.
In it the garrulous and empty-headed Mrs Bennet has only one aim – that of finding a good match for each of her five daughters. In this she is mocked by her cynical and indolent husband.
With its wit, its social precision and, above all, its irresistible heroine, Pride and Prejudice has proved one of the most enduringly popular novels in the English language.
Broke young man + chainsaw demon = Chainsaw Man! Denji was a
small-time devil hunter just trying to survive in a harsh
world. After being killed on a job, he is revived by his pet devil
Pochita and becomes something new and dangerous—Chainsaw Man!
Denji’s gotten too famous! After a news program broadcasts
Chainsaw Man’s heroics, the whole world now wants in on the
action! Can Denji’s new protection detail keep him safe from all
the talented assassins that have assembled in Japan to take him
down?!
Mary Lennox was horrid. Selfish and spoilt, she was sent to stay with her uncle in Yorkshire. She hated it. But when she finds the way into a secret garden and begins to tend to it, a change comes over her and her life.
She meets and befriends a local boy, the talented Dickon, and comes across her sickly cousin Colin who had been kept hidden from her. Between them, the three children work astonishing magic in themselves and those around them.
The Secret Garden is one of the best-loved stories of all time.
|
You may like...
North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell
Paperback
(2)
R250
R231
Discovery Miles 2 310
Hauntings
Niq Mhlongo
Paperback
R280
R259
Discovery Miles 2 590
|