A "finely wrought, flawlessly written" novel (New York TimesBook Review), set on a small island in the Puget Sound, that is "atvarious moments a courtroom drama, an interracial love story, and awar chronicle" (San Francisco Chronicle). "Guterson has fashionedsomething haunting and true" (Pico Iyer, Time). Winner of thePEN/Faulkner Award. A fall 1999 major motion picture.
The Fortress of Solitude is the story of Dylan Ebdus growingup white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. It's aneighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along withgames of stoopball. In that world, Dylan has one friend, a blackteenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. As Lethem follows theknitting and unraveling of their friendship, he creates anoverwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race andclass, superheros, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging,loyalty, and memory. The Fortress of Solitude" "is the first greaturban coming of age novel to appear in years.
From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comesthis compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel.Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed HumanFreakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark,count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways.Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, heworks for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cumdetective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King ofBrooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he setsthem are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatallystabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other twovie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel'sworld is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has troubleeven conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case whiletrying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklynis a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel b
The redemptive journey of a young woman unsure of herengagement, who revisits in memory the events of one scorchingchildhood summer when her beautiful yet troubled mother spirits heraway from her home to an Indian village untouched by time, whereshe discovers in the jungle behind her ancestral house aspellbinding garden that harbors a terrifying secret.
戏剧与现实交错的杰作在雷格纳·希尔部推理小说《喜欢交际的女人》里，他创造的一对独特的侦探搭档也首度登场。一位是心宽体胖、好色贪怀、爱斗嘴耍活宝的刑事主任达尔齐尔，另一位则是教养优雅、学识丰富的警官帕斯科。自从柯南·道尔创造了华生医生作为神探福尔摩斯的搭档之后，推理小说家就经常使用这种对比手法，用一位“次要而平凡”的角色来衬托神探的不凡。这些二号人物有时候是侦探的朋友，有时候是记者，有时候是助手或忠仆，但多半不脱烘托主角的功能。但雷格纳·希尔采取了另外一种途径：他让侦探的搭档有能力也有作用，甚至是重要的互补，没有对方彼此都不是完整的；他又让两人的文化特质与思考形态南辕北辙，比较与冲突的趣味因而源源不绝。仅此一项，就是希尔对推理小说的重大贡献。希尔的小说结构复杂紧凑，在我们要读的
We've seen them in a Dateline story or an Oprah feature: homesthat have become improbable repositories of - literally - tons ofstuff. The camera crews zoom in on rooms crammed floor-to-ceilingwith stacks of newspapers and magazines. We watch, fascinated, asprofessional organizers attack the untidy rooms, or the hostexpresses horror at a filthy kitchen, but never ask the largerquestion: How did it come to this? STUFF is the first book toexplore compulsive hoarding, a disorder that affects as many as sixmillion people. Using the latest research, much of which theypioneered in their decade of study, along with vivid case historiesof a range of hoarders (animal collectors, compulsive shoppers,elderly packrats, scavengers), Frost and Steketee describe thevarious causes of hoarding - psychological and biological--and thetraits by which you can identify a hoarder. In a portrait thatdisproves many of our assumptions about the often-hidden disease(for example, most hoarders aren't reacting to childhood poverty
The dramatic saga of 30 years in the life of Gombe, on theshores of Lake Tanganyika, where the principle residents arechimpanzees and one extraordinary woman. Goodall paints a vividportrait of our closest relatives in one of the best books aboutanimal behavior ever written.
THE ANIMAL DIALOGUES tells of Craig Childs' own chillingexperiences among the grizzlies of the Arctic, sharks off the coastof British Columbia and in the turquoise waters of Central America,jaguars in the bush of northern Mexico, mountain lions, elk,Bighorn Sheep, and others. More than chilling, however, thesestories are lyrical, enchanting, and reach beyond what one commonlyassumes an "animal story" is or should be. THE ANIMAL DIALOGUES isa book about another world that exists alongside our own, an entirerealm of languages and interactions that humans rarely get thechance to witness.
No writer has rendered our boundariless, post-colonial worldmore acutely or prophetically than V. S. Naipaul, or given itsupheavals such a hauntingly human face. A perfect case in point isthis riveting novel, a masterful and stylishly rendered narrativeof emigration, dislocation, and dread, accompanied by foursupporting narratives. In the beginning it is just a car tripthrough Africa. Two English people--Bobby, a civil servant with aguilty appetite for African boys, and Linda, a supercilious"compound wife" 117 -- are driving back to their enclave after astay in the capital 111 . But in between lies the landscape of anunnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest IdiAmin's Uganda. 111-12, 120, 130-1, 150, 178, 220-40 And the fartherNaipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they findthemselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsidersfrom horrified victims. Alongside this Conradian tour de force arefour incisive portraits of men seeking liberation far from home. Byturns funny
What is so compelling about falconry? Tim Gallagher mines hislifelong obsession with falcons for an answer in this engagingvolume interweaving memoir, history, and travelogue. An entiresubculture exists outside the mainstream of American societyconsisting of obsessed individuals (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. andfilm-writer Tony Huston among them) who still use the ancienttraining techniques and language of falconry. Gallagher finds thathis personal story connects on many levels with that of FrederickII, the thirteenth-century Holy Roman Emperor, legendary falconer,and notorious freethinker who brought the full wrath of themedieval church down upon his dynasty. While following Frederick'sfootsteps through southern Italy, Gallagher ponders his personalhistory as well. What salve to his spirit did falconry provide whenit ignited his passion at age twelve? Beset by a turbulentchildhood dominated by a brutal and violent father, Gallagherturned to this sport for emotional release. He offers us a uniqueglimpse into
