"The sun is no longer in her eyes
and the old house hovers
— a white ship moored in a sea
of long grass, the cedar bush
crouching on one side of it,
the lake an apron unfurled
on the other.
From Away"
"Smoking is a human thing and literature as always is that place (whatever the government may think) where nothing that is human is alien. And the joys (yes, joys) of smoking are no exception."
She looked at me, eyes startled, lips slightly parted. There was a milk moustache on her upper lip.
'Say that again?'
'Say what?'
'What you just said.'
'I didn't say anything.'
'I could have sworn I heard you say you were going to kill me.'
'What?'
'I thought you said 'I'm going to kill you', clear as day.'
'I never said that.'
The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom.
Paper Cuts will be a daily round-up of news and opinion about books and other printed matter. Make that an almost daily round-up. There won’t be posts on weekends. Or holidays. Or on the mornings after the Book Review’s bimonthly drinks nights at Jimmy’s Corner, a bar in midtown Manhattan.
The Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez returns to his home village, Aracataca, Colombia, to mark his upcoming 80th birthday. It's the 40th anniversary of his masterwork, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Neil Jordan tells us straight away that the narrator of the novel, Nina Hardy, has been brutally murdered by George the handyman. The story works its way back to the childhoods of these two on the banks of Ireland's River Boyne. They come from different backgrounds but their pasts are irrevocably intertwined. Nina and her brother, Gregory, are children of privilege. George and his sister, Janie, from over the river are not. They grow up together, the best of friends. Their common history ties them together although they develop very different characters. Nina becomes a famous actress, Georgie is brain damaged and mentally ill, Janie is a lush and Gregory is an adult who withholds his emotions. Danger looms as the children grow older and their idyllic childhood is threatened by blooming sexual tension.
