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Chargement... The Syringa Tree: A Novelpar Pamela Gien
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. This book is a beautiful love letter to Africa. A letter from a soul mate who knew it was all horribly flawed and it would never work out, but loved you deeply anyway. No description I can give will do it justice so I'll just leave a few pieces here to stand on their own. "There was nothing gorgeous about Clova-except the feeling you had when you were there. It was just a simple place, a beloved refuge in the looming, graceful shadow of the Soutpansberg Mountains, five hours north of Johannesburg...Just a dusty farm, really, a quiet place to run wild with the picaninns by day, and when the sun gave up so did you, falling into exhausted sleep, scrubbed and smelling of violets and camphor cream for new-burnt patches. An old place, to run free as a monkey and filthy as you pleased. Bursting barefoot from the car out into the rose-brown furrows, you knew for certain you were in a lucky place." "...Mahila was the old witch doctor who lived here on the land where we now stood. Black as the stenching folds of a bat's underbelly, he was said to cast spells into the wild, dry air with such skill that if you fell down crippled, you would never know who did it." "...to my great relief, I mysteriously grew into a lanky girl of sixteen, with a modicum of prettiness. I'd finally adapted to my long feet, which now seemed the right size for my body...I was astonished that overnight I had indeed become something of a lady after all. The monkey I once was had been cast off, like my mud coat, and left somewhere, like a little fallen shadow." "Butterflies. I don't mean the majestic kind. I just mean the ordinary kind, bobbing about, the kind that come and go, and stun you with their beauty just the same. And you never forget the bright, momentary blur of them." If that's not enough beauty for you, check out the author's beautiful face! http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/08/06/books/gien190.jpg This quiet first novel by a South African author (based on a play by the same author) is told from the perspective of a young girl from age six until she is a young mother and college graduate. Apartheid becomes deeply personal as the characters attempt to survive and flourish during the 1960s forward until the oppresive SA government opens up to ALL its citizens. Afrikaans, Africans, British, Jewish, and other groups are portrayed holistically, illuminating apartheid's political and legal beginning and, thankfully, its end. As others have written in their reviews, I read the last few pages while weeping. I look forward to more books from this author. Exquisite. The syringa tree has different meanings and is used in different ways throughout the novel. Well-developed story told from the pov of a young Jewish girl growing up before and during Apartheid in South Africa. Her family is not Afrikaans, so she is not fully accepted but still privileged as a white person. There are so many dimensions to this tale: Lizzie's loving relationship with her nanny, Salamina and Salamina's daughter, Moliseng, whom it is her job to protect; her desire to be friends & playmates with the Afrikaan girl next door; her closeness with her father and grandfather; her troubled, sometimes fragile mother. The author skillfully weaves them together in a captivating tale that reveals the beauty, the tragedy and the challenge of South Africa. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
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In this heartrending and inspiring novel set against the gorgeous, vast landscape of South Africa under apartheid, award-winning playwright Pamela Gien tells the story of two families-one black, one white-separated by racism, connected by love. Even at the age of six, lively, inquisitive Elizabeth Grace senses she's a child of privilege, "a lucky fish." Soothing her worries by raiding the sugar box, she scampers up into the sheltering arms of the lilac-blooming syringa tree growing behind the family' s suburban Johannesburg home. Lizzie's closest ally and greatest love is her Xhosa nanny, Salamina. Deeper and more elemental than any traditional friendship, their fierce devotion to each other is charged and complicated by Lizzie's mother, who suffers from creeping melancholy, by the stresses of her father's medical practice, which is segregated by law, and by the violence, injustice, and intoxicating beauty of their country. In the social and racial upheavals of the 1960s, Lizzie's eyes open to the terror and inhumanity that paralyze all the nation's cultures-Xhosa, Zulu, Jew, English, Boer. Pass laws requiring blacks to carry permission papers for white areas and stringent curfews have briefly created an orderly state-but an anxious one. Yet Lizzie's home harbors its own set of rules, with hushed midnight gatherings, clandestine transactions, and the girl's special task of protecting Salamina's newborn child-a secret that, because of the new rules, must never be mentioned outside the walls of the house. As the months pass, the contagious spirit of change sends those once underground into the streets to challenge the ruling authority. And when this unrest reaches a social and personal climax, the unthinkable will happen and forever change Lizzie's view of the world. When The Syringa Tree opened off-Broadway in 2001, theater critics and audiences alike embraced the play, and it won many awards. Pamela Gien has superbly deepened the story in this new novel, giving a personal voice to the horrors and hopes of her homeland. Written with lyricism, passion, and life-affirming redemption, this compelling story shows the healing of the heart of a young woman and the soul of a sundered nation. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Told so realistically, that I could almost see and hear the characters, felt their agony. ( )