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Chargement... Not the End of the World (original 2002; édition 2003)par Kate Atkinson (Auteur)
Information sur l'oeuvreOn a de la chance de vivre aujourd'hui par Kate Atkinson (2002)
Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Kate Atkinson writes novels in which everything ties together in the oddest manner possible, so it should not surprise me that she can write a collection of short stories that appear to have nothing at all in common, and yet wind around each other in the strangest and best possible ways. This isn't even a collection, this is more a novel in unrelated parts, and to date may be my favorite of her books, which is really saying something, as I'm pretty sure Behind the Scenes at the Museum is one of the best books ever. I registered a book at BookCrossing.com! http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12548979 I read this quite some time ago and forgot to note my thoughts here. I love Atkinson and I remember liking these short stories but I honestly do not recall them individually any more. Ik ben nooit zo van de verhalenbundels maar deze is beslist een uitzondering op die regel. Alle verhalen zijn op kleine prachtig uitgewerkte manieren met elkaar verbonden. Sommige personages spelen de hoofdrol in het ene verhaal en worden alleen maar genoemd in het andere verhaal. Het eerst verhaal en het laatste verhaal zijn duidelijk de hoekstenen van het hele boek. Erg goed gedaan zoals van Kate Atkinson kan worden verwacht.
I cannot remember the last time a book of short stories left me so fizzing with admiration. Atkinson tap-dances her way across the page, her prose as playful as a puppy, full of wit and invention, packed with pathos and pop culture. I can think of very few writers who can make the ordinary (Buffy, Barbie, a tenement flat) collide with the extraordinary (cats as big as tigers, children conceived at the bottom of the sea) to such beguiling effect. I sing of Artemis, whose shafts are of gold... the pure maiden shooter of stags, who delights in archery . That's a Homeric hymn, quoted by Kate Atkinson to illustrate a literary point. I will sing of Atkinson, whose arrows are as bright: barbed, piercing and precise, fired with analogous delight. In this themed collection, Atkinson has chosen to be a playful as well as erudite goddess of the pen. Her tales are largely set in modern Scotland, but she compels the reader to adopt the awed perspective of an ancient Greek. Real life trundles on, but only look twice and you can see the fingerprints of the gods plastered over every "accident" of fate (and we're not talking here about the avuncular Christian type of god but about lustful, arrogant immortals who love to play with mortal lives and spray their seed in human wombs). All of these stories show myth and reality bulging into each other, the solid modern wall between them replaced by a ragged curtain of damp Scottish mist. Prix et récompenses
D'un mini-thriller l'humour grin ant et plein de fantaisie (Affaires de coeur) Dieu qui d cide de revoir sa copie tant donn ce que l'homme a fait depuis sa cr ation (Gen se), en passant par une vision gla ante de ce que donnerait l'application de la charia en Ecosse (La guerre contre les femmes). Recueil de nouvelles plus mordant que jamais, et o le rire fait pleurer aux larmes Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813Literature English (North America) American fictionClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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The opening story is based on a discrepancy. Two young urban single women, Charlene and Trudi, seem to be living in a world of luxurious consumerism against a background of earthquake, explosions, and sniper fire. The collection’s title brought to mind Skeeter Davis’s tear-jerker hit. Don’t they know?
It turns out they do know, but they are shutting the fact out by force of imagination. But that is only revealed in the last of the twelve stories. The stories in between are tales of magic realism based on antique myth. They led me to revise my original understanding of the title. For “end” means not only a conclusion but also finitude or boundary. The stories suggest that the day-to-day world we take in with our senses is not all there is.
But then, when the book title forms the final sentence, spoken by Trudi to Charlene, the original sense comes back with the full weight of irony. It’s a sentence we all use to ourselves and each other after some physical or emotional skinned knee. And it’s even true of the world at the end of the book, but not for these two starving, plague-stricken young women. A downer of a conclusion, it haunted me for hours after I finished the book. ( )