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The Stories Of Jane Gardam
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Book Synopsis The Man in the Wooden Hat by : Jane Gardam
Download or read book The Man in the Wooden Hat written by Jane Gardam and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2009-10-27 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Second in the Old Filth trilogy. “An astute, subtle depiction of marriage . . . absolutely wonderful” (The Washington Post). Acclaimed as Jane Gardam’s masterpiece, Old Filth is a lyrical novel that recalls the fully lived life of Sir Edward Feathers. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself. They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect English couple of the late 1940s. As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the fifty-year union of two remarkable people, The Man in the Wooden Hat is a triumph. Fiction of a very high order from a great novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power, it will be read and loved and recommended by all the many thousands of readers who found its predecessor, Old Filth, so compelling and thoroughly satisfying. “Funny and affecting . . . It’s remarkable.” —The New York Times Book Review “The latest occasion to celebrate Gardam . . . [a] superb novel.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR “Told with quintessentially British humor . . . Gardam’s prose is witty and precise.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “It’s magnificent. . . . Funny, intelligent and immensely moving.” —Kirkus Reviews
Book Synopsis The People on Privilege Hill by : Jane Gardam
Download or read book The People on Privilege Hill written by Jane Gardam and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2008-07-29 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Engrossing stories of hilarity and heartbreak” from the Whitbread Award–winning author of the Old Filth trilogy (The Seattle Times). A collection of stories from a writer at the height of her powers—a celebrated stylist admired for her caustic humor, freewheeling imagination, love of humanity, and wicked powers of observation. This is a delightful grouping of stories, witty and wise, that includes the return of Sir Edward Feathers, “Old Filth” himself. “[Gardam’s] stories, like delicate tapestries, are alight with colors.” —The Times (London) “When Gardam hits her mark, like other exemplary short-story writers such as William Trevor, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Elizabeth Taylor, she can be dazzling.” —The Guardian “Gardam’s brisk narration and fearless temperament make for serious fun.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Wry, economical and perpetually surprising, these 14 stories from English novelist Gardam follow the last of the intrepid, stiff upper lip WWII generation of British ladies and gentlemen. . . . Gardam vividly evokes an age of iron wills.” —Publishers Weekly “Gardam displays the consummate skill of the short-story-teller, which is that of the caricaturist, the ability to capture a personality in a few brief strokes. . . . Privilege Hill is a collection of gentle stories that you could read to your grandmother, with the kind of sharp wit that would no doubt give her a secret smile. But they’re deeper than they look . . . so don’t read them all at once.” —The Bookbag
Download or read book Last Friends written by Jane Gardam and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The satisfying conclusion to Gardam’s Old Filth trilogy offers exquisite prose, wry humor, and keen insights into aging and death” (The New Yorker). While Old Filth introduced readers to Sir Edward Feathers, his dreadful childhood, and his decades-long marriage, The Man in the Wooden Hat was his wife Betty’s story. Last Friends is Terence Veneering’s turn. His beginnings were not those of the usual establishment grandee. Filth’s hated rival in court and in love is the son of a Russian acrobat marooned in the English midlands and a local girl. He escapes the war and later emerges in the Far East as a man of panache and fame. The Bar treats his success with suspicion: Where did this handsome, brilliant Slav come from? This exquisite story of Veneering, Filth, and their circle tells a bittersweet tale of friendship and grace and of the disappointments and consolations of age. They are all, finally, each other’s last friend as this magnificent series ends with the deep and abiding satisfaction that only great literature provides. “[Gardam’s] prose sparkles with wit, compassion and humor. She keeps us entertained, and she keeps us guessing. Be thankful for her books. Be thankful for this trilogy, which is ultimately an elegy, created with deep affection.” —The Washington Post “Restores us to an era rich in spectacle and bristling with insinuation and intrigue. Vivid, spacious, superbly witty, and refreshingly brisk . . . the story (and the author) will endure.” —The Boston Globe “All three Gardam books are beautifully written but it’s a pleasure to note that Last Friends is the most enjoyable, the funniest and the most touching.” —National Post
Book Synopsis A Long Way From Verona by : Jane Gardam
Download or read book A Long Way From Verona written by Jane Gardam and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I ought to tell you at the beginning that I am not quite normal having had a violent experience at the age of nine' Jessica Vye's 'violent experience' colours her schooldays and her reaction to the world around her- a confining world of Order Marks, wartime restrictions, viyella dresses, nicely-restrained essays and dusty tea shops. For Jessica she has been told that she is 'beyond all possible doubt', a born writer. With her inability to conform, her absolute compulsion to tell the truth and her dedication to accurately noting her experiences, she knows this anyway. But what she doesn't know is that the experiences that sustain and enrich her burgeoning talent will one day lead to a new- and entirely unexpected- reality.
Download or read book Old Filth written by Jane Gardam and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First in the Old Filth trilogy. A New York Times Notable Book. “Old Filth belongs in the Dickensian pantheon of memorable characters” (The New York Times Book Review). Sir Edward Feathers has had a brilliant career, from his early days as a lawyer in Southeast Asia, where he earned the nickname Old Filth (FILTH being an acronym for Failed In London Try Hong Kong) to his final working days as a respected judge at the English bar. Yet through it all he has carried with him the wounds of a difficult and emotionally hollow childhood. Now an eighty-year-old widower living in comfortable seclusion in Dorset, Feathers is finally free from the regimen of work and the sentimental scaffolding that has sustained him throughout his life. He slips back into the past with ever mounting frequency and intensity, and on the tide of these vivid, lyrical musings, Feathers approaches a reckoning with his own history. Not all the old filth, it seems, can be cleaned away. Borrowing from biography and history, Jane Gardam has written a literary masterpiece reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling’s “Baa Baa, Black Sheep” that retraces much of the twentieth century’s torrid and momentous history. SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE “Will bring immense pleasure to readers who treasure fiction that is intelligent, witty, sophisticated and—a quality encountered all too rarely in contemporary culture—adult.” —The Washington Post “Gardam is an exquisite storyteller, picking up threads, laying them down, returning to them and giving them new meaning . . . Old Filth is sad, funny, beautiful and haunting.” —The Seattle Times “A masterpiece of storytelling.” —The Dallas Morning News
Book Synopsis The Flight of the Maidens by : Jane Gardam
Download or read book The Flight of the Maidens written by Jane Gardam and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Whitbread Award–winning author of the Old Filth trilogy captures a moment in time for three young women on the cusp of adulthood. Yorkshire, 1946. The end of the war has changed the world again, and, emboldened by this new dawning, Hetty Fallows, Una Vane, and Lieselotte Klein seize the opportunities with enthusiasm. Hetty, desperate to escape the grasp of her critical mother, books a solo holiday to the Lake District under the pretext of completing her Oxford summer coursework. Una, the daughter of a disconcertingly cheery hairdresser, entertains a romantically inclined young man from the wrong side of the tracks and the left-side of politics. Meanwhile, Lieselotte, the mysterious Jewish refugee from Germany, leaves the Quaker family who had rescued her, to test herself in London. Although strikingly different from one another, these young women share the common goal of adventure and release from their middle-class surroundings through romance and education. “Gardam’s lean, fast-paced prose is at turns hugely funny and deeply moving. . . . [Her] characters are acutely and compassionately observed.” —Atlantic Monthly “Quirky, enchanting . . . with lively, laugh-out loud elan.” —The Baltimore Sun “Splendid . . . Gardam’s style is perfect.” —The New York Times Book Review “With winning charm and wit . . . Gardam frames her story in dozens of crisp, brief scenes featuring deliciously dizzy conversation.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Ebullient, humorous, and wise, this is a novel to savor.” —Booklist “The portrait of postwar England as conventions crumble and the country is rebuilt is terrific.” —Publishers Weekly
Book Synopsis The Queen of the Tambourine by : Jane Gardam
Download or read book The Queen of the Tambourine written by Jane Gardam and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2007-09-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel of the Year: “Gardam’s portrait of an insanely imaginative woman in an elusive midlife crisis is impeccably drawn” (The Seattle Times). With prose that is vibrant and witty, The Queen of the Tambourine traces the emotional breakdown—and eventual restoration—of Eliza Peabody, a smart and wildly imaginative woman who has become unbearably isolated in her prosperous London neighborhood. The letters Eliza writes to her neighbor, a woman whom she hardly knows, reveal her self-propelled descent into madness. Eliza must reach the depths of her downward spiral before she can once again find health and serenity. This story of a woman’s confrontation with the realities of sanity will delight readers who enjoy the works of Anita Brookner, Sybille Bedford, Muriel Spark, and Sylvia Plath. “Excellently done . . . Manic delusions have never been so persuasive . . . Very moving when it is not being exceedingly funny.” —Anita Brookner, award-winning author of The Debut “British author Gardam, who won the Whitbread Award for this jigsaw puzzle of a novel, keeps up the suspense to the end, writing like a sorceress in the meantime.” —The Seattle Times “Brilliant.” —The Sunday Times “An ingenious, funny, satirical, sad story . . . Vivid and poignant.” —The Independent on Sunday “Wickedly comic . . . masterly and hugely enjoyable.” —Daily Mail “Marvelously subtle and moving.” —The Times (London)
Download or read book The Hollow Land written by Jane Gardam and published by Abacus. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The barren, beautiful Cumbrian fells provide the bewitching setting for the adventures of Bill and Harry , two children who find wonder at every turn as they experience the Hollow Land. Everyday challenges give a daring edge to this rural work and play. There are mysteries to explore and uncover , like the case of the Egg Witch , and everyone is curious about the Household Name, a visitor from London , moving into the jewel of the territory, Light Farm. Gardam is at her best with this novel, which won the Whitbread award in 1981
Book Synopsis The Sidmouth Letters by : Jane Gardam
Download or read book The Sidmouth Letters written by Jane Gardam and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jane Austen's love life - long the subject of speculation - is finally, delightfully dealt with in the title story of this collection. Many of the other stories, like 'The Sidmouth Letters,' bring together past and present - with sometimes hilarious, sometimes disturbing, often intensely moving results. With quiet elegance and devastating accuracy, Jane Gardam probes many and varied lives. We meet a trio of Kensington widows, mean-spirited and middle-aged, paying improbable tribute to a long exploited nanny; we await- with dread- a stranger to tea in an Engliish home; we witness the mercurial changes that take place in young love, and we watch as a bohemian, passionate past returns to tempt domestic bliss.
Book Synopsis Going Into A Dark House by : Jane Gardam
Download or read book Going Into A Dark House written by Jane Gardam and published by Abacus. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Molly Fielding's mother had been a terrible woman...' A terrible woman indeed. One need only to look at the old sepia photograph to see a vision of nastiness. The look of cunning, the self-satisfied smile, the aura of hauteur as she watches the little Italian photographer go about his business. They say the camera never lies, but maybe this one did... 'Going into the Dark House', the title story of Jane Gardam's passionate new collection, brilliantly captures the subtly subversive qualities of her art. Quietly mesmeric and quite beautifully written, these ten stories are a delight.
Book Synopsis The Fatal Englishman by : Sebastian Faulks
Download or read book The Fatal Englishman written by Sebastian Faulks and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Fatal Englishman, his first work of nonfiction, Sebastian Faulks explores the lives of three remarkable men. Each had the seeds of greatness; each was a beacon to his generation and left something of value behind; yet each one died tragically young. Christopher Wood, only twenty-nine when he killed himself, was a painter who lived most of his short life in the beau monde of 1920s Paris, where his charm, good looks, and the dissolute life that followed them sometimes frustrated his ambition and achievement as an artist. Richard Hillary was a WWII fighter pilot who wrote a classic account of his experiences, The Last Enemy, but died in a mysterious training accident while defying doctor’s orders to stay grounded after horrific burn injuries; he was twenty-three. Jeremy Wolfenden, hailed by his contemporaries as the brightest Englishman of his generation, rejected the call of academia to become a hack journalist in Cold War Moscow. A spy, alcoholic, and open homosexual at a time when such activity was still illegal, he died at the age of thirty-one, a victim of his own recklessness and of the peculiar pressures of his time. Through the lives of these doomed young men, Faulks paints an oblique portrait of English society as it changed in the twentieth century, from the Victorian era to the modern world.
Book Synopsis Black Faces, White Faces by : Jane Gardam
Download or read book Black Faces, White Faces written by Jane Gardam and published by Abacus. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A loosely connected sequence of stories, offering vignettes of human foibles from the holiday island of Jamaica. Mrs Filling sees something nasty in the midday sun; an English lawyer dallies while his wife goes mad in England; sexuality flares and everywhere farce and racial tension lurk.
Download or read book Bilgewater written by Jane Gardam and published by Abacus. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marigold Green calls herself 'hideous, quaint and barmy'. Other people calle her Bilgewater, a corruption of Bill's daughter. Growing up in a boys' school where her father is housemaster, she is convinced of her own plainness and peculiarity. Groomed by the wise and loving Paula, upstaged by bad, beautiful Grace and ripe for seduction by entirely the wrong sort of boy, she suffers extravagantly and comically in her pilgrimage through the turbulent, twilight world of alarming adolescence
Download or read book The Pangs Of Love written by Jane Gardam and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With her customary accuracy, Jane Gardam reveals the extraordinariness of ordinary people as she deals with the pangs of love- fulfilled or hopeless, sexual or spiritual, tortured or hilarious- in these eleven stories. Paraded here are ladies with a 'thing' about vicars, strange events happening in ornate downstairs lavatories (and in ornate upstairs ones), and the English abroad, desperate and dotty. The glum and impossible Edna haunts the supermarket- and dispenses an unlikely kiss of life. The younger sister of Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid declares her sibling 'very silly' and turns her story on its tail, an old maid forms a curious liason with a tramp, and small moments of temptation fill hotel rooms as histories glance briefly off each other.
Book Synopsis Wish Her Safe At Home by : Stephen Benatar
Download or read book Wish Her Safe At Home written by Stephen Benatar and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rachel Waring is deliriously happy. Out of nowhere, a great-aunt leaves her a Georgian mansion in another city—and she sheds her old life without delay. Gone is her dull administrative job, her mousy wardrobe, her downer of a roommate. She will live as a woman of leisure, devoted to beauty, creativity, expression, and love. Once installed in her new quarters, Rachel plants a garden, takes up writing, and impresses everyone she meets with her extraordinary optimism. But as Rachel sings and jokes the days away, her new neighbors begin to wonder if she might be taking her transformation just a bit too far. In Wish Her Safe at Home, Stephen Benatar finds humor and horror in the shifting region between elation and mania. His heroine could be the next-door neighbor of the Beales of Grey Gardens or a sister to Jane Gardam’s oddball protagonists, but she has an ebullient charm all her own.
Download or read book A Few Fair Days written by Jane Gardam and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grade level: 4, 5, 6, 7, e, i.
Download or read book Get a Life written by Nadine Gordimer and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Paul Bannerman, an ecologist in Africa, is diagnosed with cancer and prescribed treatment that makes him radioactive, his suddenly fragile existence makes him question his life for the first time. He is especially struck by the contradiction in values between his work as a conservationist and that of his wife, an advertising agency executive. Then when Paul moves in with his parents to protect his wife and young son from radiation, the strange nature of his condition leads his mother to face her own past.
