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Lädt ... The Little Red Chairs (2015)von Edna O'Brien
Lädt ...
Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. I was spellbound by this book, even though it has some flaws. Let me talk about the good part first. I loved the descriptions of the the people in the little Irish town where the Part 1. of this novel is set. it shows how ordinary life was before Vlad enters the scene, and how he changes the fabric of the place. The story was compelling and told at a decent pace. Wat was lacking was that you only see what Fidelma feels by her actions. Especially after the attack you only read about het physical recovery, but there is not much about her emotional reaction. There is very little description of what goes through her mind, her fears, anger and doubts. To me it is all a very outward description and it makes the protagonist look less sympathetic. Especially in the Second part of the book. The reader never really finds out what moved Fidelma to go to The Hague and confront Vlad. We just know that she does it. All in all I enjoyed the book, despite its flaw.s "The hunted, the haunted" "We don't know others. They are an enigma. We can't know them, especially those we are most intimate with, because habit blurs us and hope blinds us to the truth." page239 A war criminal from Sarajevo is hiding out in Ireland until he gets caught. The story is more about the woman he was involved with before his capture and the repercussions the revelation of his horrors have on her life. A scattered novel about war, trauma, denial, accountability -- or something like that... as the pieces never seemed cohesive enough for me, the parts weren't glued together enough. So I will stop talking about this book now... I don't want to be like the guy in the bar at the end of this book... audiobook fiction - character driven having some trouble getting into this, although I am impressed by the narrator's ([a:Juliet Stevenson|202818|Juliet Stevenson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1518138041p2/202818.jpg]) great skill in providing the various voices, including the male characters--she also has a lovely Irish accent. I listened to about 4 hours worth (over half the book), but wasn't compelled to continue. The main story seems to be the woman's using the war criminal's sexual "healing" and "other" services to get pregnant (after suffering 2 miscarriages with her husband), but there are also lots of side stories that seemingly go nowhere (or at least seem to wander off for hours before arriving back at a point contingent to the story). The writing/storytelling is good but I think it would benefit significantly from some editing/direction. It's also possible that I would fare better with a more easily skimmable print version of the book, or that I'm just not in the right mood for this type of story, but I am giving this a pass for now. This is a terrible book with ludicrous characters BUT it's terrible in a really good way, and the ludicrous characters are never boring. It's as if master storyteller O'Brien were a master jazz pianist sitting down blindfolded in front of a deeply out of tune piano--it still sounds terrific. She riffs on anything she pleases, writing on and on about inconsequential trivia about characters who have no point being in this story. It feels like O'Brien just let any skinny bit of thought that came into her head make its way to the page and then she worked it and made it beautiful. She is so talented--she is even channeling Virginia Woolf here and there, I would say--just compare the chapter "On the Veranda" to early chapters in The Voyage Out. The lovely stark beginning which gives this book its title is the best part, though--the novel never reaches the solemn promise of those little red chairs.
"It's simply a remarkable novel....Yet if “The Little Red Chairs” is obviously about displacement and immigration, obviously about the toll of war and its murderers and victims, it is also about how the tentacles of globalization reach everywhere, even into the corners of provincial Ireland." The real genius of this novel – and I don’t use the word lightly – is to take us right up close to worlds that we normally only read about in newspapers, to make us sweat and care about them, and at the same time create something that feels utterly original, urgent, beautiful. It’s hard to believe that any novel could do more. And it’s hard – no, almost impossible – to believe that O’Brien is in her ninth decade, for this is absolutely the work of a writer in her prime and at the very height of her phenomenal powers. "This is a spectacular piece of work, massive and ferocious and far-reaching, yet also at times excruciatingly, almost unbearably, intimate. Holding you in its clutches from first page to last, it dares to address some of the darkest moral questions of our times while never once losing sight of the sliver of humanity at their core." AuszeichnungenPrestigeträchtige AuswahlenBemerkenswerte Listen
Ten years on from her last novel, Edna O'Brien reminds us why she is thought to be one of the great Irish writers of this and any generation. When a wanted war criminal from the Balkans, masquerading as a faith healer, settles in a small west coast Irish village, the community are in thrall. One woman, Fidelma McBride, falls under his spell and in this astonishing novel, Edna O'Brien charts the consequences of that fatal attraction. The Little Red Chairs is a story about love, the artifice of evil, and the terrible necessity of accountability in our shattered, damaged world. A narrative which dares to travel deep into the darkness has produced a book of enormous emotional intelligence and courage. Written with a fierce lyricism and sensibility, The Little Red Chairs dares to suggest there is a way back to redemption and hope when great evil is done. Almost six decades on from her debut, Edna O'Brien has produced what may be her masterpiece in the novel form. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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On the whole it was quite well written, although the changes between past and present tense - sometimes more than once in the same paragraph - were distracting and unnecessary. I was left feeling a little disappointed by what I'd read as the premise was really quite good, but the content, for me, was a bit of a miss. ( )