Beyond the Letters

Imagine a little town in American South. A town, which is carefully covered from the bright sunlight by the branches of ancient oaks, a town where every garden is decorated with azaleas, camellias and roses, where all people know each other and secrets are impossible to keep for more than two days. All the inhabitants here are very different, with unique fancies and skeletons in the cupboards, they have their own social ladder as well as social divisions but the life seems to go on quietly and peacefully. And it looks like nothing important can happen in this place… but precisely here, in Maycomb, Alabama, Harper Lee set her acclaimed novel. Adult world in the eyes of a child “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a little trip to the land of childhood. Of a childhood sunny and warm, with lemonade on a hot day, with secrets behind the high fence of the Radley’s place, with Miss Maudie’s colourful garden and Mrs. Dubose’s endless moralizing. The novel is narrated by Jean Louise Finch (o...

In Bradbury’s galaxy no world  shines brighter than the fourth  planet from the sun. Composition It is rather difficult to define the genre of “The Martian Chronicles”, perhaps, the most appropriate term for it is novel in short stories. The text of the Chronicles consists of two different types of stories – the main short stories that make up the major plot line of the work and something similar to intermezzi intervening with them. The latter are short, mostly plotless, sketches, which help the author to create the necessary atmosphere and the sense of a measured time flow, sometimes to describe the culture of Mars, but more often to show the interaction of Earthlings and Martians, the changes on the planet caused by people. The stories are arranged in chronological order, describing the period from 1999 to 2026, besides, each of them contains a character, an artistic detail, an action which connects it to other stories of the collection. Nevertheless, each part c...

I must admit that Wharton’s novels and short stories are always difficult to read. Not because of the style that is in my opinion immaculate, but because of the tragedies, both small and massive, which fill her writings. Many researchers compare Edith Wharton to Henry James, calling her James’s apprentice, and their creations are indeed connected through deep psychologism , which was brought to American literature by his novels and later blossomed in hers. Wharton, as well as her teacher, is a master of such scenes which are very limited in actions but rich in concealed emotions, where every little gesture, smile or just silence covers up an abyss of inner despair. Wharton’s characters are usually opposed to society but often unable to fight against it openly. So is the character of the novella “Summer”, Charity Royall . The young girl was adopted by a rather wealthy local lawyer from a poor and not very respectable family and has spent all her life in the small town of North D...

My acquaintance with Somerset Maugham began long long ago and I can proudly say that his books are for me the proof of the fact that sometimes what teachers make us read is not only useful but also fascinating. I’ve met quotes from his novels in English textbooks of all kinds and his adapted stories were among my first proper English reads. In the university we read his novels and analyzed them from the point of view of stylistics, lexicology, grammar and literary studies. One should become sick and tired of any texts seen so often but strangely enough, I’ve come to really love his stories and now I see Mr. Maugham as an old friend who can always cheer me up. So after a series of experiment with Booker prize nominees and some extremely postmodern things it was good to pick up  The Razor’s Edge . and remember my student years. The novel is a nice piece of writing all soaked with  the interbellum mood , one of the later works of Maugham (and therefore a bit uncharacteristic ...

It is always not so simple to discuss gender issues and it seems that while mass media has learned to speak about it openly long ago, the literature since Medieval times has been too conservative to do so , preferring either to use euphemisms to describe everything that doesn’t correspond to the standard female-male relations, or, as in case with religious literature, blame all diversities, or rather not speak about them at all. The truth is, however, that human personality (as well as human body) is too complicated to fit into any binary system and, whether we want it or not, we have to accept the variety of ways it can be expressed in. Jeffrey Eugenides gives the issue a brand new approach. He takes a traditional and long-existing genre of family saga and turns it into narration of all sides of family life which we all know to exist but never dare to speak about. He shows that relations within the family and self-identification are not always what we presume they should be...