Beyond the Letters

People who are ignorant are the easiest aim when you want to manipulate the others. Like the famous “451 Fahrenheit” by Ray Bradbury suggests, when you are afraid of being deprived of you power – start burning the books. The people who know nothing about anything will gladly believe all your lies. This novel is about reading which helps you to get more mature. About living in the time and place that makes you choose between your consciousness and safety. About children who can be much stronger and true to themselves than adults. About one man that wanted to rule the world and many others who believed his stories. About death that is kind and life that is cruel. About the healing and destructive power of words. The outside Let’s look at the outer form of this novel first. The peculiarities start with the narrator itself, for the story is told from the point of view of… Death. Strangely enough this severe judge, as we are used to think of him, turns out to be not deprived of human f...

Biographies are generally a non-fiction genre, for even though they have some place for imagination and emotionality within them, they are mostly a collection of facts presented in an attractive way. But many writers, especially modern ones, try to reconsider this quite old genre and give a new life to it. Here I will tell you about some novels that depict images of famous people, and whose main aim is not to tell the story of someone’s life but to let the reader see these personalities through the author’s eyes. 1. Miss Charity by Marie-Aude Muriel Loosely based on the life of Beatrix Potter this little comedy however managed to create a very credible image of the acclaimed children author. Beatrix Potter was a talented writer with her own unique vision of the world and her own ideas about woman’s position in society. Living in highly conventional Victorian society, she dared to state that any woman could be more than just a wife or a housekeeper. The book is written in th...

However far away the life brings us from our native place, there is always a moment when we need to return to the roots. In this very moment we meet the narrator of “The Italian Girl” written by Iris Murdoch, a prominent representative of postmodern British literature. Having escaped from the oppressive influence of his mother, Lydia, in his youth, Edmund couldn’t find enough strength to get back to his family up to her sudden death. Now, many years later, Edmund comes to the funeral, where he will meet his relatives, about the life of which he has only a vague knowledge based on a few brief letters. He doesn’t notice any changes at first glance – the same old house, the same family of his brother and the unchangeable Italian servant. But one occasional confession of Edmund’s niece makes him see that the relations between his relatives are more confused than they seemed to be and Lydia’s house keeps m any more secrets… The Gothic atmosphere One of the most interesting features...

As we get hold of sharp and sliding border And listen to the buzzing sound of chime,- Don’t we go mad amidst the motley order And change of made-up reasons, space and time?.. Alexander Blok It took me eight years and a degree in literary studies to get to love this great postmodernist but it was definitely worth it. I must confess that the first books by Barnes I read as a student were beyond my understanding and therefore beyond my interest but since than I discovered a lot of his works that made me fall in love with his writing. “The Noise of Time” is definitely one of them. This book is  a perfect example of intermediality  (several types of art combined) and it throws its reader into the majestic world of classical music  telling about one of the most prominent composers of the previous century Dmitri Shostakovich  and his complicated relations with Soviet authorities. It’s widely known that Soviet Union was not the most creative environm...

It’s is difficult to evaluate a book which tells about a culture so different from your own, and it’s even more difficult to review it, but nevertheless, I decided to try. I have struggled to read Asian authors for the last two years and each time I picked a book and started reading, I had real troubles analyzing the text as the symbolism and inner meanings were indecipherable to me due to the lack of appropriate cultural background. This novel written by an American author turned out to be an encyclopedia of Chinese culture and answered a lot of questions that have previously arisen, so now I’m much more prepared to read something by a Chinese writer. Lisa See has done a profound research preparing to write this novel and I really appreciated that, for this text managed to preserve Chinese symbols and cultural peculiarities but present them in a way understandable to a western reader. “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” gives you an insight into the life of Chinese women in...

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...