One of the best novels I have ever read. This doesn't mean it was enticing all the way through, but it was always compelling. In other words, it wasn't the beauty that kept me going but the rhythmic insistence. It is a novel of two equal halves. It's the second half that elevates the book for me. The first part consists of the memoirs of the title character, Molloy, and his abortive journey from a town to the sea in search of his mother. The second half consists of the search by a private investigator, Jacques Moran, for Molloy. He is given his instructions by a fellow employee of a shadowy organisation. His task seems meaningless and from the very beginning it proves to be unfeasible, but in the attempt Moran finds Molloy, in a sense, by changing into a new and more bitter edition of him. What astounds me about Beckett, especially in this novel, is the way he manages to inject humour into the bleakest of existential scenarios. The humour partly derives from some situations that occur as the novel progresses, but mostly from the skillful use of language.
Molloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy, appeared in French in 1951, followed seven months later by Malone Dies (Malone meurt) and two years later by The Unnamable (L’Innommable). Few works of contemporary literature have been so universally acclaimed as central to their time and to our understanding of the human experience.
Ray Bradbury was one of the greatest American short story writers of the 20th Century. He is best known for his science fiction, his modern gothic tales, and his bittersweet evocations of lost youth. But he wrote good crime fiction too. This collection showcases his abilities as a crime fiction writer. It starts off weakly, in my opinion, but quickly gains strength. I was impressed by 'Where Everything Ends', 'Corpse Carnival', 'And So Died Riabouchinska' and 'The Town Where No One Got Off' (almost a perfect little fable). And then we get the brilliant 'Dandelion Wine' stories: 'The Whole Town's Sleeping' (grotesquely ironic) and 'At Midnight, in the Month of June'. These are followed by the seminal 'The Small Assassin' and 'Marionettes, Inc' (a story with two separate twists embedded in it).
Many of these stories I have read before, long ago in other collections, but it was good to see that there are still Ray Bradbury stories new to me. I feel I have been reading Bradbury forever and there is still work of his I haven't discovered. The collection ends with another almost perfect fable: 'The Utterly Perfect Murder'. Despite all his faults (and they are many) Bradbury has been one of the most significant writers in my reading life, and he continues to be so.
Celebrating Ray Bradbury's centennial, a deluxe illustrated commemorative collection of his finest crime stories -- tales as strange and wonderful as his signature fantasy.
Time travelers...dark carnivals...living automata...and detectives? Honoring the 100th birthday of Ray Bradbury, renowned author of Fahrenheit 451, this new, definitive collection of the master's less well-known crime fiction, published in a high-grade premium collectible edition, features classic stories and rare gems, a number of which became episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER, including the tale Bradbury called "one of the best stories in any field that I have ever written."
It seemed to take me forever to read The Magus, much longer than it took me to read other books by Fowles, even though it's a more exciting novel than any other he wrote. For most of the book's length I felt that the writing was excellent, the story was very good, but the tone of the narrator, Nicholas Urfe, had dated badly. I found the long extracts when Conchis was talking about his past to be vastly more engaging than anything Nicholas had to say. But Nicholas grew more tolerable in the last third of the novel, especially when the action speeded up and he was put on trial by Conchis and his cohorts. The cascading deceptions became stupendous at that juncture, one deceit after another, what we thought we knew flipped suddenly into something new, and so on. Nothing was certain anymore, it is really quite disorienting stuff, done extremely well. And the ambiguous climax works very well because the reader determines the resolution.
The Magus is the story of Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching assignment on a remote Greek island. There his friendship with a local millionaire evolves into a deadly game, one in which reality and fantasy are deliberately manipulated, and Nicholas must fight for his sanity and his very survival.
The explorer who can turn his head into a trumpet if he tries really hard has crashed his balloon again, an accident that leads to him becoming the guest of a very strange household. He is introduced to the members of the tribe, including a living suit of armour, levitating skull, sentient reflection, and the woman or women in a state of quantum superposition he is fated to fall in love with. In a world ruled by the flux of wordplay and ideas-association rather than ordinary cause and effect, he must adapt quickly to the demands of lateral logic or perish. He must learn to blow impossible fanfares with his own face to secure his future.
