Pretty Ugly

Kirsty Gunn

Sinopse

Contradictions (both real and apparent), oppositions, enigmas, provocations, challenges——this is the kind of material that makes a life, and is the kind of material that, in fiction, one is never quite sure of. With Pretty Ugly, Kirsty Gunn reminds us again that she is a master of just such stuff, presenting ambiguity and complication as the essence of the storyteller's endeavour.
 
The sheer force of life that Gunn is able to load these stories up with is both testament to her unrivalled skill and an exercise in what she describes as 'reading and writing ugly', in order to pursue the deeper truths that lie at the heart of both the human imagination and human rationality.
 
So here we have all the strange and seemingly impossible dualities that make up real life——and pretty ugly it can be, as well as beautiful, hopeful, bleak, difficult, exhilarating. But never, ever dull.

Disponível desde: 30/05/2024.

Comprimento de impressão: 217 páginas.

Outros livros que poderiam interessá-lo

Christmas Eve at a Cornish Manor...

Clara Venn

The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Clara Venn.

Ver livro

Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

Charles Dickens, Herman...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

Kipling in these more modern times is increasingly seen as an apologist for the bad ways of evil empires. It’s a simplistic analysis and avoids much of his literary talent that is entertaining, scary and down right brilliant story telling whatever the background it is based on or comes from.

01 - The Top Ten - The 19th Century - The Men - An Introduction
02 - The Signalman by Charles Dickens
03 - Bartleby the Scrivener - Part 1 by Herman Melville
04 - Bartleby the Scrivener - Part 2 by Herman Melville
05 - The Cloak by Nikolai Gogol also known as 'The Overcoat'
06 - The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant
07 - About Love by Anton Chekhov
08 - The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
09 - The District Doctor by Ivan Turgenev
10 - Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
11 - A Passion in the Desert by Honoré de Balzac
12 -Lost Hearts by M R James

Ver livro

Conversation On Conversation -...

Harriet Beecher Stowe

The bookshelves of American literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From this continent their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Ver livro

The Undying Man

D H Lawrence

'The Undying Man' is a slight unfinished piece, drawing its inspiration from Shelley's 'Frankenstein' about the creation of life and the fear of death. It is interesting to speculate where Lawrence would have gone with the story but the sound of broken glass is the most likely ending.

Ver livro

A Middle-Sized Artist - From...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on 3rd July 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, to an unaffectionate mother and a father who abandoned her and her older brother to a life of poverty.
Inevitably her schooling was limited and by 15 she had attended seven different schools but received only four years education. However Charlotte was resourceful and did spend time with her father’s aunts – the suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker and the ‘Uncle Tom Cabin’s’ author, Harriet Beecher Stowe as well as many hours at the public library studying ancient civilisations.
In 1878, she enrolled in classes at the Rhode Island School of Design where she met Martha Luther and they developed a close relationship until Luther married in 1881. Charlotte was devastated and detested romance and love until she met and married the artist Charles Walter Stetson.
Their only child, Katharine Beecher Stetson, was born in 1885 but left Charlotte with post-natal depression, then often dismissed as a case of hysteria or nerves. Unsuited to domestic life she ruptured her life and moved to California with Katherine. She divorced in 1894 and then sent Katharine east to live with her father and his second wife confirming that his paternal rights be acknowledged and that Katherine establish a relationship with her father.
After her mother died in 1893, Charlotte moved back east and became involved with her first cousin, Wall Street attorney, Houghton Gilman who she married in 1900. After his death she moved back to California, where Katherine now lived.
Her most popular story is ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ which touched on her own post-partum depression and underlined the need for women to be responsible for their mental and physical well-being, as the narrator is ordered by her husband/doctor to take compete rest in her room where she is isolated and becomes obsessed with the revolting yellow wallpaper.
She wrote other notable short stories the best of which we also include.
Charlotte lectured widely for social reform, wrote important non-fiction works that questioned our patriarchal system and left a legacy as a leading and positive spokesperson for feminism.
She was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer in 1932 and, as she wrote in her suicide note and autobiography, she ‘chose chloroform over cancer’
Charlotte Perkins Gilman took her own life on 17th August 1935, aged 75, in Pasadena, California.

Ver livro

Under the shade of the feijoa...

Hayley Ann Solomon

Under the shade of the feijoa trees offers a representative sample of Hayley Ann Solomon’s particular brand of high quality, emotionally resonant short stories. The styles and intensities vary extensively, but the common denominator is humanity in all its complexity, woven with philosophy. 
“This eclectic and very personal collection of short stories by successful writer of genre fiction and emerging poet, Hayley Ann Solomon, describes in lyrical detail widely dispersed places and situations. The stories are well-constructed and intensely-felt and the author’s joy in the sounds and sequencing of beautiful words is evident.”—Philip Chatting, Winner of the Proverse Prize 2014, author of The Snow Bridge and Other Stories (Proverse, 2015). 
Hayley Ann Solomon is an award winning author and poet.  A Librarian by training, Hayley has been a full time author for some years, winning repeated recognition in commercial genre fiction. In 2017—a new departure—her first poetry collection, Celestial Promise, received a Proverse Publication Prize. She travelled to Hong Kong for the launch of her book in November 2017 and was interviewed on Radio Television Hong Kong on Phil Whelan’s Morning Brew programme.

Ver livro