Book Description
Love Is Never Painless
Truer words have never been spoken. This heart-wrenching collection of novellas brings that statement to life in three unique ways, penned by three of the generation's most prolific authors.
In Eileen M. Johnson's "How the Other Half Lives," Jamellah and Fernecia have been friends since forever. Having escaped the poverty of their youth together, they both had made their mark in society. However, men problems threaten to make them literally fall apart. Fernecia is married to a man who was raised to think he is better than everyone -- even his own wife. Jamellah has always used men to get ahead but eventually everything catches up to her. The two friends must ultimately count on each other in a world of havoc and distrust.
In V. Anthony Rivers's "Love Is 2 Blame," Malcolm is devastated after a two-year relationship with Shaylisa ends. He finds it difficult to function because he cannot comprehend why she would want to end such a perfect situation. He was everything she had asked for; he treated her with respect and showered her with love. Yet love was not enough. Trying to move on to someone new will not be as easy as it used to be, but will the lovely Zahara show Malcolm what true love is all about?
In Zane's "Staring Evil in the Face," Robier has everything a man could ever wish for: a stable and rewarding career, two beautiful children, an elegant home, and the woman of his dreams. Having loved Tiphanie since college, he is determined to keep his marital vows until . . . Tiphanie is involved in a horrible car accident that changes the entire course of their lives.
From nervous breakdowns to drug addiction, Love Is Never Painless explores the deeper side of love; the side rarely explored in romance novels. Zane, Johnson, and Rivers have penned a powerful collection of novellas that will not only have readers talking but also examining their own relationships with a new perspective.
Customer Reviews:
It was a good book!!!.......2007-08-05
My girlfriend enjoyed the book very much. She's a fan of Zane and this book is a reason why.
Change.......2007-08-02
This book was heart-felt and realistic. I love the change of pace but look forward to getting back to what drew me to her books.
A real eye-opener!.......2007-06-24
This book was wonderfully written! The authors did a great job with the stories which focused on LOVE ! And also made me realize the importance of it! This book was a real eye-opener and will defianantly touch your heart more ways than one!
Excellent Book..........2007-06-10
I typically love Zane. Her writing is bold, crisp and powerful. Her images are vivid and come through quite clearly in her writing. A new author also caught my eye, his style is very similar. Shombay Kimoni's "A Black College Nightmare". These books are both quite similar and powerful. I would suggest them both. I planned and am reading everything else both authors write.
Chris
What HAPPENED.......2007-04-11
This book was okay,but not a Zane great. I know she didn't write all the stories but I found the last story in the book to be the best but not great. I was expecting a book that you can't put down and this book was far from it.
Average customer rating:
- Reading this is an elevating experience.
- Gorgeous and Heartbreaking
- Exquisite
- Utterly gorgeous
- The Resurgence of the Romance Novel a la Steven Millhauser
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The King in the Tree: Three Novellas
Steven Millhauser
Manufacturer: Knopf
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0375415408
Release Date: 2003-02-18 |
Amazon.com
In The King in the Tree, Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Millhauser's brilliant collection of three novellas, there's one human constant: deception. The lovers in these three long stories range from a contemporary American housewife to the legendary Don Juan to Tristan and Ysolt, but the love affairs recounted here never add up to a simple geometry of two. In "Revenge," a frightening monologue, a widow gives a tour of her house to her dead husband's mistress. In "An Adventure of Don Juan," that hot-blooded Spaniard heads to the cooler climes of England and unwittingly turns a love triangle into more of a love square. This tale is set in a country manor and has the lapidary beauty of a Gainsborough painting. If the first two stories are exquisitely done, the retelling of Tristan and Ysolt is a small masterpiece. The story of the lovers is recorded by Thomas of Cornwall, advisor to the king and reluctant protector of illicit love. He closes the book with these words, which could be a description of Millhauser himself: "I, Thomas of Cornwall, prince of parchment, lord of black ink, king of all space, summoner of souls, guardian of ghosts, friend of the pear tree and the silence of waves, companion to all those who watch in the night." This book joins Jane Stevenson's Several Deceptions and John Fowles's The Ebony Tower on the short shelf of magical novella collections. --Claire Dederer
Book Description
From the author of
Edwin Mullhouse and the Pulitzer Prize–winning
Martin Dressler: three dazzling novellas about the many shapes of love.
“Revenge” is a tour de force about erotic love and betrayal, told through the voice of a woman showing her home to a stranger with a disturbing secret. As the once-happy wife moves from living room to bedroom, she insinuates herself into her guest’s (and the reader’s) mind—and we witness the gradual unfolding of a carefully meditated scheme of revenge.
“An Adventure of Don Juan” and the title novella transform classic fables into immediate, wholly original tales of romance. The first puts the famous lover on a country estate in England, where he attempts to perpetrate a brilliant seduction only to discover something surprising about the human heart. In the mesmerizing “The King in the Tree,” Millhauser explores devotion and denial, casting the tragedy of Tristan and Ysolt as an engrossing tale of a king’s infatuation with his beautiful wife—and the agony of her betrayal with his own nephew.
Full of passion, trysting, and fatal pleasures, these three brilliant novellas are rich with the many gifts of our most persistently imaginative romancer.
Customer Reviews:
Reading this is an elevating experience........2007-08-13
All the over the top praise the other reviewers have given this work is justified. One can't help but to gush over it. Liked all the stories - each one got increasingly better. Extraordinary use of the famous Millhauser love triangles (sometimes quadrangles) - every story utilizes this technique. The best thing about Millhauser is that he understands this about the nature of love (and lust and hate): it is rarely a neat and tidy relationship between two people. Rather, it is almost always a complex web of interactions, contextualized between the lover and the object of the lover's desire, who usually only obtains that status when compared against another love or lover! Deep stuff, huh? Deep stuff that Millhauser portrays perfectly in this collection. Not to mention the beautiful, fluid langauge. Not to mention the lush imagry. Not to mention the interesting pacing ..... It could go on and on. Anyway, get this book, because after you read it you'll feel glad to be alive simply for the experience of discovering a fine work such as this one.
Gorgeous and Heartbreaking.......2006-03-04
I LOVE Steven Millhauser. I own almost all his books--read them one after the other, within the span of weeks. His only flaw in my mind is slow-pacing, but my eye didn't skip over anything in King in the Tree!! I read the Tristan and Ysolt story word by word--something I never do.
Exquisite.......2003-12-25
The three novellas contained in this book are perhaps the most exquisite I've ever read and it pains me to see this beautiful book with but three reviews previous to mine. Anyone who hasn't read "The King in the Tree" is really missing something extraordinarily special.
The first novella, "Revenge" was simply not to my taste but it is perfectly crafted and oozing in irony and sarcasm. Your taste might be very different from mine and this could well end up being your favorite among the three. It is the least "flowery" and the one told in the most spare, but perfect, prose.
"An Adventure of Don Juan" was my favorite because of its overriding sense of melancholia, something I like in a book. In this novella, Don Juan's adventure at an English manor house is quite different from his adventures in Spain or other parts of continental Europe. I loved every word of this novella, from the first to the last.
The title novella, "The King in the Tree" is a heartbreaking retelling of the story of Tristan and Isolde told from the viewpoint of Oliver Cromwell. As the Amazon editorial review says, this novella is a small masterpiece. While I preferred the second novella just a little more, I do have to say that I finished reading this one with a sense of awe. If Millhauser can write something this crystalline in its perfection, this moving, this absolutely beautiful, then I feel the man can surely write anything at all. This is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have ever been fortunate enough to read. This is what every "would be" writer should aspire to.
If you love good fiction and you haven't read "The King in the Tree" you are really cheating yourself. Buy or borrow a copy today. This is probably the most beautiful book and the most perfectly crafted book I've ever read. I feel so lucky to own a copy.
Utterly gorgeous.......2003-08-27
This dazzling collection should be of interest to all lovers of Interstitial Fiction, for Millhauser is a master at blending different genres -- myth, fantasy, surrealism, historical fiction and Romance, contemporary realism, horror -- into elegant, innovative, and utterly gripping stories. He is, quite simply, one of the best writers of our day -- and this collection of three stunning novellas is not to be missed.
The Resurgence of the Romance Novel a la Steven Millhauser.......2003-08-21
Anyone who has had the pleasure of taking a journey between the two covers of a Millhauser book will approach this selection of three novellas with particular glee. Steven Millahuser has revived the glory of Romance Novels and yet has done so with his unique skill and vision. He has an obvious love for the Grand Epics of the past and here he delves deeply into the tale of Don Juan, transporting the Spanish lothario into the prim and measured world of England, finding a startlingly altered view of love among the proper Brits. His retelling of the legend of Tristan and Ysolt (Isolde) is even more beautiful than the versions we know so well. His explorations of all the agonies of love's commitments overlay the exquisite longings in this tale of chivalry, fidelity, and passion. It is impossible to read this novella without hearing Wagner's lush 'Liebestod' ringing through the air.
Millhauser is at his finest in the first of the three marvelously written and conceived novellas in this colection. In what appears to be a simple tour of a house that is on the market he manages to tell us of a marriage troubled, doomed and revenged in a simply eloquent monologue by the surviving wife. How much of this tale is purely cerebral, the workings of a mind gone mad, and how much is the actual distillation of revenge on the perpetrator of a failed marriage and death of a husband is left to us to determine.
Millhauser writes with elegant and eloquent prose, asking us to linger over his pages the way we might linger over a painting in a museum walk. And indeed his stories are written as though derived or inspired from just such experiences. Stunning writing this!
Book Description
In these three stories—two of which form the basis of the award-winning film
We Don’t Live Here Anymore—literary master Andre Dubus traces the lives of two couples who married too young, and who are intricately entwined by love and friendship, jealousy and understanding.
Hank and Jack have been best friends since high school. Hank married Edith, the prettiest girl Jack had ever seen, and Jack married Terry, whom he thinks he may no longer love. But Hank and Edith’s adultery didn’t begin or end with Jack and Terry. Moving, perceptive, rendered in clear-eyed prose,
We Don’t Live Here Anymore maps with preternatural insight the often separate lands of love and marriage.
Customer Reviews:
Effortlessly entertaining and ultimately relatable..........2007-07-27
Andre Dubus is a masterful storyteller, as anyone whose read his work can attest to. He may generally focus on the one subject of relationships and marriage but he is so connected with that subject that the lack of creative range is forgiven. In this collection he gives us three novellas that focus on a group of four people. Jack, Terry, Hank and Edith, and with each respective story he breathes life into his characters and further cements them into the readers memory.
`We Don't Live Here Anymore' is the first novella in this collection and it's a brilliant way to start things off. Told through the eyes of Jack we are brought in on the lives of two married couples, Jack and Terry and Hank and Edith. We quickly learn that Jack is sleeping with Edith. They both love each other very much. Jack has slowly grown cold concerning his wife Terry. She is lazy and boring and not the woman he thought he knew. Edith on the other hand is spontaneous and young and she showers him with affection. Edith's husband Hank is an adulterous man who doesn't love her and has betrayed her before, leaving her adultery to come easy. Hank in fact has fallen in love with Terry who still loves her husband deeply but has grown depressed and hungry for attention, attention that Hank is willing to provide. Told with such brilliant dialog and heart breaking realism, the reader can truly find a place within this all too real story.
In `Adultery' we get a better look into the eyes of Edith and her relationship with husband Hank. We see that they have both come to a mutual understanding and carry on in their individual affairs, but while Hank seems to stay stifled in his way of thinking Edith grows from her relationship with dying ex-priest Joe. Edith becomes much more alive here and becomes endearing to the reader. I fell in love with her and sobbed along with her in the end. You can see that much of her character's persona in the film adaptation of the first novella is a direct derivative of the life Dubus breathes into her here.
It's in `Finding a Girl in America' though that my heart was truly touched. There's a passage in the first few pages where Hank, now separated with Edith and falling in love with nineteen year old Lori, dreams of his unborn child, the one he never knew almost was, and it brought me to tears. Now maybe this has to do with the fact that my wife and I are expecting our first, but regardless, the dream and Hanks reaction to the dream is both moving and emotionally connected to the reader. The balance of the story as well shows how this one event in his life helped mature him and push him in a new direction where he craves the stability and normality he once considered unnatural.
Upon closing this book one feels closure because all the lose ends that seemed to unravel within the first novella seem to find themselves by the closing words and make good for all their misspent mistakes. I still feel a sense of solace for Jack and Terry for I fear they may never find happiness, but Edith and Hank are so well fleshed out and discovered that I feel warmth towards them both and am encouraged by their struggle to find themselves and their journey. `We Don't Live Here Anymore' tackles some very controversial yet ultimately familiar subjects and is a collection that will sit well with the reader and remain in their minds for a long time to come.
As Fine a Collection of Novellas as Anyone Ever Published.......2006-06-09
The three novellas collected here -- We Don't Live Here Anymore, Adultery, and Finding a Girl in America -- all concern an overlapping cast of characters, notably our man Hank, a Dubus doppelganger who can't seem to find the right balance between freedom and devotion, but who is drawn with such empathy that we forgive him even as those he has loved and wronged forgive him in the stories. My favorite of the three is Finding a Girl in America, and it's good enough as a standalone novella, but even better when read against the backdrop of the two that precede it.
My only gripe about this collection is that the publishers removed "The Pretty Girl", which was included in an earlier edition, but it's a choice that makes perfect sense, because "The Pretty Girl" is not linked with the other three novellas.
If you enjoy these stories, consider checking out "Voices from the Moon," Dubus's finest novella, collected in his Selected Stories. Check out "Rosa," too, and, hell, everything he ever committed to print.
I Will Champion This Collection Until I Die.......2006-04-18
Important lessons from this amazing book:
1. Less is not always more, more is more.
2. Characters can be complex. In fact, they must be.
3. Dubus' world is a luscious, richly painted place--why do other writers render their world in black and white?
4. Stories can wrap their arms around you and embrace you for days--even weeks. They can slow you down, in all the best ways.
5. Details--By the end of this trio of novellas, you will have been to another place. It's good to get away.
Get lost here. It's an important place to be.
You'll think about it long after you've put it down........2006-01-22
This book is a collection of three novellas. Each containing the same characters as we trace them through the years. The stories follow two young couples, Jack and Terry and Hank and Edith. Jack and Hank are both literature professors at a small New England college and Terry and Edith are housewives and mothers. They're all best friends and they all married too young. This book is broken into three novellas, "We Don't Live Here Anymore," features Jack's first-person narrative. "Adultery" is Edith's version of events, and the final story, "Finding a Girl in America" is Hank's saga of trying to move on after a failed marriage. The characters in these stories are so vivid. That's the one thing I love about Andre Dubus's writing power. The characters just aren't fictional people, they become people living in the house next to you. Sure, it is bleak and depressing at times, but what marriage isn't?
Immaturity abounds in these dismal stories........2005-12-06
I was very interested in the first story in this collection because at the outset it looked like it would take a look beneath the surface of relationships. Instead the story quickly became a silly adolescent soap opera acted out by supposed adults. The four central characters are comprised of two married couples. Each spouse has an affair with his/her friend's spouse. And they all pretend this isn't going on and that they're still all friends. The four characters are among the most unlikeable, narcissistic, immature, non-credible characters I've ever read about. The two male characters teach at a college, but could just as easily be portrayed as accountants, factory workers, or computer programmers. The characters have absolutely no depth. The men in the story clearly suffer from "Peter Pan" syndrome. The author is trying so hard to say something important with these stories, but it's a mystery what that is. In short he seems to think that immature behavior somehow represents honesty. If you want to read about four people who never outgrew high school adolescent behavior this may be the book for you. Apparently Dubus saw something he liked in these characters because he wrote three novellas including them. Unfortunately the movie is just as dismal as the book--even more so actually.
Book Description
The brutal realities of the dark places Su Tong depicts in this collection of novellas set in 1930s provincial China -- worlds of prostitution, poverty, and drug addiction -- belie his prose of stunning and simplebeauty. The title novella, "Raise the Red Lantern," which became a critically acclaimed film, tells the story of Lotus, a young woman whose father's suicide forces her to become the concubine of a wealthy merchant. Crushed by loneliness, despair, and cruel treatment, Lotus finds her descent into insanity both a weapon and a refuge.
"Nineteen Thirty-Four Escapes" is an account of a family's struggles during one momentous year; plagued by disease, death, and the shady promise of life in a larger town, the family slowly disintegrates.
Finally, "Opium Family" details the last years of a landowning clan whose demise is brought about by corruption, lust, and treachery -- fruits of the insidious crop they harvest.
Customer Reviews:
Too short.......2007-08-12
I wanted the WHOLE book to be the story Raise the Red Lantern. Too short!!
Intriguing and suspenseful .......2005-09-22
I thoroughly enjoyed "Raise the Red Lantern", more so than the other two novellas. As an occidental 30-something I realize I am not qualified to judge the accuracy of the story, but I found it highly entertaining. I also liked the film version. The novella differs in creating a degree of emotion, suspense, and creepiness that the film lacks. The film is worth seeing for the setting and costumes alone.
Set in China of the 1920's or 30's the protagonist is a young woman who, due to her father's death, can no longer afford to study at the unversity. With few options available she becomes the 4th wife/concubine of a wealthy man who is plenty old enough to be her father. The "wives"/mistresses each have their own small apartment in his traditional Chinese compound. What she finds a life of boredom interrupted by plots among the other mistresses, and the slighted maid who wanted to be the 4th mistress, to eliminate each other and win favor with their benefactor. They all want to spend intimate time with the old geezer in order to conceive a son, the only way to ascend this surreal hierarchy. The protagonist manages to thwart numerous plots against her and sets out to discover the mystery of the previous 4th mistress. In the process she descends to a level of cruel that she previously disdained in the other mistresses. As with most Chinese stories, don't expect a happy ending.
Book Description
The first English translation of work by Wang Xiaobo, one of the most important writers of twentieth-century China.
Customer Reviews:
a great novelist discovered.......2007-05-08
A poet tells you about himself and a novelist brings knowledge of the world. In Wang's writings we see the absurdity in China under the totalitarian rule from a compeletly different angle - yet how enlightening it is! - that power by its masochist nature has found its sadist victims. Reading through these stories marked by Wang's now famous witty and satire tone, you laugh with heavy sighs yet at same time, strangely, don't feel depressed. Other than the value of love itself Wang has tried to explore in stories like Golden Age, an important reason for this is that he has shown you a way to understand absurdity in life, by his super intelligence and the power of his calm and acute observation. As Kundera once noted: "All we can do in the face of that ineluctable defeat called life is to try to understand it. That is the raison d'être of the art of the novel."
So when we read about Chen Qingyang's laments and her sudden epiphany of "so-called truth" - "The truth is that you can't wake up. That was the moment she finnaly figured out what the world was made of; and the next moment she made up her mind: she stepped forward to accept the torment. She felt unusually happy." Don't we also feel unusually sad and happy at same time? Sad at seeing "that ineluctable defeat" part of life, happy at the final understanding of the absurdity made of her living. That's the enjoyment of reading a good novel.
Hats off to the great translation done by Zhang and Sommers. Wang deserves such a first-class English version for his wonderful work.
Wonderful recreation of Wang's masterpieces.......2007-04-03
Congratulations to Hongling Zhang and Jason Sommer for the wonderful recreation of Wang's masterpieces. Highly recommended.
Amazon.com
A brothel keeper's sons discuss genocide and plot murder; a young alien wanderer is pursued by his shadow double; and a political prisoner tries to prove his identity, not least to himself. Gene Wolfe's first novel consists of three linked sections, all of them elegant broodings on identity, sameness, and strangeness, and all of them set on the vividly evoked colony worlds of Ste. Croix and Ste. Anne, twin planets delicately poised in mutual orbit.
Marsch, the victim in the third story, is the apparent author of the second and a casual visitor whose naïve questions precipitate tragedy in the first. The sections dance around one another like the planets of their settings. Clones, downloaded personalities inhabiting robots, aliens that perhaps mimicked humans so successfully that they forgot who they were, a French culture adopted by its ruthless oppressors--there are lots of ways to lose yourself, and perhaps the worst is to think that freedom consists of owning other people, that identity is won at the expense of others.
It is easy to be impressed by the intellectual games of Wolfe's stunning book and forget that he is, and always has been, the most intensely moral of SF writers. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
Back in print for the first time in more than a decade, Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a universally acknowledged masterpiece of science fiction by one of the field's most brilliant writers.Far out from Earth, two sister planets, Saint Anne and Saint Croix, circle each other in an eternal dance. It is said a race of shapeshifters once lived here, only to perish when men came. But one man believes they can still be found, somewhere in the back of the beyond.In The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Wolfe skillfully interweaves three bizarre tales to create a mesmerizing pattern: the harrowing account of the son of a mad genius who discovers his hideous heritage; a young man's mythic dreamquest for his darker half; the bizarre chronicle of a scientists' nightmarish imprisonment. Like an intricate, braided knot, the pattern at last unfolds to reveal astonishing truths about this strange and savage alien landscape.
Customer Reviews:
Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-03
This, as the title suggests, is not one novel, but three novellas, and
they are not all directly related. In the first, a story is set on an
odd planet. Where are the colonists? Who are the colonists? Have the
resident aliens become the colonists, being shapeshifters. The others
may not be as interesting, but are equally odd and may have something
in common thematically.
greatest living writer?.......2007-07-20
I'm not a huge sci-fi fan so I wasn't sure I would like this one. I finished it in awe, thinking this might be the greatest living author, and a relative unknown, in the back-waters of sci-fi. The book is atmospherically sinister, intricate and complex with an unreliable narrator. Rereading helps, but it's not like a Rubik's cube, complicated with one solution. You can narrow it down to several possible alternatives, but that is all.
What I found equally fascinating is how some on the Net interpret this novel. They take the theme of "shape shifting" too seriously, in a sci-fi sense -- i.e. people who can really imitate any human form they like. The novel leads you down this path, but you do not have to read the "shape shifting" this way. It might be simply a myth the conquering people have of the "natives", who are now lost, but once had "magic" powers. Again, sci-fi markers can be unreliable as well.
I tried other books by Wolfe, but they were too slow or dark, and short stories are not his best format. But this guy is a master, in or out of sci-fi. But cerebral, definitely.
One of the best novels I've ever read.......2007-04-09
This is an amazing multi-layered work, so rich and complex that it rewards multiple re-readings. I pretty much believe that careful reading of this book will make you more intelligent. I've recommended it to dozens of people since I first read it. I feel kind of sorry for those who didn't enjoy it-to me, it would be a bit like being color-blind.
not sure how i feel about this one..........2006-12-31
i was really looking forward to this book after reading the reviews, but after finishing it i feel its one of those books where if you never read it trust me you didn't miss out on anything.
average
An awesome literary achievement of enigmatic narrative and original plot.......2006-03-27
THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, Gene Wolfe's first book-length work of note, is a collection of three seemingly unrelated novellas that are, at the close of the third, shown to be cunningly interlinked. The first novella, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", was published in one of Damon Knight's Orbit anthologies in 1974, while the latter two were written and published together to expand the themes and plot of the first. The setting of it all is Sainte Anne and Saint Croix, two sister planets revolving around a common center of gravity in a far-away solar system, colonized first by Frenchmen and later occupied (in a brutal fashion, it is hinted) by later waves of English-speaking colonists. Before men arrived, legend goes, Sainte Anne was inhabited by an indigenous race of shapeshifters, which humans wiped out. Or did the aboriginals wipe out the colonists, imitating them so faithfully that they forgot their own origins? The novellas touch upon many themes of post-colonial theory.
In the first novella, a young man grows up in a strangely sheltered environment on Saint Croix, discovering at last the secrets of his scientist father's work. Here, the aboriginal inhabitants of the sister planet are only briefly mentioned, but the plot has much more local concerns. The second novella "'A Story' by John V. Marsch" is inevitably confusing to first-time readers, and initially seems unrelated to the first. It is the story of an adolescent's initiation to manhood in a primitive society, a dreamquest that brings him across a bizarre landscape and introducing him to various tribes espousing peculiar religious beliefs. In the third novella, "V.R.T." a bureaucrat on Saint Croix goes over the diaries of an imprisoned anthropologist. Again, it seems a complete change of direction with little to link it to the first two, but by the end a story arc spanning the three novellas is revealed. THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS is an excellent example of Wolfe's love for mysteries, some revealed so casually the reader might easily miss it, and others so deeply buried that it may take several tries for the author to find the key. This all gives the book excellent re-read value. And here one can see the genesis of the techniques that Wolfe used in later works, such as his masterpiece The Book of the New Sun.
The narrative here is so ingeniously constructed that I would recommend THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS to any lover of literature, even those that are usually wary of anything called science-fiction. Wolfe's novel PEACE, published a year later, continues this strong writing and is also highly recommend, and its plot might be attractive to a more general audience.
Book Description
Be careful what you wish for...
Three cutting-edge writers explore the high-wire risk of having a sexual wish come true. In "Jodi K" by Jill Soloway, the award-winning writer/producer of Six Feet Under, a suburban teenager is a skeptical part of every high school make-out scene, but her heart is fixed on the middle-aged man next door. "Charmed, I'm Sure" by Eric Albert, a frequent contributor to Best American Erotica, tells of a single man who enters into a contract with a modern-day witch and finds there are unforeseen complications even in the most magical seductions. The young woman in "Bending" by Greta Christina, the author of Paying for It, can't seem to find an alternative sexual position...until her friends and lovers come up with a scheme that opens her up -- literally -- to her real needs and desires.
Download Description
"Be careful what you wish for... Three cutting-edge writers explore the high-wire risk of having a sexual wish come true. In ""Jodi K"" by Jill Soloway, the award-winning writer/producer of Six Feet Under, a suburban teenager is a skeptical part of every high school make-out scene, but her heart is fixed on the middle-aged man next door. ""Charmed, I'm Sure"" by Eric Albert, a frequent contributor to Best American Erotica, tells of a single man who enters into a contract with a modern-day witch and finds there are unforeseen complications even in the most magical seductions. The young woman in ""Bending"" by Greta Christina, the author of Paying for It, can't seem to find an alternative sexual position...until her friends and lovers come up with a scheme that opens her up -- literally -- to her real needs and desires. "
Customer Reviews:
Susie Bright Does It Again.......2005-10-16
With Three Kinds Of Asking for It, Susie Bright once again presents us with a collection of erotic novellas that we will want to read over and over.There is a certain indelible thread of earthly spirituality that unites these three superb novellas novellas.All are about transformation and change. For me, the hottest, most memorable and interesting stories about doing IT always include this element and I certainly was not disappointed here.
In Eric Albert's supremely witty,Charmed,I'm Sure, our hero discovers what is under the fine print when he enters into a contract with a very modern witch who accepts credit card payment for her spells. In Bending, beautifully written by Greta Christina, a woman who prefers one sexual position over all others, pushes her sexual envelope so far out she finds a whole new world inside. In Jill Soloway's very wise and very funny Jodi K. we find out what happens when a smart and lovely fourteen year old gets a crush on her best friend's father. All three of these novellas end with a surprise that left me breathless and delighted.
Three Kinds Of Asking For It is a book I want to give to all my friends.
Tsaurah Litzky, author of The Motion Of The Ocean
I loved "Charmed" and "Bending!".......2005-08-02
I'm the author of several books on NeoPaganism. I've also been writing and selling porn stories for about a decade.
In "Charmed, I'm Sure," a dash of magic helps fantasy meet reality, but our hero gets much more than he bargained for. The story is a wild ride, intensely erotic and playful. I couldn't wait to see what happened next. "Bending" is a fascinating journey deep into one woman's very particular kink -- and out the other side. It got me off and made me think. That's all we can ever ask of sex writing.
I wasn't as enamored of "Jodi K," hence the missing star. But the book is worth buying for the first two stories.
I really liked it.......2005-07-31
So far I've only read the first two of the three stories. (Based on the reviews that I've seen here, I'm looking forward to reading the last one.) It's easy to say that I really liked them, but a bit harder to say why I liked them - but I'll try. With respect to Eric Albert's "Charmed, I'm Sure", it's the combination of real eroticism, a natural cleverness, and a subtle sense of humor that doesn't get in the way of the eroticism. With respect to Greta Christina's "Bending", it's an intriguingly erotic idea taken to a pretty extreme level, but in a way that, although erotic, is also gentle and touching. With respect to Jill Soloway's "Jodi K", I'll have to wait until I read it - but based on the company that it is keeping, I strongly suspect that I'll it too.
Eric Albert's "Charmed I'm Sure".......2005-07-28
"Avrat taldor"could become some household phrase you say to your wingman when you're at the bar and you spot your next victim. They're the words that the protagonist must use so his newly acquired sexual powers over others--and by others I mean everyone and anyone--can take root. Of course musing on how pleasant it would be to have that kind of sexual control, access, and opportunity would suffice as erotic adventure, but it's by far the only hypothesis that unravels. In all the slick sensuality, raw physicality, and relentless humor, there remain newer, deeper philosophical territories that make the narrative richer for the digging. I trusted the author's craft from the start, so I knew the plot wouldn't fizzle out into 'the evil temptress- poor exploited hero' dynamic or become an archaic warning about what you get when you trust a female. The story does beckon to some fairytale genre conventions including a witch and a stone, but uses these conventions in a fresh, upbeat way. In effect, Albert becomes the sorcerer, you, the protagonist, the book, your stone, the words, your presented spell, your unleashed sexual thirst, the ensuing outcome, a formula that will leave you, as it did me, "Charmed, I'm Sure".
I heart Jodi K.......2005-07-25
I love Jodi K, Jill Soloway's perfect little novella -- it's a slice of Judy Blume, but for adults. Jodi K is funny and completely believable; she somehow manages to be sympathetic even when she complains about her father's obsession with the Holocaust. This book is surprisingly sexy, too, that confusing, vague kind of sexy that hovers over you during puberty, when everything is charged with meaning and longing and esprit sweatshirts. I could listen to Jodi K's voice forever, and secretly wish that Soloway would expand Jodi K into a full length novel or (dare I dream?) a book series.
Customer Reviews:
Thank Heavens for Ellen Gilchrist!.......1999-09-04
I loved these novellas. Each one could have been published as a "little" book (the size of HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT or ELLEN FOSTER) and most certainly "passed" for a novel.
"Winter" was a gripping tour-de-force of Anna Hand, the late author, on a madcap trip to Europe, trying to gather evidence on her evil sister-in-law. "Olivia DeHaviland Hand" introduces us to Olivia, the long lost daughter of Daniel Hand, and niece to Anna and Helen. I must say I loved "A Summer In Maine" because all of the characters talk, drink, make love, and stir up mischief.
I just hope Ellen Gilchrist writes as fast as she can. She's a poet, she's a philosopher, she's a genie, she's underrated!!! Some of her characters border on alcoholism, but they are so deftly drawn, they come across as flesh and blood; in lesser hands, these women would have come across as melodramatic vixens. Her work is loud and subtle, wild and innocent. I noticed on Amazon that she has another book coming out in 2000.
Book Description
Dying, Flight into Darkness, and Fraulein Else reveal the depths of Schnitzler's psychological and moral understanding of life as well as the masterful storytelling techniques that immerse the reader into the very center of his characters' thoughts and emotions. The tales of Arthur Schnitzler--especially as rendered in Margret Schaefer's clear, uncluttered translations--are many suggestive, allusive, and dreamlike things. But they are most certainly not the work of a period writer. --Chris Lehmann, Washington Post Book World
Customer Reviews:
A Darker Schnitzler.......2004-01-21
Until recently Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was known outside German-speaking countries primarily for his cycle of one-act plays, 'Reigen,' often called--even in English translation--'La Ronde' because of the deservedly famous movie version of that name by Max Ophuls. More recently though, his name has occasionally been heard because another of his works, 'Traumnovelle,' ('Dream Novella') served as a basis for Stanley Kubrick's last film, 'Eyes Wide Shut.' In this book we have three novellas in sparkling translations by Schnitzler scholar, Margret Schaefer, who had earlier translated several of the shorter stories (including 'Traumnovelle') in a volume called "Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas." Her translations are vernacular and swift.
Schnitzler came of age in the Vienna of the period christened memorably by Frederic Morton 'A Nervous Splendor.' This was the fin-de-siècle Vienna in the waning days of its glory and power, a city consumed by social ritual, death, art, gossip. It was the city of Mahler, Freud, Klimt, and the tragic murder-suicide of Crown Price Rudolf and his mistress, Mary Vetsera, at Mayerling. The three novellas here--'Flight into Darkness,' 'Dying,' and 'Fräulein Else'--are very much concerned with those subjects that consumed the city. Indeed, they are very much darker than the rather more light-heartedly sophisticated, even frivolous (if sometimes ominous) subjects of 'Reigen' or 'Anatol' or 'Flirtation.'
A brief comment about each of the three novellas (without giving too much away):
'Flight into Darkness' describes the gradual and never straight-line psychological disintegration of its protagonist, Robert. It is said that Schnitzler himself served as model for his hero although he certainly was never clinically insane. Still, he had an obsessive nature and a tendency towards jealousy and paranoia. Stylistically, the novella, which took Schnitzler over two decades to put the finishing touches to, has an omniscient narrator privy to Robert's sometimes reeling ruminations.
'Dying' is about a man who may or may not be dying; we're never quite sure and that's part of the fascination. There are elements that remind one of Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress, but it is not quite THAT story. Ms Schaefer comments that its applicability to our present day concern over AIDS is entirely apt, although Felix's illness is never specified.
'Fräulein Else' is remarkable in that it is a full-fledged example of stream-of-consciousness, the inner life of a 19-year-old girl, in writing that is entirely convincing and manages to be charming, amusing, shocking all at the same time. Ms Schaefer, in her excellent foreword, makes the claim that Schnitzler's stream-of-consciousness technique antedates that of Joyce or Woolf since it was first used in his earlier story, 'Lieutenant Gustl,' published in 1900.
This collection makes a strong case for Schnitzler as a writer who understands the human psyche as well as most later writers, and better than any of his contemporaries except Freud who, of course, was not a writer of fiction (most people would say). His ability to conjure up the physical environs and social milieu of Vienna is near unmatched. These are engrossing and disturbing stories leavened with wit--after all it was Schnitzler who said 'The way of wisdom is to take everything seriously, but nothing too seriously'--and informed by perspicacity.
Scott Morrison
Customer Reviews:
Another gem from Millhauser.......2007-04-06
It's been a while since I've read anything by Steven Millhauser. I jumped into his short stories several years ago with the collections The Knife Thrower and The Barnum Museum, got a good feel for his style (which I liked), and moved to other books in my stack. I have certainly felt Millhauser's pull since that time, and I couldn't ignore it any longer. LITTLE KINGDOMS was an excellent choice for getting back into his work.
The three novellas comprising LITTLE KINGDOMS are thematically related, in that they all showcase how art at first replaces reality, and then assumes it. In "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne", a newspaper cartoonist turns to animated side-projects to escape from his unsatisfying life. Millhauser works wonders with this tale, effectively capturing the spirit of comic strips and animation in the early 20th Century and bringing them to surprising life. "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon" shows how we shape our own mythologies, and how they in turn shape us. By the end of the tale, the two perspectives are merged into an astounding whole. Finally, "Catalogue of the Exhibition: The Art of Edmund Moorash (1810 - 1846)" uses the descriptions of an artist's paintings to tell the artist's life story, and what descriptions they are. The catalogue format enables Millhauser's creativity to run free, creating objects that might be too unsettling or terrifying to view in real life. While it is not essential to read these novellas together, I feel that doing so shows how Millhauser effectively uses different styles of writing to present a single theme.
In addition, there is another common theme of relationships in distress. To go much further into this might ruin the stories, but I will say that the main characters in these three novellas do not have healthy relationships with their loved ones. But for all the problems present with the main characters, they sure do make for fascinating subjects.
Picturesque Tales.......2002-09-23
The first of the three novellas that comprise this book, The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne, is by itself worth the price of admission. Unusually direct for Millhauser, the story of an obsessed cartoonist in turn of the century New York engages the emotions as well as the intellect, creating a quietly heartbreaking family portrait while vividly depicting the joys and agonies of iconoclastic creativity.
The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon is a yet another post-modern fairy tale, but after a slow start becomes quite intriguing, let down only by an overly facile conclusion.
Catalogue of the Exhibition is a brilliant idea -- the story of an artist and his circle told in the catalogue for an exhibition of his work -- and seems perfect for Millhauser, whose love for (and skill at) describing invented painting and drawing seemingly knows no bounds, yet this novella disappoints. The "Catalogue" idea seems tacked on as the entries grow to fill pages barely about the painting at hand, and the story never quite punches through the conceit. But we do get some wonderfully spooky descriptions of Lovecraftian canvases.
Millhauser's certainly an acquired taste and not for everyone, but if you've enjoyed any of his other work this collection, particularly its fine first tale, will likely please.
Wonderful Stories.......2001-11-30
I've read several of Millhauser's books, and the first (and longest) novela in this book is one of my favorite. It's about a cartoonist who begins creating animations in the 1920's. He becomes more and more obsessed... wonderful descriptions of his drawings... but his interactions with his wife and daughter are touching and very sad. This story will have a lasting effect.
The Readers of Steven Millhauser.......2001-06-07
Readers of the mysterious work of Steven Millhauser are sometimes themselves a mystery. Look, for example, at some readers' extremely negative reactions to his prize-winning "Martin Dressler." What accounts for this? Perhaps this is a class of readers who trail the Pulitzer Prize committees and choose their books based only on who wins. How odd and superficial. Again and again, such know-nothings find their narrowly traditional notions of what a novel is betrayed by Millhauser. Mr. Millhauser, keep it up!
enchanting fairy tale-like novellas with a dark side.......2001-01-15
This is a different pace than his other books b-c it's broken down into quick-read novellas. You sink into an almost childlike world of characters whose consuming faith in one thing allows them to create their own imaginary realities. There are so many little kingdoms within each story, and it evokes a feeling of wonder. I only gave it a 3 b-c I liked some of his other books better, but this book was really interesting, deceptively simple. Also, I disagree with the first reviewer who said the last story was a bore. It was a different pace, but I could really visualize each painting he described. It encourages the reader to use his or her own imagination
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