Two Lives

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Full disclosure: I spent my adolescence reading gossipy accounts of Gertrude Stein's involvement with William James, with Hemingway, with Picasso, with the Shakespeare and Co. people, with the whole coterie surrounding the first performance of Les Rites des Printemps. The woman knew every one who was even remotely fascinating in early 20th century western culture. Plus, she was so darn dramatic and moody, saying all kinds of epigrammatically horrible things about the people who were supposed to be her friends, and not really respecting any gender norms whatsoever. I read everything I could get my hands on about her, kind of the way other girls my age were reading all about River Phoenix. Well I've tried and tried and I've found it impossible to write a review on these two novellas. Briefly, two middle-aged women, both aged fifty-six which I found very odd; one novella set in south-east Ireland and the other in Umbria in Italy.

The entire first 3 or 4 chapters were not fun to read, I would categorize them in my "wire coat hanger" category. And the author was too flip in telling about it within such accusatory detail of ridicule too. But the fear and tension factors came across in a very real sense of actuality. That's how it is. This I do know. And have also seen. It takes a long time to read The Making of Americans. The language Stein writes in (after cutting herself loose from the conventional language of the opening Dehning section) is not the transparent language through which we enter stories, forgetting we are reading. We never forget we are reading while reading The Making of Americans. Stein seems to be transcribing rather than A lot of people have been puzzled by the connection between these two novellas. They both have as their pivot a woman of the same age who lives in a fantasy world. My theory is the second novella was written out of the missed opportunity he detected in the first novella. That, in a sense, he was rewriting the first novella from a less romantic perspective. There's a kiss in the first novella which maybe shouldn't have been there, an act of reciprocation which gives some credence to Mary Louise's lifelong romantic obsession with her cousin. In a sense this kiss makes her narrative more reliable than it needs to be. At times it felt like Trevor was extolling the virtues of romantic feeling and missed a rich opportunity to question its hidden purposes and even its validity. And there perhaps was sown the seed of giving the second novella an utterly unreliable narrator. Told in the first-person narrative, the reader is dragged away in a deluge of unreliable memories that blends with the accounts of the grim lives these women recite in muffled resignation, as if they tried to convince themselves that the traumatic experiences they went through didn’t actually befall on them.When Seth began reconstructing their story, more than 10 years ago, he did so with little sense of where it might lead. By then Henny was dead and Shanti, 85 and in poor health, needed the stimulus of some project. In the event, as he sat down, laptop at the ready, to conduct his interviews, it was Seth who was stimulated - and made to grasp how many events and intellectual currents of the 20th century intersected with the lives of Shanti and Henny. A heartrending new book -- the story of a marriage and the story of two lives -- from the author of the international bestselling novel A Suitable Boy

His parents had a fraught relationship, which was perhaps the most scandalous part of Mr. Elder’s life; they ended up sleeping in separate rooms. Divorce was taboo for their generation. This is one of the few interesting things that happened in his household that Elder should've expanded on, but he doesn't. He also doesn’t get too much into his relationship with his brothers. He lost one, to drug abuse, and he does pay tribute to how beloved he was despite not being conventionally regarded as “good” or useful. Humor and elegance are just two of many words to describe Reeve Lindbergh’s Two Lives. She shares both her busy life on her beloved sheep farm and her public life, answering the questions Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh refused to entertain. She gives us hope for finding balance in our far too busy lives." If things truly come in waves, we seem to be riding a Gertrude Stein tsunami. Recent Stein events and books include: Sometimes I love to sit awhile watching a bird totter around the garden, or listen and follow the water flowing in a stream, or watch the wind blowing through the grasses and heathers when I walk up Kinder Scout - often this is how it feels to me to read this author.Two Lives focuses on the love story between Seth’s uncle, Shanti Behari Seth, and his German-Jewish great aunt, Hennerle Gerda Caro. They’re better known to Seth as Uncle Shanti and Aunty Henny. The book is divided into five separate parts, each part following a different period in the family’s history. Included are personal anecdotes from family interviews, letters between the couple, and photographs to better illustrate where events take place. Lastly, I would have loved to meet his Mom. I had a Mom who lived to that exact same age and was called the "War Department" too. Actually my cousins called my parents "The Axis Powers"- so this book really hit home for me. In those exact same eras as Larry's parents' lives too. The "first one" was "My House in Umbria," the story of Emily Delahunty, though most readers consider "Reading Turgenev" the superior novella. Certainly the Booker committee did when they shortlisted it for the prize in 1991.

Then one day he sits down with his father as an adult. 8 hours he spends with him. The veil lifts. It lifts between the son's understanding of the father, and between the father's understanding of the son. There is an new, intriguing appreciation of his father. A sense that despite behavior that seems strange to a young boy there was a method, a reason and a goal in it. That in the end it was (imperfectly) enacted towards the goal of raising a productive person... a productive citizen.Shanti Behari Seth was born on the eighth day of the eighth month in the eighth year of the twentieth century; he died two years before its close. He was brought up in India in the apparently vigorous but dying Raj and was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin -- though he could not speak a word of German -- to study medicine and dentistry. It was here, before he migrated to Britain, that Shanti's path first crossed that of his future wife. Great book, I thought of the trials with my own father and some of the conversations that we have had, and are still having, yes my father did come from the same era as Larry's dad, went through some of the same things, utilized the military as a stepping stone, raised many boys. Many of us would find some similarities in our life spaces with this book, I thought it a was a welcome read during this holiday season, and it made me appreciate my own father even more. The story delves intricately into the ups and downs of the lives of his uncle and aunt. The text is frequently interspersed with photographs, letters, anecdotes based on Shanti’s interviews with the author, and other sources. Exploring Nature: Beetles & Bugs: A Captivating Inside View Of The Life Of Two Of The Most Successful Insect Species On The Planet, With Over 200 Pictures.