Alors que Dolly s'apprête dans sa chambre le jour de son mariage, la maisonnée bruisse d'agitation : va-et-vient des domestiques, arrivée des premiers cadeaux, chamailleries des jeunes cousins... Au milieu de tant de fébrilité, un jeune homme, Joseph Patton, guette l'apparition de celle à qui il n'osa pas se déclarer l'été précédent. Que ferait Dolly s'il lui avouait qu'il l'a toujours aimée et la suppliait de s'enfuir avec lui, tandis que tout le monde l'attendrait à l'église ?
« Un petit livre par sa taille, mais grand par sa perfection [...] plein de la cocasserie des situations douloureuses, le genre d'humour qui nous permet de nous retourner et de rire des choses qui nous ont fait le plus de mal dans la vie. » David Garnett, 1932.
'Vous croyez que nous sommes là pour vous protéger ? Mais pas du tout, mon commandant : nous sommes là pour protéger le Congo contre vous !
Son fume-cigarette suspendu en l'air, Spicer resta pour une fois sans voix. Il revint au Dr Hanschelle de s'engouffrer dans la brèche :
- Je ne pense pas que le Congo ait tellement à craindre de nous, lança-t-il. Nous ne sommes pratiquement tous que des amateurs...
- Précisément ! Vous autres, les Anglais, vous avez un véritable don pour l'amateurisme. [...] On sait toujours à peu près ce que des professionnels peuvent s'apprêter à faire, mais qui d'autre qu'une bande d'amateurs aurait pu imaginer une telle expédition ?'
Lancés en 1915 par l'Amirauté britannique à la reconquête du lac Tanganyika avec seulement quelques armes et deux petites embarcations, ces amateurs-là n'en sont pas des moindres : l'un est un inconditionnel de la sauce Worcester, l'autre un ancien pilote de course automobile, mais le plus étrange est leur chef, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson. Officier mythomane et hâbleur, Spicer ne reculera devant aucun danger pour entrer dans la légende... À partir des faits ayant inspiré John Huston pour The African Queen, Giles Foden raconte ici une savoureuse épopée. N'oubliant pas au passage de convoquer Conrad, Livingstone et Stanley, il sait aussi éclairer de son expérience personnelle cette étonnante page d'histoire de l'Afrique coloniale.
'Eugenides offers a perfect Valentine's Day gift for lovers a literary fiction... One of the best anthologies of recent years, as well as commanding proof that its editor is as expert a reader as he is a novelist.' Kirkus Reviews (starred)
'When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession... Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name... It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure of lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer.' Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead
On va s'écraser.
Je t'aime.
Fais ce que tu veux.
Papa
Voilà le sms que reçoit Julie, 18 ans. Son père, sa mère et son frère Tom se crashent effectivement en Afrique. Et Julie se retrouve seule dans sa grande et luxueuse maison d'Oslo.
Julie n'a plus envie de vivre. Elle s'efforce d'échapper aux attentions délicates et inquiètes de ses amis et du « docteur dingo », le psychologue qui la suit. Elle nourrit des idées de suicide qu'elle consent à écrire dans un journal intime. Bien qu'elle trouve ça terriblement ringard, d'écrire un journal. Et elle s'envole pour faire le tour de la planète, autant de fois que possible, pour multiplier ses chances de s'écraser, et d'en finir. Ou alors attraper la grippe aviaire. Ou encore attirer sur elle une fatwa, peut-être en dessinant des caricatures ? Julie met toutes les chances de son côté.
'A lively collection full ot its editor's good taste... 44 vibrant, shocking, fresh and classic stories... thrilling' Independant
In 1992 Richard Ford edited and introduced the first Granta Book of the American Short Story. It became the definitive anthology of American short fiction written in the last half of the twentieth century. In the fifteen years since, Ford has been reading new stories and re-reading old ones. The result is this completely new collection of stories that he regretted overlooking the first time around as well as many by a new generation of writers, among them Sherman Alexie, Juno Diaz, Deborah Eisenberg, Nell Freudenberger, Matthew Klam, Jhumpa Lahiri and ZZ Packer.
'Here are riches gathered. This is a magnificent volume, admittedly making it very difficult for any other book to stand equal.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
'The definitive anthology' Prospect
'If you pick up a single volume of the year's fiction, make it this one' Financial Times
'You'd be hard pressed to find anything less than magical among these 40-plus tales' Daily Mail
When the university merged his Department of Linguistics with English, Professor Desmond Bates took early retirement, but he is not enjoying it. He misses the purposeful routine of the academic year, and has lost his appetite for research.
His wife Winifred's late-flowering career goes form strength ot strength, reducing his role to that of escort and househusband, while the rejuvenation of her appearance makes him uneasily conscious of the age gap between them. The monotony of his days is relieved only by wearisome journeys to London to check on the welfare of his eighty-nine-year-old father, an ex dance musician who stubbornly refuses to move from the house he is patently unable to live in with safety.
But these discontents are nothing compared to the affliction of hearing loss, which is a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment. In the popular imagination, he observes, deafness is comic, as blindness is tragic, but for the deaf person himself it is no joke. It is through his deafness that Desmond gets inadvertently involved with a young woman whose wayward and unpredictable behaviour threatens to destabilise his life completely.
Funny and moving by turns, Deaf Sentence is a brilliant account of one man's effort to come to terms with deafness and death, ageing and mortality, the comedy and tragedy of human life.
'A quietly masterful first novel.' Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh
Westen Gray was just eight years old when his Caucasian mother died and his Chinese father, Xin, sent him away to be raised by her relatives. More than twenty years later, after a lifetime of estrangement, Westen receives an invitation from his father to travel with him to China. So it is that two strangers - a father and a son - travel halfway around the world to a land that one of them knows iintimately and the other has never seen. The future of their relationship hinges on the trip and on the contents of a sealed letter written by Westen's mother before her death - a letter that threatens to answer the lifelong question neither of them has dared to ask.
'Leung's writing is exquisite, deceptively plain, deeply felt and spiritually high, with dead-on depictions of the world as it is... [He] eyes all kinds with compassion, true empathy and bursts of clairvoyance.' San Francisco Chronicle
'Leung reveals a plethora of fascinating answers with beautiful, concise prose and unwavering empathy.' Entertainment Weekly
'Witty, enchanting and supremely well written' Robert McCrum Observer
'Ex Libris will provide enjoyable moments of recognition for all book obsessives' Alain de Botton
'A perfect book for anyone who is passionate about books' Cormac Kinsella Irish Times
'In literary reflections that play and delight, charm and enlighten, the love of books takes on unexpected configurations' Cynthia Ozick
A dazzling collection of essays in which today's most celebrated writers explore their personal relationships with the literary life.
Featuring a gathering of more than fifty of contemporary literature's finest voices, this volume will enchant, move, and inspire readers with its tales of The Writing Life. In it, authors divulge professional secrets : how they first discovered they wer writers, how they work, how they deal with the myriad frustrations and delights a writer's life affords. Culled from ten years of the distinguished Washington Post column of the same name, The Writing Life highlights an eclectic group of luminaries who have wildly varied stories to tell, but who share this singularly beguiling career. Here are their pleasures as well as their peeves ; revelations of their deepest fears ; dramas of triumphs and failures ; insights into the demands and rewards.
Each piece is accompanied by a brief and vivid biography of the writer by Washington Post Book World editor, Marie Arana, who also provides an introduction to the collection. The result is a rare view from the inside : a close examination of writers' concerns about the creative process and the place of literature in America. For anyone interested in the making of fiction and nonfiction, here is a fascinating vantage on the writer's world - an indispensable guide to the craft.
Lorsqu'un soir brumeux de 1898, le jeune artiste Samuel Godwin pousse les grilles de la propriété de Fourwinds, il est immédiatement envoûté. Engagé pour enseigner l'art aux deux jeunes filles de Mr Farrow, il ignore encore que cette luxueuse demeure sera pour lui le décor de ses plus belles peintures.
Intrigué par la personnalité ombrageuse du maître des lieux, séduit par ses filles, Marianne et Juliana, désarçonné par Charlotte Agnew, leur gouvernante et dame de compagnie, le peintre comprend vite que le raffinement du décor et des personnages dissimule les plus sombres mystères. Que le vent souffle pour mieux balayer les cendres d'un passé pour le moins scandaleux et les secrets abrités par les pierres.
Entre désir de possession, obsessions et illusions, les deux demoiselles, leur père, l'ombre de leur mère décédée et leur gouvernante entament devant Samuel une subtile danse aussi fascinante que macabre...
