Word: adults
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These are incidents recalled by an adult, with the freshness and candor of a child. Yet if all of Welch's work is disguised autobiography, he is occasionally capable of imagining the complexities and frustrations of adult life. In The Hateful Word, a middle-aged woman is infatuated with a prisoner of war. She impulsively embraces him, only to hear the cruel pronouncement " 'Soon I go back to Germany; I tell them there you are like, like--' He strained after the one word to express his gratitude. 'You are like mother to me--my English mother...
...people "like bottles walking; their heads as inexpressive as round stoppers. What if some god or giant should bend down and take several of the stoppers out? I thought. Inside there would be black churning depths like bile, or bitter medicine." But it is his wary view of the adult world that lingers. Even a Punch and Judy show has an ominous significance: when Punch "began hitting the baby with hard wooden thuds I felt its skull crack and knew that none of us were safe while grown-ups thought that this sort of thing was funny...
...other way around. It took seven years for Mr. Grant and me to make a tentative, farcical try at a love scene; my new boss made a pass at me my very first day. I think he still might be after me. That's called sexual tension. Very adult...
...lover, Novelist Dashiell Hammett. Luce's choice of moment is shrewd. Unlike the sequestered Emily Dickinson, Hellman was one of life's winners, blessed with fame, money, affection and what she seemed to seek most, a measure of power. Her childhood disillusioned her. But whose childhood does not? Her adult life was not marred by more than the normal share of grief. Only the ordeal of Hammett's last illness makes her vulnerable enough for an audience to like, despite the verbal savagery that she hurled at almost everyone she knew. The decision to present Hellman in a two-hour...
...Number of strokes of a cane decreed as punishment for two adult brothers in Malaysia for sharing a bottle of beer in public...