Word: beastes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Ginger-colored Thomasina is the pet of a vet named Andrew MacDhui in a little Scottish town called Inveranoch. Thomasina is actually part-narrator of this book. She is a guid Scots puss and purrs with a burr; before Author Gallico is through with the unfortunate beast she does everything but carry a Harry Lauder cane and sing I Love a Lassie...
...real nature of the Communist beast is obviously still news to ex-Party Member Fast. The rank and file, he continues to insist, were "the bravest and the best." The betrayers of the socialist dreams were the leaders, who rule by terror and, above all, by "magic." The onetime holder (1953) of the Stalin Peace Prize tries to explain and expose that evil Red magic; he sees Big Brother's ultimate depredations in the destruction of conscience ("The very nature of right and wrong has changed"). Considering Author Fast's onetime reputation, the book will take its minor...
...girl herself is tormented and driven to drink by the swinish brutality of a man who Vidgren learns too late is none other than the school's "pet sadist," Caligula, who in turn is tormented by an epic inferiority complex, which brings out the classical beast in him. The tragic ending of the affair severs Vidgren's educational umbilical cord and sends him out into the invigorating world alone, happy to be free...
Torment is a pretty film because the boy breaks so cleanly with his past, because Caligula is a master beast, and because Miss Olsen drinks herself to death with brandy, rather than cheap rotgut. But the film never rises to a high level because the trio's, and most especially the boy's torment lacks both the moral depth of Joyce's Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man and the personal intensity of Anderson's Tea and Sympathy. The three are unhappy, but not convincingly miserable...
...title tale Mooltiki has a hint of Disney. Mooltiki is a kind of reluctant dragon among lady elephants. She rumbles and grumbles audibly while stoking the mighty campfire with logs. She would rather blow bubbles in the river or clutch a flower in her trunk than be a proper beast of burden. Around Mooltiki's plotless existence revolve a skin-prickling tiger hunt and Author Godden's evocations of the lush tropical fecundities of Indian jungle country. Rumer Godden is a fastidious craftsman but a trifle hammy. Some of her sentences preen themselves so long before the mirror...