Word: bleak
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...likely to provide the coalition a significant if brief popularity bump. The Karachi Stock Exchange rose 4%, and the rupee rose marginally against the dollar. But with inflation at 25%, alarming levels of capital flight, soaring costs of food and fuel, and rising unemployment, the economic outlook remains bleak. And as Pakistan-based Taliban become more confident, Islamist militancy is a growing concern...
...that strike Hermann's characters might be outtakes from the Book of Job, but she renders them with an emotional acuity that makes them believable. And though the shifts in perspective that frame the novel may seem gimmicky, the rhythmic quality of the prose never falters. As for the bleak title, it will surprise the reader to find that, for Ruby at least, there is a cure for grief. It is hard won, yes--but, in Hermann's telling, it's worth the winning...
Through Dawsey and his friends, we learn the story of the Germans' World War II occupation of the island, a bleak affair of starvation, humiliation and slave labor. We get to know a cast of scuffed, scarred Guernseyans who formed a book club as an alibi to keep their doings secret from curious Nazis. Where Bridget Jones' mascaraed eye might have turned away from such things (v. unpleasant!), Juliet's focuses in on the story of a fiercely independent, bona fide--quirky Guernseyan named Elizabeth McKenna, now missing, who had an affair, and eventually a child, with a German officer...
...with their mouths shut, preferring to keep their angst private. This comprehensive history at last gives voice to their experience and their anguish. On June 25, 1950, Soviet-armed troops from the People's Democratic Republic of Korea charged across the 38th parallel in an attempt to unify the bleak peninsula by force. They quickly swept through the outmanned and outgunned South Korean army. Even the intervention of U.S. soldiers five days later, assisted by a United Nations force, could not stop the advance until it had reached the Pusan perimeter, in the country's extreme southeast corner. But General...
...financial crowd, this may well be--as is oft proclaimed--the worst crisis since the Great Depression. But you don't have to agree with Phil Gramm that this is a "mental recession" to acknowledge that things don't look quite so bleak beyond Wall Street--unless you're struggling to make payments on a house that's worth 30% less than the mortgage. Then you're in crisis. Most Americans aren't. The economy still seems to be growing. Job losses have been manageable. Yes, people are very unhappy about the economy. But day to day, they're more...