Word: bolivar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Putting last things first is an old storyteller's trick, and there isn't a trickier old storyteller than Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A good example of his skill comes early in this new novel about the final days of Simon Bolivar, and it is worth quoting if only to demonstrate how a maestro establishes his theme...
...General Simon Jose Antonio de la Santisima Trinidad Bolivar y Palacios was leaving forever. He had wrested from Spanish domination an empire five times more vast than all of Europe, he had led 20 years of wars to keep it free and united, and he had governed it with a firm hand until the week before, but when it was time to leave he did not even take away with him the consolation that anyone believed in his departure. The only man with enough lucidity to know he really was going, and where he was going to, was the English...
BELLE FICTION: In Praise of the Stepmother by Mario Vargas Llosa -- Would you believe an erotic family novel? The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- The autumn of Simon Bolivar. Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut -- Meditations of a Vietnam vet in 2001. Buffalo Girls by Larry McMurtry -- Calamity Jane, Bill Cody and Sitting Bull whoop it up. Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver -- Environmental catastrophe meets Native American mythology. The Final Club by Geoffrey Wolff -- Class warfare at Princeton during the 1950s. Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman -- Fictional characters caught up in the factual bombing of Move headquarters...