Word: lifeness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Gate at the Stairs” chronicles a year in the life of Tassie Keltjin, the 20-year-old daughter of a potato farmer who has left her hometown of Dellacrosse, Illinois, to attend college in Troy, a nearby university town. The novel starts in 2001, a few months after September 11, and focuses loosely on Tassie’s experiences working as a nanny to Sarah and Edward, a pair of well-meaning, well-to-do liberals who take a sanctimonious and labored approach to parenting their adopted mixed-race toddler...
Although Moore’s tone is usually straightforward and conversational, she is at heart a writer deeply concerned with language, and many of Tassie’s insights about life in Troy are born from observations about local idiom. When a character drops the word “hogwash,” Tassie deadpans, “I had once seen a hog washed. In whey. The hog was Helen, and she really liked it, the slop of the whey, then later a cool hose.” Her constant language-play calls attention to the separate vernaculars...
...things we talked about before the game was try to dedicate the game towards someone that influenced your life,” York said. “Whether it was a little league coach...maybe one of your parents...really try to focus on that particular...
...final and titular story of the book exemplifies this tendency. It is Munro’s imagining of a short period in the life of an exceptional woman from history: Sophia Kovalevsky, a mathematician and novelist who lived in the late 19th century. Munro writes that she encountered Sophia’s story in an encyclopedia, and the story begins to read more like a factual entry than anything else. Sophia is a fascinating character and a perfect example of a powerful woman, but by portraying her as a saint, Munro makes this woman less accessible to her readers...
...model of the past [Folklore and Mythology] events, it goes even further in its attempt to integrate the making of the music, including the construction of the instruments, and the scholarship that has investigated not only the musical form itself, but also its place in American social and cultural life,” Foster wrote in an e-mail...