Word: lise
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Freeland also stood out in the curtainraiser, a dull concert version of Purcell's Indian Queen, because he sang English instead of whatever tenors are singing when they roll their r's like guttural hyenas on second-rate recordings of Handel oratorios. Fuller and McCarthy also sang well; Lise Landis, the clown Apollinaire described in one of his less inspired couplets as "Zanzibar's Monsieur Lacouf/Who died and died again without saying ouf," joined Peter Kellogg in an entr'acte dance that was both comic and lyrical...
...region of formidable murk. The stated business of the novel is nothing less than a search for the Unholy Grail-the pewter cup, Buckholz imagines, from which Judas drank at the Last Supper. The searchers are Matthew Mendelsohn, a 33-year-old former New York state senator, and Lise, a moonstruck German beauty. For three years they have excavated the beaches and caves of Ibiza -Lise because she believes with the force of mania that the cup is there, Matthew because he believes serenely in nothing...
...Later, Lise meets an ancient Nova Scotian lady who is perhaps the ultimate exponent of Women's Lib. "The male sex is getting out of hand," she says. "Perfume, jewellery, hair down to their shoulders, and I'm not talking about the ones who were born like that. If God had intended them to be as good as us he wouldn't have made them different from us to the naked eye. If we don't look lively, they will be taking over the homes and the children...
...story is built with brisk prose. Little is told about Lise's earlier life, but she hints at the source of her tragedy in the only moment when her resolve wavers: "I want to go back home and feel all that lonely grief again. I miss it so much already." She recovers her imbalance quickly. She has been life's victim long enough. By deciding to die violently, she has achieved the illusion of control over her own fate...
...this time Mrs. Spark herself has succumbed to the powers of her prose. Despite her sheer skill and concision-or perhaps because of them-the book is too schematic. It also seems a rather self-consciously "modern" novel. Though the author's descriptive grasp of madness is frightening, Lise appears to suffer from an almost textbook urban psychosis. She is set about with a clutter of literary devices: the contrast between the repressed North and the chaotic South, the carefully anonymous settings, the intrusive hints that Lise is either like a street whore or a bride...