Word: novelized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Carson agonized over what material to use in constructing separate veins for the boys. Because brain sinuses are structurally different from veins elsewhere in the body, a vessel from the leg or another area would not do. Finally a colleague suggested a novel solution: using part of the pericardium, the membrane that surrounds the heart. "That was a fabulous idea," says Carson. "We knew we were going into the chest anyway. It was right there in front of us saying, 'Take...
...that storm arrives, readers of First Light will never hear of it. For the quiet, almost humdrum opening chapter of this first novel is also, in a traditional sense, the conclusion of the tale. Charles Baxter, 40, the author of two fine collections of short stories, has not only come across an interesting idea for an experimental narrative but has managed to translate it into convincing fiction. The book's epigraph, from Kierkegaard, provides the key: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards...
...First there is graduate school and the brief affair with her dissertation director that produces her son. Then back to high school, where Dorsey gives the valedictory speech at her graduation. Before long she is a growing girl, fascinated by stars and the mechanics of household objects. In the novel's last chapter, Hugh, age five, is escorted by his father into a hospital room to see his newborn baby sister...
...rewinding his story, the author provides a fascinating illusion of consolidation. Hugh and Dorsey do not grow apart; they are put together again, reknit into their shared heritage of parents and the past. Life does not happen that way, of course, but First Light never seems implausible. Instead, the novel moves over everyday details with the inexorable, contrary tug of memory...
...quest for a ban on all nuclear testing, the Soviet Union publicly unveiled a novel proposal last week. Speaking in Washington, Colonel General Nikolai Chervov, one of Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's closest arms-control advisers, invited the U.S. to explode an atom bomb at a Soviet nuclear test site. Purpose: to enable Washington to fine-tune its monitoring equipment and thus ensure that any treaty violation could be detected. Chervov added that the Soviets should then be allowed to detonate a bomb at a U.S. test site...