Word: novels
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...neighborhood where all the houses match and everyone has a cat or a dog. But he's different--he's an only child in a world of big families, and that means, of course, that he, like all children, must deal with some degree of ostracization. At the novel's beginning, it seems that this is going to be the focus of the story--that we're going to hear a "pity-me" story about the poor, abused, only child growing up in a world full of brothers and sisters. Hajime complains, "I detested the term only child. Every time...
Luckily the novel doesn't develop into the whiny piece that the opening chapters promise it will be. Murakami salvages a passable story out of what seems to be headed straight for crash-and-burn. Ultimately it's a book about love--a unique book in that the love with which it deals is fairly singular. The book doesn't seem to be trying to expose some broad message or preach anything to us. It is simply telling another story of love, loss and happiness...
South of the Border, West of the Sun can only gain a lukewarm reception from readers who, for the most part, can't identify with anything in the novel (besides, perhaps, the rather trite description of the painful process of adolescence), and who don't seem to have anything to gain by reading it. We are asked to think about happiness and its definition--that seems to be about it. And so we're left with a question, which in many cases is a suitable ending to a good book. Unfortunately in this case, the question...
...Premise Based on best-selling novel by Cathleen Schine, this quaint little romantic mystery examines the ultimate question: how do you fall in love? Helen, the perfectly complacent, satisfied and divorced bookstore owner and mother receives a passionate, unsigned love letter. When she discovers its author is her college student employee, she tries to resist temptation...
...Premise Loosely based on the novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye, The Thirteenth Floor is the latest in an increasing number of science-fiction films which delve into the nature of reality and creation. The story revolves around two corporate visionaries, Doug (Bierko) and Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who create a complete virtual reality simulation of 1937 Los Angeles on a computer chip. However, when Fuller is murdered and Doug becomes the prime suspect, he must plunge into a mystery that has him questioning the thin line between the real and the simulated...