Word: old
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Old Patagonian Express...
...this third novel (after Last Night at the Brain Thieves' Ball and Preservation Hall) Spencer builds a model of emergent love pursued to its obsessive extreme. The author constructs his tale around an apposite metaphor, catastrophic fire. Seventeen-year-old David Axelrod sets some newspapers alight on the porch of his beloved Jade's house after her parents have forbidden him to see her for 30 days. He wishes to attract attention and instead nearly incinerates Jade, her brothers and parents...
...German settlers McKay takes with him to the Kansas Territory make music boxes that play Old Dog Tray. The young wife McKay takes with him suffers from underwork, a cold heart and a galloping case of pre-feminism. She also dislikes the residents of her husband's hives. Catherine "knew that the bees were women. They were dignified, dangerous, purposeful women . . . Their lives were all work, all women's work-housekeeping and foraging. They spent their lives in domestic boredom...
McKay himself is a rich Bostonian of refined sensibility, great kindness and few brains. Because bees tend to start new swarms if the old queen is removed, and can do so up to four times a season, McKay figures he can parlay the ten hives he is taking to Kansas into 10,240 hives in five years. Each hive can "cheerfully" produce 80 to 100 lbs. of honey a year. This he will ship east in summer for sale. The music boxes will take up the trading slack in winter...
...Rose Kennedy, 89, matriarch of the Kennedy clan; after undergoing surgery to repair an intestinal hernia; in Boston. "The operation went well," her physician reported. "She's a tough old gal. She was swimming just two days...