Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hard men for whom terrorism has become a way of life were again trying to blow away the chance for peace. Nor was it a surprise that the Protestant politicians, who fear any change in their domination of the province, denounced the bombing as a Roman Catholic republican plot that made the talks impossible...
Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake (Putnam; 219 pages; $23.95) is a salvage job, a reprocessing of what the author calls the "best parts" of an unpublished novel that did not work. This revision is a mix of autobiographical bits, plot concepts, barbershop cynicism and romantic idealism, all loosely tied together by a standard science-fiction device: on Feb. 13, 2001, a quirk in space-time flips the calendar back 10 years to Feb. 17, 1991. From that moment, everyone in the world is fated to repeat the decade in every living detail...
Darrow's client is a serial-killing woman who has murdered several adults and a large number of children, including at least three of her own. And here is where the plot seems a bit askew. As in real life, Darrow is a passionate death-penalty opponent. If he loses, his thoroughly guilty client goes to the electric chair. Just deserts aside, the novel has clip-clopped along too jocularly for too many chapters for this to be an acceptable outcome. Well, can the child killer go free? Perish forbid. Therefore...
...wonderful plot line," Borchert said. "It was really funny. We would have to take laugh breaks while we were reading...
...sordid particulars and easy explanations are ever the enemy of tragedy. In this case they transform it--despite a lot of earnest acting of the kind that always seems to have its eye on a year-end prize--into nothing more than a revenge plot. They also rob it of grandeur and universality and deprive us of the pleasure of deriving our own meanings from its characters and events. We know what we think of child molesters, and we are aware of the dread consequences of their acts. On this matter we require no instruction. But a cracked...