Word: tortuous
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...novel describes the aftermath of a tortuous love affair between the narrator, Kate Ennis, and a married man named Jake. "Orcas Island," the first of the book's three parts, consists almost entirely of inconsequential vignettes, save for the occasional recollection of some uncomfortable scene with Jake, all culled from Kate's recent and distant past. An air of anticipation runs throughout these sometimes humorous, sometimes ironic sketches which appear to introduce Kate's bright but as of yet unfocused mind. These narrative throat clearings are expected to subside and the story of Kate and Jake, or at least Kate...
...logic is a bit tortuous. It finds that pornography promotes bigotry and fosters acts of aggression against women, both of which, in turn, "harm women's opportunities for equality of rights in employment, education, property rights,...contribute significantly to restricting women from full exercise of citizenship . . . and undermine women's equal exercise of rights to speech and action...
...South Africa's 17-year control of that nation. This year, for the first time. South African troops came into direct confrontation with those of Marxist Angola, supported by some of the country's estimated 26,000 Cuban soldiers and advisers. After five years of tortuous U.N. negotiation, the Angolan-Namibian situation is still at a violent stalemate: Angola refuses to dismiss its Cuban troops until South Africa withdraws; South Africa refuses to withdraw until the Cubans are dismissed. Meanwhile, South Africa will doubtless continue assisting the insurgent National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UMTA...
...facts of the California case were more tortuous than a television melodrama: a family therapist, acting under the demands of a 1980 state law requiring that child abuse be reported, gave Solano County officials information about a physician who was alleged to have molested his stepdaughter. The information had been obtained during a counseling session with the doctor, his wife and the girl. As a result, the stepfather was charged with child molestation. He signed a confession, but Amy's corroborating evidence was needed in order to prosecute. When she refused to testify. Judge DeRonde found her in contempt...
...trail-blazing foreign films, the operator of a 42nd Street horror-movie house and, toward the end of his 94 years, a member of the New York Film Festival selection committee. Day after sweltering summer day he would sit in a cramped Manhattan screening room patiently enduring the tortuous eccentricities of directors from Rumania to Rodeo Drive. But when asked whether one of these angst marathons should appear in the festival, he would often as not growl: "Yes-if the producer agrees to cut it by 30 minutes...