Word: tragic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...musical opens, Conrad Jarrett (Aaron Sompong) has just been released from a psychiatric hospital, where he has spent eight months for attempted suicide following his brother's tragic death in a boating accident. Confronted by worried parents and the prospect of assimilating back into school, Conrad realizes that it will not be easy to regain a normal life. Dr. Berger (Brett Conner), Conrad's psychologist, helps him deal with the tough times he encounters...
...contained tragicomedy realized in perfectly pitched prose that reveals some of the nobler and most of the baser elements in human nature. In the first of two parallel plots, a pair of practical jokes leads to the Love Nest killings. A second story line relates the daring courtship and tragic marriage of Edward and Katrina, who remarks, "It's quite uncanny what one sets in motion by being oneself." It's a point well taken throughout this tale of unforeseen consequences and fierce individualists...
Perhaps we should not judge Lisa Hathaway's stoic reaction to her daughter's tragic, untimely death. But when Hathaway states that emotion is unnatural and untruthful, we have to wonder whether Jessica had the "freedom and choice" to express fear or lack of confidence before taking off in the thin, storm-tossed air of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Hathaway says it's acceptable to die in a state of joy, but we know it's not O.K. to die in a state of fright. This mother may very well believe that she would do nothing differently a second time. The question...
While Jessica's story is a rare and tragic instance, the dangers of such overachieving or intense focus on one activity show up in countless ways. The child actor grows up without an education; the tennis star mysteriously drops off the circuit to spend some time being a teenager; the figure skater takes part in a plot to club an opponent. Child athletes may ruin their bodies: ballerinas develop anorexia; teen football players take steroids. And doctors say they are seeing more and more young people who are not special stars exhibiting a range of emotional problems, from depression...
...books are living rooms that open up onto whole worlds. And with characteristic deliberation, he has steadily moved from a first collection of stories (Swimming Lessons) to a prizewinning mid-length novel (Such a Long Journey) to this new epic, which is worthy of the 19th century masters of tragic realism, from Hardy to Balzac. In response, perhaps, to a world that has "a phobia about anything in slow motion," it restores the old-fashioned virtues of attention and compassion...