Summary of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

Summary of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud PDF Author: TIME SUMMARY
Publisher: XinXii
ISBN: 3989119427
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 93

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Book Description
DISCLAIMER This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book. Summary of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET: Chapter provides an astute outline of the main contents. Fast & simple understanding of the content analysis. Exceptionally summarized content that you may skip in the original book This Strange Eventful History is a masterful story by Claire Messud, set in an itinerant state from 1940 to 2010. The family, including patriarch Gaston and wife Lucienne, is amidst the chaos of World War II, colonial homeland, and Algerian independence. The story revolves around their devoted siblings, François and Denise, and their union with Barbara. Inspired by long-ago stories from their family's history, Messud animates the characters' rich interior lives amid social and political upheaval. The novel is both intimate and expansive, making it a tour de force.

Summary of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

Summary of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud PDF Author: TIME SUMMARY
Publisher: XinXii
ISBN: 3989119427
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 93

Get Book Here

Book Description
DISCLAIMER This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book. Summary of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET: Chapter provides an astute outline of the main contents. Fast & simple understanding of the content analysis. Exceptionally summarized content that you may skip in the original book This Strange Eventful History is a masterful story by Claire Messud, set in an itinerant state from 1940 to 2010. The family, including patriarch Gaston and wife Lucienne, is amidst the chaos of World War II, colonial homeland, and Algerian independence. The story revolves around their devoted siblings, François and Denise, and their union with Barbara. Inspired by long-ago stories from their family's history, Messud animates the characters' rich interior lives amid social and political upheaval. The novel is both intimate and expansive, making it a tour de force.

The Burning Girl: A Novel

The Burning Girl: A Novel PDF Author: Claire Messud
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393635031
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist "[A] masterwork of psychological fiction.… Messud teases readers with a psychological mystery, withholding information and then cannily parceling it out." —Chicago Tribune Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. The Burning Girl is a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about youth and friendship, and straddles, expertly, childhood’s imaginary worlds and painful adult reality—crafting a true, immediate portrait of female adolescence. Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way. The Burning Girl was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, NPR, Financial Times, Town & Country, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Refinery29, and Literary Hub.

The Emperor's Children

The Emperor's Children PDF Author: Claire Messud
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030727666X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
A bestselling, masterful novel about the intersections in the lives of three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties, making their way—and not—in New York City. There is beautiful, sophisticated Marina Thwaite—an “It” girl finishing her first book; the daughter of Murray Thwaite, celebrated intellectual and journalist—and her two closest friends from Brown, Danielle, a quietly appealing television producer, and Julius, a cash-strapped freelance critic. The delicious complications that arise among them become dangerous when Murray’s nephew, Frederick “Bootie” Tubb, an idealistic college dropout determined to make his mark, comes to town. As the skies darken, it is Bootie’s unexpected decisions—and their stunning, heartbreaking outcome—that will change each of their lives forever. A richly drawn, brilliantly observed novel of fate and fortune—of innocence and experience, seduction and self-invention; of ambition, including literary ambition; of glamour, disaster, and promise—The Emperor’s Children is a tour de force that brings to life a city, a generation, and the way we live in this moment. A New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year

A Dream Life

A Dream Life PDF Author: Claire Messud
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781649697295
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
A JEWEL OF A NOVEL BY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER CLAIRE MESSUD. When the Armstrong family moves from New York at the dawn of the 1970s, Australia feels, to Alice Armstrong, like the end of the earth. Residing in a grand manor on the glittering Sydney Harbour, her family finds their life has turned upside down. As she navigates this strange new world, Alice must find a way to weave an existence from its shimmering mirage. Lies and self-deception are at the heart of this keenly observed story. This is a sharp, biting and playful tale with a cast of unscrupulous characters adrift in a dream life of their own making. Written with the characteristic delicacy of touch, humour and emotional insight that make Claire Messud one of our greatest writers. '[Messud is] among our greatest contemporary writers.' -- The New Yorker 'A perfect frolic of a book, puffed on breezes of beauty and wit: it waltzes you through a little fear, a little darkness, and tips you out, refreshed and laughing, into the sun.' -- Helen Garner 'Witty, arch and acutely observed, A Dream Life expertly captures the excruciating insecurities of class in our supposedly classless society.' -- Geraldine Brooks 'A novelist of unnerving talent.' -- The New York Times

The Woman Upstairs

The Woman Upstairs PDF Author: Claire Messud
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307962407
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Told with urgency, intimacy, and piercing emotion, this New York Times bestselling novel is the riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed, and abandoned by a desire for a world beyond her own. Nora Eldridge is a reliable, but unremarkable, friend and neighbor, always on the fringe of other people’s achievements. But the arrival of the Shahid family—dashing Skandar, a Lebanese scholar, glamorous Sirena, an Italian artist, and their son, Reza—draws her into a complex and exciting new world. Nora’s happiness pushes her beyond her boundaries, until Sirena’s careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal. A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • A Washington Post Top Ten Book of the Year • A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book • A Huffington Post Best Book • A Boston GlobeBest Book of the Year • A Kirkus Best Fiction Book • A Goodreads Best Book

Ladysitting: My Year with Nana at the End of Her Century

Ladysitting: My Year with Nana at the End of Her Century PDF Author: Lorene Cary
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393635899
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Lorene Cary’s grandmother moves in, and everything changes: day-to-day life, family relationships, the Nana she knew—even their shared past. From cherished memories of weekends she spent as a child with her indulgent Nana to the reality of the year she spent “ladysitting” her now frail grandmother, Lorene Cary journeys through stories of their time together and five generations of their African American family. Brilliantly weaving a narrative of her complicated yet transformative relationship with Nana—a fierce, stubborn, and independent woman, who managed a business until she was 100—Cary looks at Nana’s impulse to control people and fate, from the early death of her mother and oppression in the Jim Crow South to living on her own in her New Jersey home. Cary knew there might be some reckonings to come. Nana was a force: Her obstinacy could come out in unanticipated ways—secretly getting a driver’s license to show up her husband, carrying on a longtime feud with Cary’s father. But Nana could also be devoted: to Nana’s father, to black causes, and—Cary had thought—to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Facing the inevitable end raises tensions, with Cary drawing on her spirituality and Nana consoling herself with late-night sweets and the loyalty of caregivers. When Nana doubts Cary’s dedication, Cary must go deeper into understanding this complicated woman. In Ladysitting, Cary captures the ruptures, love, and, perhaps, forgiveness that can occur in a family as she bears witness to her grandmother’s 101 vibrant years of life.

Profusely Illustrated

Profusely Illustrated PDF Author: Edward Sorel
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0525521070
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The fabulous life and times of one of our wittiest, most endearing and enduring caricaturists—in his own words and inimitable art. Sorel has given us "some of the best pictorial satire of our time ... [his] pen can slash as well as any sword” (The Washington Post). Alongside more than 172 of his drawings, cartoons, and caricatures—and in prose as spirited and wickedly pointed as his artwork—Edward Sorel gives us an unforgettable self-portrait: his poor Depression-era childhood in the Bronx (surrounded by loving Romanian immigrant grandparents and a clan of mostly left-leaning aunts and uncles); his first stabs at drawing when pneumonia kept him out of school at age eight; his time as a student at New York’s famed High School of Music and Art; the scrappy early days of Push Pin Studios, founded with fellow Cooper Union alums Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast, which became the hottest design group of the 1960s; his two marriages and four children; and his many friends in New York’s art and literary circles. As the “young lefty” becomes an “old lefty,” Sorel charts the highlights of his remarkable life, by both telling us and showing us how in magazines and newspapers, books, murals, cartoons, and comic strips, he steadily lampooned—and celebrated—American cultural and political life. He sets his story in the parallel trajectory of American presidents, from FDR’s time to the present day—with the candor and depth of insight that could come only from someone who lived through it all. In Profusely Illustrated, Sorel reveals the kaleidoscopic ways in which the personal and political collide in art—a collision that is simultaneously brilliant in concept and uproarious and beautiful in its representation.

I Killed Zoe Spanos

I Killed Zoe Spanos PDF Author: Kit Frick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 153444971X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Working as a nanny in the Hamptons before starting college, Anna learns of her weird connection to a missing girl, but after she confesses to manslaughter a podcast producer helps reveal life-changing truths.

Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write: An Autobiography in Essays

Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write: An Autobiography in Essays PDF Author: Claire Messud
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324006765
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A glimpse into a beloved novelist’s inner world, shaped by family, art, and literature. In her fiction, Claire Messud "has specialized in creating unusual female characters with ferocious, imaginative inner lives" (Ruth Franklin, New York Times Magazine). Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write opens a window on Messud’s own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm, complicated family; and, throughout it all, her devotion to art and literature. In twenty-six intimate, brilliant, and funny essays, Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk, and Valeria Luiselli; examines three facets of Albert Camus and The Stranger; and tours her favorite paintings at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In the luminous title essay, she explores her drive to write, born of the magic of sharing language and the transformative powers of “a single successful sentence.” Together, these essays show the inner workings of a dazzling literary mind. Crafting a vivid portrait of a life in celebration of the power of literature, Messud proves once again "an absolute master storyteller" (Rebecca Carroll, Los Angeles Times).

The Last Life

The Last Life PDF Author: Claire Messud
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 054756385X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
A “mesmerizing” novel of a family falling apart by the New York Times bestselling author of The Burning Girl. Set in colonial Algeria, the south of France, and New England, and narrated by a fifteen-year-old girl with a ruthless regard for the truth, The Last Life is the tale of the LaBasse family, whose quiet integrity is shattered by the shots from a grandfather’s rifle. As their world suddenly begins to crumble, long-hidden shame emerges: a son abandoned by the family before he was even born, a mother whose identity is not what she has claimed, and a father whose act of defiance brings Hotel Bellevue—the family business—to its knees. From the PEN/Faulkner Award-nominated author of The Emperor’s Children, named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, this novel skillfully reveals how the stories we tell ourselves, and the lies to which we cling, can turn on us in a moment. “[A] tour de force . . . every step feels stunningly sure.” —Vogue