I enjoy the Marvel Cinematic Universe more than the average person, but the domination of comic book superhero movies in contemporary cinema could use a little shakeup. Prior to the release of Spider-Man in 2002, superhero films were few and far between, at least compared to the half-dozen a year we're now used to. Books without pictures had long been a goldmine for the film industry, however, and the 1990s in particular produced a string of art house darlings and big hits from a variety of genres: literary fiction, historical fiction, sci-fi, horror, thriller, romance, biography. Here are some cinematic highlights from that last gasp of the pre-spandex era, with the books that inspired them. (J.C.)
Running for high school student body president, Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) proves to be a solicitous overachiever who gets under the skin of her soci...Show more
Running for high school student body president, Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) proves to be a solicitous overachiever who gets under the skin of her social studies teacher (Matthew Broderick) in Alexander Payne's (Sideways) sneakily subversive dramedy. With its multiple points of view derived from Tom Perrotta's novel, this way-smarter-than-average film adaptation skewers politics--electoral and sexual--en route to a wider commentary on human nature. (Library Journal)
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Running for high school student body president, Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) proves to be a solicitous overachiever who gets under the skin of her soci...Show more
Running for high school student body president, Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) proves to be a solicitous overachiever who gets under the skin of her social studies teacher (Matthew Broderick) in Alexander Payne's (Sideways) sneakily subversive dramedy. With its multiple points of view derived from Tom Perrotta's novel, this way-smarter-than-average film adaptation skewers politics--electoral and sexual--en route to a wider commentary on human nature. (Library Journal)
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Peopled with characters we have all met in real life, this soap opera/comedy is funny, sad, realistic, irreverent, and very readable. (Library Journal)
Peopled with characters we have all met in real life, this soap opera/comedy is funny, sad, realistic, irreverent, and very readable. (Library Journal)
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Peopled with characters we have all met in real life, this soap opera/comedy is funny, sad, realistic, irreverent, and very readable. (Library Journal)
Peopled with characters we have all met in real life, this soap opera/comedy is funny, sad, realistic, irreverent, and very readable. (Library Journal)
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Underrated Canadian director Patricia Rozema brought her own flavor to this Jane Austen adaptation, highlighting class differences, slavery, and sexual freedom, while infusing Fanny Price with elements of Austen's life. (J.C.)
Underrated Canadian director Patricia Rozema brought her own flavor to this Jane Austen adaptation, highlighting class differences, slavery, and sexual freedom, while infusing Fanny Price with elements of Austen's life. (J.C.)
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Underrated Canadian director Patricia Rozema brought her own flavor to this Jane Austen adaptation, highlighting class differences, slavery, and sexual freedom, while infusing Fanny Price with elements of Austen's life. (J.C.)
Underrated Canadian director Patricia Rozema brought her own flavor to this Jane Austen adaptation, highlighting class differences, slavery, and sexual freedom, while infusing Fanny Price with elements of Austen's life. (J.C.)
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At the center of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is Fanny Price, the classic "poor cousin" who has been brought to live with the rich Sir Thomas Be...Show more
At the center of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is Fanny Price, the classic "poor cousin" who has been brought to live with the rich Sir Thomas Bertram and his wife as an act of charity. Over time, Fanny comes to demonstrate forcibly those virtues Austen most admired: modesty, firm principles, and a loving heart. As Fanny watches her cousins Maria and Julia cast aside their scruples in dangerous flirtations (and worse), and as she herself resolutely resists the advantages of marriage to the fascinating but morally unsteady Henry Crawford, her seeming austerity grows in appeal and makes clear why she was Austen's own favorite among her heroines. (Bibliocommons)
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At the center of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is Fanny Price, the classic "poor cousin" who has been brought to live with the rich Sir Thomas Be...Show more
At the center of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is Fanny Price, the classic "poor cousin" who has been brought to live with the rich Sir Thomas Bertram and his wife as an act of charity. Over time, Fanny comes to demonstrate forcibly those virtues Austen most admired: modesty, firm principles, and a loving heart. As Fanny watches her cousins Maria and Julia cast aside their scruples in dangerous flirtations (and worse), and as she herself resolutely resists the advantages of marriage to the fascinating but morally unsteady Henry Crawford, her seeming austerity grows in appeal and makes clear why she was Austen's own favorite among her heroines. (Bibliocommons)
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Director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain; Life of Pi) scrupulously navigates Cheever and Updike territory in this coolly antiseptic dissection of upper-middle...Show more
Director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain; Life of Pi) scrupulously navigates Cheever and Updike territory in this coolly antiseptic dissection of upper-middle-class ennui in early 1970s New England suburbia. Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire, Elijah Wood, and Christina Ricci make up the top-notch cast portraying sympathetic characters confused by cultural changes and numb to real emotion until tragedy strikes. (Library Journal)
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Director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain; Life of Pi) scrupulously navigates Cheever and Updike territory in this coolly antiseptic dissection of upper-middle...Show more
Director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain; Life of Pi) scrupulously navigates Cheever and Updike territory in this coolly antiseptic dissection of upper-middle-class ennui in early 1970s New England suburbia. Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire, Elijah Wood, and Christina Ricci make up the top-notch cast portraying sympathetic characters confused by cultural changes and numb to real emotion until tragedy strikes. (Library Journal)
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The year is 1973. As a freak winter storm bears down on an exclusive, affluent suburb in Connecticut, cars skid out of control, men and women swap partner...Show more
The year is 1973. As a freak winter storm bears down on an exclusive, affluent suburb in Connecticut, cars skid out of control, men and women swap partners, and their children experiment with sex, drugs, and even suicide. Here two families come face-to-face with the seething emotions behind the well-clipped lawns of their lives. (Publisher description)
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Director David Fincher may have peaked early in his career with this 1999 film, which isn't about men punching each other so much as it is about identity,...Show more
Director David Fincher may have peaked early in his career with this 1999 film, which isn't about men punching each other so much as it is about identity, consumer culture, and emotional detachment. Mayhem ensues, and subliminal foreshadowing invites repeat viewings. (J.C.)
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Director David Fincher may have peaked early in his career with this 1999 film, which isn't about men punching each other so much as it is about identity,...Show more
Director David Fincher may have peaked early in his career with this 1999 film, which isn't about men punching each other so much as it is about identity, consumer culture, and emotional detachment. Mayhem ensues, and subliminal foreshadowing invites repeat viewings. (J.C.)
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Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inf...Show more
Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inflicting a violent anarchy upon the land, Palahniuk's apocalyptic first novel is clearly not for the faint of heart. The unnamed (and extremely unreliable) narrator, who makes his living investigating accidents for a car company in order to assess their liability, is combating insomnia and a general sense of anomie by attending a steady series of support-group meetings for the grievously ill, at one of which (testicular cancer) he meets a young woman named Marla. She and the narrator get into a love triangle of sorts with Tyler Durden, a mysterious and gleefully destructive young man with whom the narrator starts a fight club, a secret society that offers young professionals the chance to beat one another to a bloody pulp. Writing in an ironic deadpan and including something to offend everyone, Palahniuk is a risky writer who takes chances galore, especially with a particularly bizarre plot twist he throws in late in the book. Caustic, outrageous, bleakly funny, violent and always unsettling, Palahniuk's utterly original creation will make even the most jaded reader sit up and take notice. (Publishers Weekly)
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Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inf...Show more
Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inflicting a violent anarchy upon the land, Palahniuk's apocalyptic first novel is clearly not for the faint of heart. The unnamed (and extremely unreliable) narrator, who makes his living investigating accidents for a car company in order to assess their liability, is combating insomnia and a general sense of anomie by attending a steady series of support-group meetings for the grievously ill, at one of which (testicular cancer) he meets a young woman named Marla. She and the narrator get into a love triangle of sorts with Tyler Durden, a mysterious and gleefully destructive young man with whom the narrator starts a fight club, a secret society that offers young professionals the chance to beat one another to a bloody pulp. Writing in an ironic deadpan and including something to offend everyone, Palahniuk is a risky writer who takes chances galore, especially with a particularly bizarre plot twist he throws in late in the book. Caustic, outrageous, bleakly funny, violent and always unsettling, Palahniuk's utterly original creation will make even the most jaded reader sit up and take notice. (Publishers Weekly)
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Paul Verhoeven's ultraviolent-but-hilarious 1997 film was a misunderstood gem of sci-fi political satire, in which shiny, nationalistic youth become inter...Show more
Paul Verhoeven's ultraviolent-but-hilarious 1997 film was a misunderstood gem of sci-fi political satire, in which shiny, nationalistic youth become intergalactic cannon fodder. Worth checking out if for no better reason than to behold Neil Patrick Harris playing a fascist military psychic. See also: Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990), though it only vaguely resembles the source material, Philip K. Dick's story "We Can Remember It For you Wholesale." (J.C.)
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Paul Verhoeven's ultraviolent-but-hilarious 1997 film was a misunderstood gem of sci-fi political satire, in which shiny, nationalistic youth become inter...Show more
Paul Verhoeven's ultraviolent-but-hilarious 1997 film was a misunderstood gem of sci-fi political satire, in which shiny, nationalistic youth become intergalactic cannon fodder. Worth checking out if for no better reason than to behold Neil Patrick Harris playing a fascist military psychic. See also: Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990), though it only vaguely resembles the source material, Philip K. Dick's story "We Can Remember It For you Wholesale." (J.C.)
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Similar to the film, though perhaps without the winking or irony. (J.C.)
Similar to the film, though perhaps without the winking or irony. (J.C.)
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Similar to the film, though perhaps without the winking or irony. (J.C.)
Similar to the film, though perhaps without the winking or irony. (J.C.)
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Director Danny Boyle thrills in this 'original, daring' tale of a group of young drug addicts wheeling through blue collar Edinburgh that earned an Academ...Show more
Director Danny Boyle thrills in this 'original, daring' tale of a group of young drug addicts wheeling through blue collar Edinburgh that earned an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Trainspotting electrified audiences and critics with its hilariously dark humor, stunning visuals and sharp honest take on both the exhilarating highs, and the terrifying lows, of addiction. (Bibliocommons)
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Director Danny Boyle thrills in this 'original, daring' tale of a group of young drug addicts wheeling through blue collar Edinburgh that earned an Academ...Show more
Director Danny Boyle thrills in this 'original, daring' tale of a group of young drug addicts wheeling through blue collar Edinburgh that earned an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Trainspotting electrified audiences and critics with its hilariously dark humor, stunning visuals and sharp honest take on both the exhilarating highs, and the terrifying lows, of addiction. (Bibliocommons)
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In a series of vignettes that collectively have the depth and heft of a novel, the characters score and shoot heroin, kick and get clean, steal to score a...Show more
In a series of vignettes that collectively have the depth and heft of a novel, the characters score and shoot heroin, kick and get clean, steal to score again, drink, fight, have sex, contract HIV, OD, die, and go to each other's funerals. Despite the obvious darkness of the material, it is both sad and funny, profane and poetic as well as brilliant and bracingly original. This remains immersive, exhilarating stuff, its whip-smart observations delivered with stinging humor that can make you laugh, cry, and gasp in horror. (Booklist)
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In a series of vignettes that collectively have the depth and heft of a novel, the characters score and shoot heroin, kick and get clean, steal to score a...Show more
In a series of vignettes that collectively have the depth and heft of a novel, the characters score and shoot heroin, kick and get clean, steal to score again, drink, fight, have sex, contract HIV, OD, die, and go to each other's funerals. Despite the obvious darkness of the material, it is both sad and funny, profane and poetic as well as brilliant and bracingly original. This remains immersive, exhilarating stuff, its whip-smart observations delivered with stinging humor that can make you laugh, cry, and gasp in horror. (Booklist)
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More than any earlier Scorsese film, Goodfellas is memorable for the ensemble nature of the performances... The movie has been beautifully cast from the l...Show more
More than any earlier Scorsese film, Goodfellas is memorable for the ensemble nature of the performances... The movie has been beautifully cast from the leading roles to the bits. There is flash also in some of Mr. Scorsese's directorial choices, including freeze frames, fast cutting and the occasional long tracking shot. None of it is superfluous. (The New York Times)
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More than any earlier Scorsese film, Goodfellas is memorable for the ensemble nature of the performances... The movie has been beautifully cast from the l...Show more
More than any earlier Scorsese film, Goodfellas is memorable for the ensemble nature of the performances... The movie has been beautifully cast from the leading roles to the bits. There is flash also in some of Mr. Scorsese's directorial choices, including freeze frames, fast cutting and the occasional long tracking shot. None of it is superfluous. (The New York Times)
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A longtime member of organized crime recounts his criminal career, his involvement in the six-million dollar Lufthansa robbery, and his decision to become a federal witness. (NoveList)
A longtime member of organized crime recounts his criminal career, his involvement in the six-million dollar Lufthansa robbery, and his decision to become a federal witness. (NoveList)
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The harrowing story of New Zealand novelist Janet Frame, who was misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic, institutionalized, and subjected to electroshock treatme...Show more
The harrowing story of New Zealand novelist Janet Frame, who was misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic, institutionalized, and subjected to electroshock treatments, is marvelously told in three parts--with a trio of talented actresses playing the author as a teen and in her 20s and 30s--by Jane Campion (The Piano) in her sophomore effort. (Library Journal)
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The harrowing story of New Zealand novelist Janet Frame, who was misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic, institutionalized, and subjected to electroshock treatme...Show more
The harrowing story of New Zealand novelist Janet Frame, who was misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic, institutionalized, and subjected to electroshock treatments, is marvelously told in three parts--with a trio of talented actresses playing the author as a teen and in her 20s and 30s--by Jane Campion (The Piano) in her sophomore effort. (Library Journal)
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Taking Frame from birth to secondary-school graduation during WW II, this eccentric novelist concentrates on her growing awareness of words: their use, misuse, and re-use. (Kirkus)
Taking Frame from birth to secondary-school graduation during WW II, this eccentric novelist concentrates on her growing awareness of words: their use, misuse, and re-use. (Kirkus)
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Taking Frame from birth to secondary-school graduation during WW II, this eccentric novelist concentrates on her growing awareness of words: their use, misuse, and re-use. (Kirkus)
Taking Frame from birth to secondary-school graduation during WW II, this eccentric novelist concentrates on her growing awareness of words: their use, misuse, and re-use. (Kirkus)
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The New Zealand author shares her life story, including growing up in an intellectually intense family, frequent stints in mental hospitals, and how she began her writing career. (NoveList)
The New Zealand author shares her life story, including growing up in an intellectually intense family, frequent stints in mental hospitals, and how she began her writing career. (NoveList)
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The New Zealand author shares her life story, including growing up in an intellectually intense family, frequent stints in mental hospitals, and how she began her writing career. (NoveList)
The New Zealand author shares her life story, including growing up in an intellectually intense family, frequent stints in mental hospitals, and how she began her writing career. (NoveList)
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The third volume of Frame's distinctive autobiography, the haunted last part of which (An Angel at My Table) detailed the horror of being wrongly hospital...Show more
The third volume of Frame's distinctive autobiography, the haunted last part of which (An Angel at My Table) detailed the horror of being wrongly hospitalized for schizophrenia that she never suffered from. On an arts grant, she leaves New Zealand (her home, but where she was also hospitalized) for Europe as this third volume begins: to London, then Ibiza, Andorra, and London again, literally in search of her place in the world not as a schizophrenic but as a writer, an "envoy from mirror city"--that place that "lay within as the city of the imagination." (Kirkus)
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The third volume of Frame's distinctive autobiography, the haunted last part of which (An Angel at My Table) detailed the horror of being wrongly hospital...Show more
The third volume of Frame's distinctive autobiography, the haunted last part of which (An Angel at My Table) detailed the horror of being wrongly hospitalized for schizophrenia that she never suffered from. On an arts grant, she leaves New Zealand (her home, but where she was also hospitalized) for Europe as this third volume begins: to London, then Ibiza, Andorra, and London again, literally in search of her place in the world not as a schizophrenic but as a writer, an "envoy from mirror city"--that place that "lay within as the city of the imagination." (Kirkus)
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Notorious poet and playwright Oscar Wilde devours all that life has to offer, but there's only so much that late Victorian England will tolerate. As Wilde...Show more
Notorious poet and playwright Oscar Wilde devours all that life has to offer, but there's only so much that late Victorian England will tolerate. As Wilde delves into a taboo world of unrealized homosexual desire, his life rapidly becomes a turbulent charade. He cannot escape the repercussions wrought by a "pure" society, nor will he hide in shame for being true to his nature. (Bibliocommons)
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Notorious poet and playwright Oscar Wilde devours all that life has to offer, but there's only so much that late Victorian England will tolerate. As Wilde...Show more
Notorious poet and playwright Oscar Wilde devours all that life has to offer, but there's only so much that late Victorian England will tolerate. As Wilde delves into a taboo world of unrealized homosexual desire, his life rapidly becomes a turbulent charade. He cannot escape the repercussions wrought by a "pure" society, nor will he hide in shame for being true to his nature. (Bibliocommons)
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The biography sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story of a great subject: Oscar Wilde--psychologically and sexually complicated, enormously quotable,...Show more
The biography sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story of a great subject: Oscar Wilde--psychologically and sexually complicated, enormously quotable, central to an alluring cultural world and someone whose life assumed an unbearably dramatic shape. (Bibliocommons)
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The biography sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story of a great subject: Oscar Wilde--psychologically and sexually complicated, enormously quotable,...Show more
The biography sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story of a great subject: Oscar Wilde--psychologically and sexually complicated, enormously quotable, central to an alluring cultural world and someone whose life assumed an unbearably dramatic shape. (Bibliocommons)
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Carrington is the true story of the peculiar love affair between two nonconformists in Victorian England: painter Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson) and auth...Show more
Carrington is the true story of the peculiar love affair between two nonconformists in Victorian England: painter Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson) and author Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce). Dora is a young English artist who is part of the Bloomsbury Group, an assemblage of British writers, painters, and eccentrics that includes the likes of Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, when she meets Strachey. A confirmed homosexual before meeting Carrington, Strachey inquires who the "ravishing boy" is and discovers that it's a woman. Shocked to discover this, he finds himself captivated by her, and they begin an unusual 17-year love affair/friendship. (Bibliocommons)
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Carrington is the true story of the peculiar love affair between two nonconformists in Victorian England: painter Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson) and auth...Show more
Carrington is the true story of the peculiar love affair between two nonconformists in Victorian England: painter Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson) and author Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce). Dora is a young English artist who is part of the Bloomsbury Group, an assemblage of British writers, painters, and eccentrics that includes the likes of Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, when she meets Strachey. A confirmed homosexual before meeting Carrington, Strachey inquires who the "ravishing boy" is and discovers that it's a woman. Shocked to discover this, he finds himself captivated by her, and they begin an unusual 17-year love affair/friendship. (Bibliocommons)
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Holroyd's big, gossipy life of English historian Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), first published in 1968 and now in a revised, expanded edition, offers a vib...Show more
Holroyd's big, gossipy life of English historian Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), first published in 1968 and now in a revised, expanded edition, offers a vibrant, intimate portrait of the Bloomsbury circle, their love affairs, jealousies and creative ferment. In Eminent Victorians (1918), Strachey stripped away the pious camouflage of Victorian society, targeting hypocrisy, imperialism, militarism and religion. Drawing on thousands of letters by Strachey and his Bloomsbury coterie, Holroyd unearths details of Strachey's adolescent self-loathing and sexual guilt; his proposing marriage to Virginia Woolf in an effort to renounce his homosexuality; his pacifism during WWI; and his relationship with his adoring live-in companion, painter Dora Carrington, who tolerated his gay affairs. (Publishers Weekly)
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Holroyd's big, gossipy life of English historian Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), first published in 1968 and now in a revised, expanded edition, offers a vib...Show more
Holroyd's big, gossipy life of English historian Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), first published in 1968 and now in a revised, expanded edition, offers a vibrant, intimate portrait of the Bloomsbury circle, their love affairs, jealousies and creative ferment. In Eminent Victorians (1918), Strachey stripped away the pious camouflage of Victorian society, targeting hypocrisy, imperialism, militarism and religion. Drawing on thousands of letters by Strachey and his Bloomsbury coterie, Holroyd unearths details of Strachey's adolescent self-loathing and sexual guilt; his proposing marriage to Virginia Woolf in an effort to renounce his homosexuality; his pacifism during WWI; and his relationship with his adoring live-in companion, painter Dora Carrington, who tolerated his gay affairs. (Publishers Weekly)
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Not your average period drama...the costumes, design, music and camerawork steer clear of naturalism, highlighting both the modernity of the approach and ...Show more
Not your average period drama...the costumes, design, music and camerawork steer clear of naturalism, highlighting both the modernity of the approach and the notions of humans as creatures to be observed dispassionately. Despite some uneven pacing and variability in performance, this is a work of clarity, ambition and intelligence. (TimeOut Film Guide)
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Revisiting the Victorian ambience of Possession, Byatt treats her large audience to more extraordinary literary gamesmanship with two intricate novellas. ...Show more
Revisiting the Victorian ambience of Possession, Byatt treats her large audience to more extraordinary literary gamesmanship with two intricate novellas. In "Morpho Eugenia " penniless young entomologist William Adamson has just returned from a 10-year expedition in the Amazon. William is taken in by a titled clergyman with scientific pretensions, and soon marries his benefactor's beautiful daughter. Unable to undertake another Amazon adventure, he studies domestic ant colonies and discovers indecent parallels between the insects and his new family. As fans will anticipate, Byatt effortlessly exploits the opportunities for pastiche, belletristic flourish and critical commentary. If her symbolism is as excessively upholstered and overdetermined as the narratives of her Victorian models, beneath the padding she sets out a delicate chain of thematic concerns--19th-century tensions between science and faith, erotic currents within families, the nature of marital happiness--and heightens them by juxtaposing the two novellas here. (Publishers Weekly)
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Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. He's hired to go to Italy to bring back he playbo...Show more
Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. He's hired to go to Italy to bring back he playboy son of a millionaire and soon is plunged into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder. (Bibliocommons) See also: the 1960 French film "Purple Noon." (J.C.)
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Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. He's hired to go to Italy to bring back he playbo...Show more
Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. He's hired to go to Italy to bring back he playboy son of a millionaire and soon is plunged into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder. (Bibliocommons) See also: the 1960 French film "Purple Noon." (J.C.)
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