441 members · Public group
Highlighting genre fiction done well. We read books from different genres which we believe provide an interesting experience for the reader, and hope to meet up with others to discuss. We seek to have conversations with both depth and humor.
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Set in the aftermath of the “Carnation Revolution” of April 25, 1974, Antonio Lobo Antunes’s Warning to the Crocodiles is a fragmented narrative of the violent tensions resulting from major political changes in Portugal. Told through the memories of four women who spend their days fashioning homemade explosives and participating in the kidnap and torture of communists, the novel details the clandestine activities of an extreme right-wing Salazarist faction resisting the country’s new embrace of democracy.
Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
The Fiery Angel is one of the great achievements of modern Russian literature, as powerful and revolutionary as its contemporary, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. In a vividly atmospheric recreation of the occult underworld of sixteenth century Germany, during the age of the Inquisition, three souls meet; an innocent young man choosing between Love and Duty, a woman prone to visions and a Knight, who is either an angel or a demon. Religious experience and sexual hysteria meet in an apocalyptic vision of the spiritual crisis of modern life. The Fiery Angel is one of the great novels of decadent occultism.
What is the power of art in the face of death? In The Art Lover Carole Maso has created an elegant and moving narrative about a woman experiencing (and reliving) the most painful transitions of her life. Caroline, the novel's protagonist, returns to New York after the death of her fatherostensibly to wrap things up and take care of necessary "business"where her memory and imagination conspire to lay before her all her griefs and joys in a rebellious progression. In different voices, employing a collage-like fragmentation, Maso gently unfolds The Art Lover in much the same way the fragile and prehistoric fiddlehead fern unfolds throughout the novel, bringing with subtle grace the ever-entangled feelings of grief and love into full and tender view. Various illustrations throughout.
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