#setterfield

[sadoldjonny]

David Gordon, a Wizard of Movement and Words, Dies at 85

For this choreographer, director and pioneer of postmodern dance, life was art and art was life.

[cianfrusagliesociali]

"Ci si abitua talmente ai propri orrori da dimenticare l'impressione che devono fare agli altri."

La tredicesima storia, Diane Setterfield

Aggiorniamoci su questo libro

Problemi, su problemi, su problemi. Non ci riesco. Credo di avere:

O il blocco del lettore

O un libro che non mi piace

O un libro troppo complicato per me

O un libro brutto

Escluderei l’ultima perchè continuo a leggere recensioni bellissime e continui elogi. Non so... potrei avere il blocco del lettore, ma questo blocco potrebbe essere causato dal libro.

Questo romanzo è sempre e costantemente depresso. Oltre al personaggio, sta male anche il cielo. Preferisco più coerenza dei libri che leggo, nel senso... se qualcuno sta male, non devono per forza esserci nuvole scure.

Forse è solo perchè a me non piace la gente negativa (anche se adoro le tragedie) ma probabilmente tutta questa atmosfera cupa è data dalla protagonista in sè. Lei è cupa, è depressa, e tutto ciò le fa vedere il mondo tramite un filtro.

Io onestamente preferisco la gente non esagerata.

(Mi dispiace Margaret, ma proprio non mi vai giù)

[selfdestructi0n]

What succour, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What God is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statute of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running in your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

The Thirteenth Tale, Diana Setterfield

[scribbles-and-wanderlust]

Now (re-)Reading #74

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Biographer Margaret Lea returns one night to her apartment above her father's antiquarian bookshop. On her steps she finds a letter. It is a hand-written request from one of Britain’s most prolific and well-loved novelists. Vida Winter, gravely ill, wants to recount her life story before it is too late, and she wants Margaret to be the one to capture her history. The request takes Margaret by surprise–she doesn’t know the author, nor has she read any of Miss Winter’s dozens of novels. Late one night while pondering whether to accept the task of recording Miss Winter’s personal story, Margaret begins to read her father’s rare copy of Miss Winter’s Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation. She is spellbound by the stories and confused when she realizes the book only contains twelve stories. Where is the thirteenth tale? Intrigued, Margaret agrees to meet Miss Winter and act as her biographer. As Vida Winter unfolds her story, she shares with Margaret the dark family secrets that she has long kept hidden as she remembers her days at Angelfield, the now burnt-out estate that was her childhood home. Margaret carefully records Miss Winter’s account and finds herself more and more deeply immersed in the strange and troubling story. In the end, both women have to confront their pasts and the weight of family secrets. As well as the ghosts that haunt them still.

____________________________

Considering my reaction to The Flight of Gemma Hardy, my professor and I agreed to change my project to something more gothic. Which I don't mind at all. This is a great book!

Finished 20/50 (40%) of my 50 Book Challenge!

[morsuaile]

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What sucor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

- The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

[whylovememylove-blog]

Politeness. Now there's a poor man's virtue if ever there was one. What's so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it's easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else. People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think about them.

Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

[whylovememylove-blog]

All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.

Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

[whylovememylove-blog]

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale