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- ‘The Governess’ (2014): Praised by Historical Novel Society, Midwest Book Review and Kindle Book Review U.S., the novel has done well in the UK where it's regularly picked up as an ebook & frequently lands in Top 100 Free lists (#1 in 'Death & Grief,' #2 in 'Religious & Inspirational Romance,' #13 in 'Parenting & Families'): http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00MF8BJQE
- ‘Catharsis’ (2015) received mixed reviews: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B010IQSFN4
Non-Fiction: https://www.scribd.com/noorilhudahttp://newslinemagazine.com/contribut...
Fiction:
- ‘The Governess’ (2014): Praised by Historical Novel Society, Midwest Book Review and Kindle Book Review U.S., the novel has done well in the UK where it's regularly picked up as an ebook & frequently lands in Top 100 Free lists (#1 in 'Death & Grief,' #2 in 'Religious & Inspirational Romance,' #13 in 'Parenting & Families'): http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00MF8BJQE
- ‘Catharsis’ (2015) received mixed reviews: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B010IQSFN4
...more
Annual Schedule for Free Ebook Versions of 'The Governess' & 'Catharsis':
The Governess & Catharsis will be free across Amazon on the following events:
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* Memorial Day Weekend (25-29 May)
* Independence Day Weekend (4-8 July)
* 'Catharsis' on Halloween Weekend (31 Oct.)
* 'The Governess' & 'Catharsis' on Thanksgiving Weekend (4th Thursday in Nov.) 21-25 Nov.
Ebook: ASIN: B00MF8BJQE
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* Christmas+New Year's Day (25-29 Dec.)
* Memorial Day Weekend (25-29 May)
* Independence Day Weekend (4-8 July)
* 'Catharsis' on Halloween Weekend (31 Oct.)
* 'The Governess' & 'Catharsis' on Thanksgiving Weekend (4th Thursday in Nov.) 21-25 Nov.
Ebook: ASIN: B00MF8BJQE
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Published on April 16, 2024 10:00
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The Governess
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Catharsis
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This is a genre-bending memoir that packs a lot of divergent material in a stream of consciousness style of writing. The audiobook was released by Harper Focus in May 2025 and is 14 hours and 3 minutes long. I listened to it while driving, gardening
This is a genre-bending memoir that packs a lot of divergent material in a stream of consciousness style of writing. The audiobook was released by Harper Focus in May 2025 and is 14 hours and 3 minutes long. I listened to it while driving, gardening and cooking, stopping at some tough moments narrated therein. Throughout the summer, Grammar gave a lot of interviews as part of the press tour to promote this book. He spoke to Diane Sawyer and Tamron Hall and the panel from The View, and via video link, joined Michel (‘Michelle’) Martin for PBS’s Amanpour & Company and Anderson Cooper for his new series on CNN ‘All There is’. Interestingly, Rob Lowe, Billy Bush, Graham Bensinger had him on their youtube channels. Leonard Picker asked him questions for Publisher’s Weekly. PW gave the memoir a starred review. People Magazine, NY Post and other news sites such as The Times on Sunday and The Australian have featured him too. In most of these interviews Grammer has said that he approached the book inspired by James Joyce’s narrative technique: Hence, what you get as a listener is an unfiltered, go-with-the-flow, fragmented and at time hyperbolic monologue in Grammar’s amazingly soothing, confident acting voice. There’s fond nostalgia, anecdotes on Grammar’s ancestors, mom, gam, grandpa, his cousins, his flings, loves and marriages, what they all mean to him, the values he wants his 7 children to have (his eighth was born after the book was published), his professional journey and career advancement through the decades is noted, as well as stories of deaths, accidents and murder in the family. Sprinkled inbetween are his thoughts on religion, spirituality, psychic phenomena as well as his opinion on abortion, death penalty and parole hearings for murder convicts. Chick Fillet’s Grilled Chicken Nuggets make an appearance. And yes, his 18-year old sister Karen’s life is eulogized in dignified pain and justified anger. Grammar makes it a point to remember every insignificant moment that he had with her to counter the horrific significance of her death. The audiobook serves as much as a 70 year old Grammar’s ‘memento mori’, i.e. an object kept as a reminder of inevitability of death, as much as it is on the joy of life, by honoring the threads that connect him, his sister with his extended family. It’s a true crime book and an allegory on grief with enough stardust to keep you interested and enough random verbosity to make you irritated. I love Kelsey Grammar and Frasier. I first read about his sister’s murder way back in the 90s, probably in People Magazine, when Frasier first started airing. Karen Elisa Grammer was born on 15 july 1956 in NJ to Alan and Sally and raised by Sally, Gam, and grandpa Gordon. She was just another teenage girl living it up in 70s America. She had completed college, had a boyfriend, an apartment, a job. But Grammar successfully brings out how normal, average and cool his sister was. Yes, there are adjectives and superlatives but there is also heart and a human being at the center of it. Grammar calls her the “true child of 60s” - 12:34 chap.26 In Chap. 26, at the 17:41 mark of a 20 minute 30 seconds chapter, he describes her as “an Oreo cookie dipped in ice-cold coca cola” (17:41-17:45 of Chap. 26). However, Grammar is limited in recounting his sister's life because of the refusal of her two best friends to be part of this project, he doesn’t give the reason as to why they refused, whether it was small money quote or his celebrity status or their need for privacy or something else, he does not say. And so, he has had to rely on his spurts of memory and her college roommate to fill in the gaps of what she was like in life and college, with friends and boyfriends. What you are left with is a feeling of what could or would have been. This book is the ultimate victim impact statement and also the ultimate biography for a young seemingly unremarkable victim whose true strength is revealed in her last moments, when she didn’t give up, despite bleeding profusely. She could have been any one of us. She had the misfortune of being kidnapped by strangers who proceeded to have their way with her. Just the bare minimum of facts are enough to chill a listener to his or her bone. Grammar recites the inevitable at the 7% mark of audiobook. In the 49 minute long chap. 3 titled ‘Then’. She was weeks away from her 19th birthday. chap. 3: titled Then: 00:00-00:57: “Karen approached 3 men entering the back of a Red Lobster restaurant. She had come to pick up her paycheque before heading out to the mountains for the fourth of July weekend. The 3 men had come to rob the place. There had been several murders in Colorado Springs that summer. These men were responsible. Karen had no idea who there were. She asked them what they were up to but I’m fairly certain she discerned quickly what suddenly faced her: Destruction. The story I was told by district attorney and others involved in the arrest of these men, has never really been clear. I think they hoped to spare my feelings, to keep the horror of what had actually happened from me. I appreciate that and I accept their reasons for being vague. The specific details of her suffering were kept from me but some information had to be offered. Conjecture of what she suffered is probably just as brutal as the reality. My imaginings paint the worst picture. But this is Karen’s tragedy, not mine….Yes I offered that perspective earlier, but this tragedy is Karen’s triumph as well. Her strength that evening is unfathomable. Her dignity stands forever an inspiration to me. What I’ve endured is nothing by comparison but it was enough for me, enough to hollow me in the journey of life and love and joy for a long time. I could not forgive myself.” (7% completed, 13 h 4 min left. Chap. 3: 00:00-01:29) Grammer further says that at the time of the abduction, Red Lobster restaurant had a rule that employees could not stay or wait inside the venue, and that’s why Karen had to stand outside. Grammer says this rule makes no sense to him. I think he mentions that after Karen’s murder, this rule was changed but I’m not sure. She worked in the kitchen and was waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up. She was by her friend’s car, in the back alley. “The men abducted Karen. They held her hostage for several hours. the district attorney told me Karen negotiated with them for her life, she would do whatever they asked if they spared her. I’m not sure she laid it out like that. Perhaps she implied she hoped they would spare her. I’m sure by the time they took her to the apartment where she was raped and tortured by them Karen understood that her life was at stake. I have thought for years at her heart in that moment, how it must have been beating, not like a rabbit’s frozen in terror before a wolf but increased in urgent and calculating as she tried to offer them a way out of killing her. Karen was always the brave one. Karen could even stand up to my grandmother.” (7% completed, 13 h 4 min left. Chap. 3: 01:35-02:17) Should Grammar have focussed a bit more on the horrific, cold, cruel, torturous, vicious, murder? I don’t know the answer to that. But what he reveals is still bone-chilling: Karen was knees, violated, punched, beaten, blindfolded with blue scarf, freddie (glenn) ties her hands, raped, sodomised (Grammer calls them "animals"; and that "I'm in prison 49 years of that night"), taken their turns, discussion on what to do with karen? openly discussed killing her, medium (to connect with karen; who told her she had been taken out before death), back in the car with 2: michael corbett was not there, karen escaped from car for mobile homes . “she escaped briefly”, 42 stab wounds. 7 wounds sufficient to kill her, each one could be fatal. police and da unclear one escaping. freddie gleen slashed her throat almost decapittating her, she staggered across the street few hundred yards away, crawled to trailer, man in trailer found her, paramedics tried to revive her, they could not. For context, Michael Corbett, Larry Dunn, and Freddie Glenn were spree killers responsible for three grisly murders in and around Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1975. Corbett and Dunn were soldiers. Freddie Glenn was a civilian employee at a Colorado army base. All three were young men. Of these 3, Dunn got full immunity to testify against the other two, Michael Corbett and Freddie Glenn. Corbett died in prison. Grammar is an openly conservative Republican, and there are important opinions expressed here, such as his feelings about death penalty and abortion. Unfortunately, his views on these subjects made more news during his book promotion tour than his sister or the nature of grief and coping mechanisms. Grammer speaks about parole hearings and death penalty in Chapter 4 (44 minutes long chapter, 15% completed audiobook, 11 h 55 min left of audiobook), right around the time he mentions (21:00 - 21:50). “Freddie Glenns said he was a good kid. So I wonder what happened to him that somewhere in his life he had the effrontery and self-loathing to plunge a knife 42 times into Karen’s body, over and over again, his hatred stabbed into her, after he and his friends had raped her, more than once. And there was more. Some good kid. And now whenever he appears for parole his protestations are never about how he longs to do something good for the world. Or how he wishes he could take it all back. According to Mr. Glenn as far as I can tell, he’s been in jail long enough. Just a good kid who somehow ended up in prison for a murder that doesn’t quite merit the rest of his life incarcerated. So he tore apart an innocent girl, ruthlessly, mercilessly, violently.” (21:00 - 21:50, Chapter 4, 15 % completed) “We were the good kids. Karen was the good kid. This man was an executioner, without any law to guide him, no decency at all, and no humanity. As I spent the next months and years about how to go on, he spent hoping he could get out. Not be held accountable. He and his friend actually pleaded not guilty and would have us believe to this day it was just a slip up when it was a vicious, premeditated assassination and destruction of my 18 year old sister. Letting her live would’ve threatened the freedom of his friends and himself. So they happily performed desecration of an innocent girl for what was to be an extra month of freedom before they were sent to die in prison. Freddie Glenn received the death penalty for his crime. During the Carter administration the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to review all death penalty cases and so his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He owes his life for what he did. He owes 42 lifetimes for every stab wound he plunged into my sister. My opinion.” (22:00-23:05, Chapter 4) And Grammer is not a fan of the parole hearings he has to attend every 5 years or so to make sure Glenn doesn’t get out. There are 2 abortions mentioned in the book: One occurs very early on in Grammer’s dating life, when he was in his early twenties and he expresses he left the choice to the girlfriend. The baby was a son. He says he’s remorseful over it. The second abortion that he recounts is with his current wife, his fourth, Kayte. They lost one half of their unborn twins when one baby’s sack ruptured at 13 weeks (Chapter 23) and did not heal naturally, and he and his wife had to make the difficult decision to abort the baby, a fetus, a son, to keep the other twin, a daughter, alive. As Grammer says at the beginning of Chapter 23, “We begged God to spare us this tragic choice but sometimes we are asked to play God. So a needle through Kayte’s belly, into his heart, killed him. We killed him. We killed our son so Faith might live. We wept as we watched his heart stop. Saw it. It’s the greatest pain I have known. Kayte’s scream was enough to make a man mourn a lifetime. Another lifetime. Mom’s scream when she learnt of Karen’s murder.” (00:32-01:09, Chapter 23 (Chapter 23 occurs at 95% of audiobook, and is a 14 min.s 35 seconds long chapter). I like the 'stream of consciousness' style of writing that he adopted for this project but this book needed a strong editor who could gently tell Grammar to pipe it down a bit when he goes off on tangents, drifting off into a time he wants to memorialize for himself, and not for his sister or the listener. For example, while waiting around Barry College, Karen’s college, he eats Chick Fillet’s Grilled Nuggets for the first time in his life. As a 68 year old. His verdict: Not Bad. Maybe his age plays a role? He’s seventy years old and maybe that makes him more susceptible to look back and reminisce about anything and everything, to purge and create a historical record, no matter how insignificant it may be to a probable audience. In this regard, the one minute 30 second short Chapter 7 “A Letter to the Reader” works as his disclaimer for these excursions. He says he has several pictures of her in his home. He says he sees her everyday (‘He says he has several pictures of her in his home. He says he sees her everyday’ is from Chapter 15). In Chapter 15, that at the 20:09 mark, (2o:07-20:55) “Last night it seemed her presence was clearly with us. And it seemed she wanted us to know something. Something that might surprise me. Pothead. Maybe. Not earth shaking or any cause for shame. Makes sense. I see her reaching for that candy. Karen is coming into our realm. I’m not crazy. Perhaps I’m a little foolish or a bit too willing to believe I’m in touch with her. But I have spent a lifetime with Karen and I would know. Haven’t heard the sound of her voice as I long to but she was definitely around last night. It was a warm and enjoyable evening with her and my kids and Kayte. There was love and there was a bit of mischief. Karen. Yeah that was Karen.” The book is peppered with these sorts of manifestations of grief, for e.g. how it fractured his personality and relationships, how it contributed to his drug and alcohol use, how he wants to capture the vicissitudes of his sister’s brief experience in life by visiting her college, which she left after a semester to be with her boyfriend John, her last apartment, the ground floor apartment she shared with her boyfriend, and her last place of work, the red lobster restaurant that she was kidnapped from, which is now a pawnshop). He did not go to address where she was murdered, because he didn’t note down the address for the trip (as he reveals in Chap. 26). In these passages, he is as much a ghost as he is a narrator grieving all the adventures, mundane and iconic, that he got to have without her by his side. Like I said, I love him. I love his work. He has an amazing voice which is put to good use here, like elsewhere, and I wish him all the best. This is part of my summer 2025 recommendations. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. Review posted on Youtube: https://youtu.be/qr55LFzmbXo ...more |
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Killer Althusser by Francis Dupuis-Déri translated by Mélissa Bull was published by Between the Lines, which is a member of Literary Press Group of Canada, in July 2025. On its website, Between the Lines publishing house defines itself as a “social m
Killer Althusser by Francis Dupuis-Déri translated by Mélissa Bull was published by Between the Lines, which is a member of Literary Press Group of Canada, in July 2025. On its website, Between the Lines publishing house defines itself as a “social movement press that publishes nonfiction books that expose and challenge oppression in our society. We aim to amplify the struggles of Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities; migrants; women; queer folks; and working-class people. BTL is proudly leftwing and the books we publish reflect our activist roots and our commitment to social justice struggles. BTL authors are academics, journalists, artists, and activists—all our authors hope their books will spark political and social change. As a product of New Left radicalism, BTL embodies the cooperative and democratic ideals of its founders. BTL has no boss, no individual owner; we are run by a small staff and a dedicated volunteer editorial committee. Decisions on what we publish are made by consensus. We publish books not to seek profit, but to document and promote struggles for a better world, challenge the mainstream, and offer readers new perspectives on critical political issues. Our press is situated in Tkaronto, traditional Wendat, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee territory subject to the Dish with One Spoon treaty. This land was stewarded by the Mississauga of the Credit River (that’s a First Nations tribe) and is home to many Indigenous peoples, including the Métis, and those displaced from their homelands by Canadian extractive and other industries. Together we share a responsibility to care for and nurture these lands and to struggle for a better future for the earth and all peoples.” So it's obvious that their office or printing press is located in indigenous tribal land. I looked up on the internet and here is a map of the area covered and identified as Dish with One Spoon land. Dish with one Spoon literally means sharing the resources of the land and conserving it with other nations or people who live on it, and at first, as I’ve come to understand, this treaty was between two tribes, but now is seen as a covenant between all of the indigenous tribes as well as the settlers, migrants and the Canadian government. The area includes part of Ontario, moving along freshwater lakes and borders Quebec. This is a beautiful idea that makes people stewards and protectors of the land, makes them responsible for its maintenance and growth, by not just taking but also giving something back to it, and allows them, whether local people or newcomers, to benefit from it, equally, peacefully in a just manner without discrimination. Under this idea and treaty, nobody is deemed superior or disrespected. Nobody’s rights are usurped and everyone gets a piece of the pie so to speak. Nothing gets wasted because you are only taking what you need and you are sharing it with others. The world, and dare I say it, Pakistan needs more of this on an institutional level and it’s no surprise that indigenous people, more rooted in nature and less in commerce, came up with it and practiced it long before foreigners commodified and scavenged the Americas as conquerers. You can learn more about this treaty by going to Canadian Encyclopedia website or checking out multiple youtube videos on the subject]. Coming back to publisher of Killer Althusser, Between the Lines says it has published more than 300 titles since its inception 48 years ago. And now to the book itself. Way back in 1980, a famous French philosopher killed his partner of thirty years after she told him she did not want to live with him anymore. He got away with it citing mental illness that he had battled all his life with frequent hospitalization, the media and literary brass supported him, he wrote a memoir, spent some time in a psychiatric institution, and then died a natural death. Bottomline: he never served any time in prison for the murder. He wasn’t cancelled as people are nowadays. His work is still critiqued and discussed. He is after all, one of the most influential thinkers on Marxism. His name is Louis Althusser and I think by titling his book Killer Althusser, author Francis Dupuis-Déri wants people to identify the revered professor as a killer too, removing all the other labels that served to protect him during his lifetime. He strangled his wife Helene Legotien-Rytmann in the early morning hours of November 16, 1980 and I found a news report that originally aired on a French TV channel INA Société on 17 November, a day later. The one minute thirty seven second package is full of pictures of Althusser taken by Daniel Levy. There’s not a single picture of the victim, the killed wife, Helene Legotien-Rytmann in it. I find it unusual that she is not covered or spoken of in the report. As the author, Dupuis-Déri notes in the book, the widely respected and influential daily newspaper Le Monde wrote on 19 November, 1980, about how studying the mental disorder could help explain the murder, in effect presenting an explanation for his actions before the esteemed professor was put to any sort of judicial process. It is this erasure, this determination that the real victim of the killing was not the long-suffering wife but rather the great intellectual himself is what infuriates Dupuis-Déri. He calls Althusser “banal, just another woman killer.” (56, Conclusion, Killer Althusser). There were no obvious signs of struggle or violence on Helene and only an autopsy revealed the strangulation but Althusser was not checked either for scratches or signs that she put up a fight. Because he was immediately placed in a mental hospital by his prestigious university’s staff, and by the time the police came he was long gone. A judge went to the hospital to tell him that he was being charged with ‘Voluntary homicide’ but the judge was told by staff that Althusser was in no position to be served with a warrant since he was mentally fragile in fact “in a state of total mental collapse and was incapable of understanding the legal procedure” (vii, Introduction, twin autobiography, Vintage, 1994). The judge ordered 3 psychiatrists to guage whether he was sane or insane at the time of commission of the crime as well as whether he was mentally competent to understand the charge against him. Two months later, on the basis of their reports, the judge dismissed the case. “In French terms, he declared a non-lieu. In English the term non-suit, or no-grounds is usually used. i.e. a refusal to order prosecution.” (vii, introduction, twin autobiography, Vintage, 1994) Hence, Dupuis-Déri considers this case to be “a social revealer, as by revisiting this crime, and particularly by examining the public discourse around the crime, we can see how a network of male protection and solidarity established to benefit the killer makes it possible to highlight the ‘hidden strategies’ of male violence against women.” [page 3, Introduction, Killer Althusser, 2025] Francis Dupuis-Déri himself is a political science professor and researcher at the Institut de recherches et d'études féministes at Université du Québec à Montréal (Institute for Feminist Research and Studies of the University of Quebec in Montreal). He has written about incels, toxic masculinity and rise of masculinist terrorism in a French titled book La Crise de la masculinité. Autopsie d'un mythe tenace ("The Crisis of Masculinity: Autopsy of a Tenacious Myth", 2022). Killer Althusser is translated into English by Mélissa Bull. I cannot comment on the quality of the translation, but the book reads more like a PhD dissertation than a work of narrative non-fiction. It’s a frosty research paper in which Dupuis-Déri coldly studies the contours of what Althusser said about the crime, how the French press and cultural and literary elite protected him and his status, not just from prosecution but even from condemnation. He also analyzes that ultimate question: can the philosopher be separated from the murderer? A documentary on the development of his ideological framework is available online. It has proper subtitles. It was made by Bruno Oliviero (Altooser Althusser: An Intellectual Adventure. While watching an interview he gave to Italian TV in April 1980, a few months before the murder, I was struck by how similar his definition of communism sounds like The Dish with One Spoon treaty. The anti-thesis of capitalism. Here, Althusser defines communism as “a mode of production where there are no economic relationships of exploitation nor any political relationships of domination. Neither are there ideological relationships of intimidation or pressure, nor of ideological enslavement.” (Louis Althusser: The Crisis of Marxism (interview) Interview date: April 30, 1980. Host: Renato Parascandolo) Althusser’s views on Marxism, communism, anarchism, Catholicism, etc. have been cited as much as his biographies, his writings and his letters to Helene, even his dreams and the probable meaning behind them have been dissected. Though Dupuis-Déri laments that Helene has been ignored in the countless discussions on the crime and the man responsible for it, he offers no new insight or passage, save a small biographical paragraph, and a bibliography of her published work, on what Helene’s life was like for thirty years or so with a distinguished man who may or may not have been a pill behind closed doors. He says on page 52, (‘Conclusion’, Killer Althusser, 2025), “What do we know about Hélène Legotien today? Almost nothing, except that she was murdered by her illustrious husband. She’s ultimately died twice and her murderer is responsible tor both of her deaths. He killed her first with his own hands and then a second time by occupying the entire public space to talk about himself under the pretense of addressing her death. A quick web search (with Google) leads me to see that there is almost no information available about her. Searching for her in fact almost inevitably leads us instead to her killer, Althusser.” It’s this anger probably that led to many people to contact him after the publication of the French title ‘Althusser; Assassin’ in 2023. They shed more light into Helene’s life and work. He includes their feedback in this translation. In his examination, Dupuis-Déri quotes from Althusser’s autobiography, ’The Future Lasts a Long Time’ - it was published after his death, and you must read it as well. Dupuis-Déri calls it “filthy” (page 51, ‘Can we separate the author from his work?’ Killer Althusser, 2025) a “tedious text on a literary level, revolting from a political point of view and disgusting from a psychological perspective, given how the murderer presents himself as a victim.” (page 17, ‘Psychologization and Victimization’, Killer Althusser, 2025). But it can be seen as a character study and historical record which you, as a reader and an analyst, can choose to believe or disbelieve. He authored another autobiography as well - Les Faits (The Facts). The French and English versions of the two books are available online. The French version of both books was published by Editions STOCK/IMEC in 1992 and the English version of both was published by Vintage an imprint of Random House in 1994. I am double-minded about the extent of Louis Althusser’s culpability because he did have a long history of endless cycle of psychiatric hospitalizations and had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I don’t know how he was able to perform his professorship duties amongst this chaos. Except for a doctor who lived near his apartment, none of his students or faculty members knew about his mental health struggles. That’s surprising to me. There has never been any investigative expose’ on his mental health records, medications or social life. He was 8 years younger than Helene, he was a Catholic and she was Jewish. During World War 2 he was in a German prison war camp in Schlesweig-Holstein and kept there for almost 5 years. The couple had lived as lovers for more than thirty years before they got married in 1976. His relationship with her is described in various places as strained. I have no doubt he was difficult to live with though he had a longterm residency and employment in an ivy league university. She worked as a researcher for an NGO SEDES (société d'études pour le développement économique et social) till her retirement. According to Dupuis-Déri, by 1980, Helene had expressed a desire to leave him and had been looking at apartments to move into. He said he had no memory of strangulating her in bed but does remember massaging her neck in bed. Red flags anyone? Is this story a cautionary tale for a woman to make a clean break before officially declaring a separation or breakup and to not reside with a mentally unstable man who can use his illness as an excuse to get away with an act that is rooted in anger and resentment and inability to let go? An eerie passage from his ‘Future Lasts’ autobiography (page 251, autobiography, Future lasts, 1994. translator: Veasey Richard; passage quoted on page 14, Feminist Insights, Killer Althusser) is quoted on page 14 of Killer Althusser. In it, Althusser says “I do not know what exactly I put Helene through (I do know, however, that I was truly capable of the most terrible things), but she told me with a determination that terrified me that she could no longer live with me, that in her eyes I was a monster and that she wanted to leave me for good. She began quite openly to look for a flat, but did not find one immediately. She then made practical arrangements which I found unbearable; totally ignoring me, though I was still there, in our own flat. She got up before me and disappeared for the whole day. It she happened to stay at home she refused to talk to me and even to come face to face with me..…I was consumed with anguish. As you know, I always experienced intense anguish at being abandoned and especially by her, but being totally ignored, though I was still there, in our own home, was the most unbearable thing of all.” I think this would be seen as a motive or trigger for the killing by any investigator or prosecutor. And maybe this would have come out if Althusser had ever been allowed to be detained and questioned by the police. In every available picture, some which are are being displayed on the screen right now, Helene comes across as a very cute, affable, lovely woman. While Althusser looks, well doesn’t he look like a grouch? After the murder and three year hospitalization that ended in 1983, his teaching days behind him, Althusser moved away from the university that he had been a part of for the majority of his life. He continued to receive guests including a former student who was an adviser to then-President Mitterrand. He gave interviews on subjects such as philosophy and psychology. He engaged with the press by writing to them about how they had misinterpreted his work. He read books written on his work. He wrote the autobiographies mentioned before and told his life story to a biographer. Basically, he seems obsessed that he be remembered for his professional work from the 40s to early 80s than what happened in his personal life on 16 November 1980. In the introduction written by Douglas Johnson, (vii, introduction, autobiography, 1994) it is mentioned that “From time to time, in his despair, he would walk in the streets of Northern Paris, a shabby ageing figure, and would startle passerbys as he would shout ‘je suis le grande althusser’ (I am the great Althusser)” Amidst all this, the revolving cycle of being in and out of hospitals continued and he died of a heart attack in a hospital. In an interview that he gave to Italian TV in April of 1980, a few months before the murder, he was asked by the interviewer the difference between love and respect and he replied: “What do you do if you insist ‘I have to love you because Christ asked me to?’ You run away. But if you have respect for the other, then he will leave you to do whatever you want. If he wants you to love him, then it’s fine. But if he doesn’t, that’s also fine.” (Louis Althusser: The Crisis of Marxism (interview) Interview date: April 30, 1980. Host: Renato Parascandolo. A bit ironical considering what happened just a few months later. Francis Dupuis-Déri states that “even today, in France, a man kills his spouse or ex-spouse on average every 3 days.” (page 13, ‘Feminist Insights’, Killer Althusser, 2025) This thesis-like examination of how Althusser was reported on and written about post-murder adds to the study of this complicated, controversial figure. Two things can co-exist at the same time: Althusser’s work can be appreciated or debated while condemning the intimate partner violence against Helene. Dupuis-Déri thinks recognizing his professional accomplishments is akin to giving him immunity. What do you think? Thanks to the publisher for this book. Review on Youtube: https://youtu.be/YLX-YacmJfU ...more |
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13 hours, 44 min ago
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This is a genre-bending memoir that packs a lot of divergent material in a stream of consciousness style of writing. The audiobook was released by Harper Focus in May 2025 and is 14 hours and 3 minutes long. I listened to it while driving, gardening
This is a genre-bending memoir that packs a lot of divergent material in a stream of consciousness style of writing. The audiobook was released by Harper Focus in May 2025 and is 14 hours and 3 minutes long. I listened to it while driving, gardening and cooking, stopping at some tough moments narrated therein. Throughout the summer, Grammar gave a lot of interviews as part of the press tour to promote this book. He spoke to Diane Sawyer and Tamron Hall and the panel from The View, and via video link, joined Michel (‘Michelle’) Martin for PBS’s Amanpour & Company and Anderson Cooper for his new series on CNN ‘All There is’. Interestingly, Rob Lowe, Billy Bush, Graham Bensinger had him on their youtube channels. Leonard Picker asked him questions for Publisher’s Weekly. PW gave the memoir a starred review. People Magazine, NY Post and other news sites such as The Times on Sunday and The Australian have featured him too. In most of these interviews Grammer has said that he approached the book inspired by James Joyce’s narrative technique: Hence, what you get as a listener is an unfiltered, go-with-the-flow, fragmented and at time hyperbolic monologue in Grammar’s amazingly soothing, confident acting voice. There’s fond nostalgia, anecdotes on Grammar’s ancestors, mom, gam, grandpa, his cousins, his flings, loves and marriages, what they all mean to him, the values he wants his 7 children to have (his eighth was born after the book was published), his professional journey and career advancement through the decades is noted, as well as stories of deaths, accidents and murder in the family. Sprinkled inbetween are his thoughts on religion, spirituality, psychic phenomena as well as his opinion on abortion, death penalty and parole hearings for murder convicts. Chick Fillet’s Grilled Chicken Nuggets make an appearance. And yes, his 18-year old sister Karen’s life is eulogized in dignified pain and justified anger. Grammar makes it a point to remember every insignificant moment that he had with her to counter the horrific significance of her death. The audiobook serves as much as a 70 year old Grammar’s ‘memento mori’, i.e. an object kept as a reminder of inevitability of death, as much as it is on the joy of life, by honoring the threads that connect him, his sister with his extended family. It’s a true crime book and an allegory on grief with enough stardust to keep you interested and enough random verbosity to make you irritated. I love Kelsey Grammar and Frasier. I first read about his sister’s murder way back in the 90s, probably in People Magazine, when Frasier first started airing. Karen Elisa Grammer was born on 15 july 1956 in NJ to Alan and Sally and raised by Sally, Gam, and grandpa Gordon. She was just another teenage girl living it up in 70s America. She had completed college, had a boyfriend, an apartment, a job. But Grammar successfully brings out how normal, average and cool his sister was. Yes, there are adjectives and superlatives but there is also heart and a human being at the center of it. Grammar calls her the “true child of 60s” - 12:34 chap.26 In Chap. 26, at the 17:41 mark of a 20 minute 30 seconds chapter, he describes her as “an Oreo cookie dipped in ice-cold coca cola” (17:41-17:45 of Chap. 26). However, Grammar is limited in recounting his sister's life because of the refusal of her two best friends to be part of this project, he doesn’t give the reason as to why they refused, whether it was small money quote or his celebrity status or their need for privacy or something else, he does not say. And so, he has had to rely on his spurts of memory and her college roommate to fill in the gaps of what she was like in life and college, with friends and boyfriends. What you are left with is a feeling of what could or would have been. This book is the ultimate victim impact statement and also the ultimate biography for a young seemingly unremarkable victim whose true strength is revealed in her last moments, when she didn’t give up, despite bleeding profusely. She could have been any one of us. She had the misfortune of being kidnapped by strangers who proceeded to have their way with her. Just the bare minimum of facts are enough to chill a listener to his or her bone. Grammar recites the inevitable at the 7% mark of audiobook. In the 49 minute long chap. 3 titled ‘Then’. She was weeks away from her 19th birthday. chap. 3: titled Then: 00:00-00:57: “Karen approached 3 men entering the back of a Red Lobster restaurant. She had come to pick up her paycheque before heading out to the mountains for the fourth of July weekend. The 3 men had come to rob the place. There had been several murders in Colorado Springs that summer. These men were responsible. Karen had no idea who there were. She asked them what they were up to but I’m fairly certain she discerned quickly what suddenly faced her: Destruction. The story I was told by district attorney and others involved in the arrest of these men, has never really been clear. I think they hoped to spare my feelings, to keep the horror of what had actually happened from me. I appreciate that and I accept their reasons for being vague. The specific details of her suffering were kept from me but some information had to be offered. Conjecture of what she suffered is probably just as brutal as the reality. My imaginings paint the worst picture. But this is Karen’s tragedy, not mine….Yes I offered that perspective earlier, but this tragedy is Karen’s triumph as well. Her strength that evening is unfathomable. Her dignity stands forever an inspiration to me. What I’ve endured is nothing by comparison but it was enough for me, enough to hollow me in the journey of life and love and joy for a long time. I could not forgive myself.” (7% completed, 13 h 4 min left. Chap. 3: 00:00-01:29) Grammer further says that at the time of the abduction, Red Lobster restaurant had a rule that employees could not stay or wait inside the venue, and that’s why Karen had to stand outside. Grammer says this rule makes no sense to him. I think he mentions that after Karen’s murder, this rule was changed but I’m not sure. She worked in the kitchen and was waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up. She was by her friend’s car, in the back alley. “The men abducted Karen. They held her hostage for several hours. the district attorney told me Karen negotiated with them for her life, she would do whatever they asked if they spared her. I’m not sure she laid it out like that. Perhaps she implied she hoped they would spare her. I’m sure by the time they took her to the apartment where she was raped and tortured by them Karen understood that her life was at stake. I have thought for years at her heart in that moment, how it must have been beating, not like a rabbit’s frozen in terror before a wolf but increased in urgent and calculating as she tried to offer them a way out of killing her. Karen was always the brave one. Karen could even stand up to my grandmother.” (7% completed, 13 h 4 min left. Chap. 3: 01:35-02:17) Should Grammar have focussed a bit more on the horrific, cold, cruel, torturous, vicious, murder? I don’t know the answer to that. But what he reveals is still bone-chilling: Karen was knees, violated, punched, beaten, blindfolded with blue scarf, freddie (glenn) ties her hands, raped, sodomised (Grammer calls them "animals"; and that "I'm in prison 49 years of that night"), taken their turns, discussion on what to do with karen? openly discussed killing her, medium (to connect with karen; who told her she had been taken out before death), back in the car with 2: michael corbett was not there, karen escaped from car for mobile homes . “she escaped briefly”, 42 stab wounds. 7 wounds sufficient to kill her, each one could be fatal. police and da unclear one escaping. freddie gleen slashed her throat almost decapittating her, she staggered across the street few hundred yards away, crawled to trailer, man in trailer found her, paramedics tried to revive her, they could not. For context, Michael Corbett, Larry Dunn, and Freddie Glenn were spree killers responsible for three grisly murders in and around Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1975. Corbett and Dunn were soldiers. Freddie Glenn was a civilian employee at a Colorado army base. All three were young men. Of these 3, Dunn got full immunity to testify against the other two, Michael Corbett and Freddie Glenn. Corbett died in prison. Grammar is an openly conservative Republican, and there are important opinions expressed here, such as his feelings about death penalty and abortion. Unfortunately, his views on these subjects made more news during his book promotion tour than his sister or the nature of grief and coping mechanisms. Grammer speaks about parole hearings and death penalty in Chapter 4 (44 minutes long chapter, 15% completed audiobook, 11 h 55 min left of audiobook), right around the time he mentions (21:00 - 21:50). “Freddie Glenns said he was a good kid. So I wonder what happened to him that somewhere in his life he had the effrontery and self-loathing to plunge a knife 42 times into Karen’s body, over and over again, his hatred stabbed into her, after he and his friends had raped her, more than once. And there was more. Some good kid. And now whenever he appears for parole his protestations are never about how he longs to do something good for the world. Or how he wishes he could take it all back. According to Mr. Glenn as far as I can tell, he’s been in jail long enough. Just a good kid who somehow ended up in prison for a murder that doesn’t quite merit the rest of his life incarcerated. So he tore apart an innocent girl, ruthlessly, mercilessly, violently.” (21:00 - 21:50, Chapter 4, 15 % completed) “We were the good kids. Karen was the good kid. This man was an executioner, without any law to guide him, no decency at all, and no humanity. As I spent the next months and years about how to go on, he spent hoping he could get out. Not be held accountable. He and his friend actually pleaded not guilty and would have us believe to this day it was just a slip up when it was a vicious, premeditated assassination and destruction of my 18 year old sister. Letting her live would’ve threatened the freedom of his friends and himself. So they happily performed desecration of an innocent girl for what was to be an extra month of freedom before they were sent to die in prison. Freddie Glenn received the death penalty for his crime. During the Carter administration the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to review all death penalty cases and so his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He owes his life for what he did. He owes 42 lifetimes for every stab wound he plunged into my sister. My opinion.” (22:00-23:05, Chapter 4) And Grammer is not a fan of the parole hearings he has to attend every 5 years or so to make sure Glenn doesn’t get out. There are 2 abortions mentioned in the book: One occurs very early on in Grammer’s dating life, when he was in his early twenties and he expresses he left the choice to the girlfriend. The baby was a son. He says he’s remorseful over it. The second abortion that he recounts is with his current wife, his fourth, Kayte. They lost one half of their unborn twins when one baby’s sack ruptured at 13 weeks (Chapter 23) and did not heal naturally, and he and his wife had to make the difficult decision to abort the baby, a fetus, a son, to keep the other twin, a daughter, alive. As Grammer says at the beginning of Chapter 23, “We begged God to spare us this tragic choice but sometimes we are asked to play God. So a needle through Kayte’s belly, into his heart, killed him. We killed him. We killed our son so Faith might live. We wept as we watched his heart stop. Saw it. It’s the greatest pain I have known. Kayte’s scream was enough to make a man mourn a lifetime. Another lifetime. Mom’s scream when she learnt of Karen’s murder.” (00:32-01:09, Chapter 23 (Chapter 23 occurs at 95% of audiobook, and is a 14 min.s 35 seconds long chapter). I like the 'stream of consciousness' style of writing that he adopted for this project but this book needed a strong editor who could gently tell Grammar to pipe it down a bit when he goes off on tangents, drifting off into a time he wants to memorialize for himself, and not for his sister or the listener. For example, while waiting around Barry College, Karen’s college, he eats Chick Fillet’s Grilled Nuggets for the first time in his life. As a 68 year old. His verdict: Not Bad. Maybe his age plays a role? He’s seventy years old and maybe that makes him more susceptible to look back and reminisce about anything and everything, to purge and create a historical record, no matter how insignificant it may be to a probable audience. In this regard, the one minute 30 second short Chapter 7 “A Letter to the Reader” works as his disclaimer for these excursions. He says he has several pictures of her in his home. He says he sees her everyday (‘He says he has several pictures of her in his home. He says he sees her everyday’ is from Chapter 15). In Chapter 15, that at the 20:09 mark, (2o:07-20:55) “Last night it seemed her presence was clearly with us. And it seemed she wanted us to know something. Something that might surprise me. Pothead. Maybe. Not earth shaking or any cause for shame. Makes sense. I see her reaching for that candy. Karen is coming into our realm. I’m not crazy. Perhaps I’m a little foolish or a bit too willing to believe I’m in touch with her. But I have spent a lifetime with Karen and I would know. Haven’t heard the sound of her voice as I long to but she was definitely around last night. It was a warm and enjoyable evening with her and my kids and Kayte. There was love and there was a bit of mischief. Karen. Yeah that was Karen.” The book is peppered with these sorts of manifestations of grief, for e.g. how it fractured his personality and relationships, how it contributed to his drug and alcohol use, how he wants to capture the vicissitudes of his sister’s brief experience in life by visiting her college, which she left after a semester to be with her boyfriend John, her last apartment, the ground floor apartment she shared with her boyfriend, and her last place of work, the red lobster restaurant that she was kidnapped from, which is now a pawnshop). He did not go to address where she was murdered, because he didn’t note down the address for the trip (as he reveals in Chap. 26). In these passages, he is as much a ghost as he is a narrator grieving all the adventures, mundane and iconic, that he got to have without her by his side. Like I said, I love him. I love his work. He has an amazing voice which is put to good use here, like elsewhere, and I wish him all the best. This is part of my summer 2025 recommendations. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. Review posted on Youtube: https://youtu.be/qr55LFzmbXo ...more |
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14 hours, 54 min ago
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Highly recommended. A big shoutout to this beautiful tearjerker, part romance, part terror. I just spent an entire day reading it. What a miserable way to spend a Sunday. I was close to crying on every page. The Death of Us by Abigail Dean is publish
Highly recommended. A big shoutout to this beautiful tearjerker, part romance, part terror. I just spent an entire day reading it. What a miserable way to spend a Sunday. I was close to crying on every page. The Death of Us by Abigail Dean is published in Great Britain by Hemlock Press, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers Ltd., London, and in United States by Viking. I read the blurb and was hooked immediately and thankfully my request for an ARC was accepted. The synopsis says the story is about a couple who are driven apart by a home invasion where the rapist terrorizes them for 5 hours and then leaves. He’s caught 25 years later by which time he has graduated to murders. There are lots of stories here, lots of victims, dead and alive. You’ll recognize the trajectory of grief in various kinds of victims the rapist killer leaves behind. The surveillance, stalking and sinister break-ins just to get a feel of the layout of the house and know the lives and interests of the residents, to destroy it piece by piece during the home invasion, the terror when the intruder shows up in front of the unsuspecting and sleepy couple, when a couple is separated, the infantilized husband in one room who can hear his wife being raped in the other room for hours but can do nothing to stop it, the wife is forced by the intruder to act like she’s enjoying the rape and she does not know whether she’ll live at the end of it or not, and then the murders of other couples, the children who are left unharmed, and souvenirs collected from the house as trophies. The wreckage is visceral and you’ll meet all the survivors and the routes they took to cope with the trauma. The relationships that get destroyed, the unspoken anger and helplessness, the way more power was given to the killer by indulging in hurting each other and self-destructive behavior. I’m sure the killer enjoyed each of the victim impact statements as affirmation of his enduring infamy, legacy and power. That’s why what Isabel and Edward do in the end, going against expectations to not give any more oxygen to this POS, is all the more powerful. It’s beautiful, incredible, and tragic. But more importantly, since I as the reader have gone through 30 years worth of life of not just this couple but everyone else’s in the book, I felt my heart breaking every now and then over what a waste of all that time, dwelling in all that pain, denying yourself love and joy because of feelings of shame, humiliation and low esteem. Early on Isabel is given back the items that were taken as trophies from the home, the mementos that meant the most to her and Edward, her wedding ring, her headphones and a teddy bear that Edward had given to her as a gift years ago. but I felt the most important thing the intruder / rapist took from them was their relationship which was most precious to both of them. I loved it. I also loved the interconnected family relationships, this couple does not exist in a vacuum away from their extended families and friends and everyone is fleshed out, not cardboard. The actions of police, detetctives, media, parents, all ring true. The dialogue complements the person saying the lines. If you’ve ever read true crime books or watched documentaries on the subject (like the ones on Golden State Killer, BTK), you’ll recognize these kinds of criminals and their modus operandi, the trauma that the victims and survivors live with, and the families of such criminals who say they didn’t know they were living with a serial killer and the rage that the community feels against such families (the alleged Gilgo Beach killer’s family and their 1 million dollar contract comes to mind). Opinion on that inevitable Film/TV Adaptation: My biggest fear is that one of the botoxed and expression-less actresses will be hired to play the role of Isabel in that inevitable series whether it airs on Netflix, or ITV or Channel 4: god please no Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, Scarlett Johansson, Amanda Seyfried, Rosamund Pike, Sydney Sweeney, Blake Lively, Ariana Grande or that girl from Anora who got the Oscar. None of these actresses have authentic facial expressions. None of them knows subtlety and Isabel has internalized so much of her trauma that the acting has to be subtle. Maybe someone as naturally beautiful as Leighton Meester if she can conjure up pain as an expression (which Meester can’t). My only hope is that someone like Song Ye-Jin is hired to play Isabel’s character. By that I don’t mean the actress should be necessarily Asian, rather if you’ve followed Song Ye-Jin’s careergraph she has always played melo-romantic roles who have emotional wounds and much is left unsaid, she plays women who are sometimes infuriatingly self-destructive and somewhat unlikeable, but always vulnerable and tragic, especially in 2006’s drama Alone in Love where she played part of an ex-couple who have gone through a traumatic experience (loss of a child) and get separated because of it, but are still in love with each other and find excuses to stay connected in each other’s lives, unable to move on. If you’ve seen that drama, you’d know what kind of subtle mood and movement I think this book requires in an adaptation. As for Edward, any one who can be the casually cool but repressed Kam Woo Sung from Alone in Love, so no Fassbender, no Timothee Chalamet, no digitally de-aged, no one with obviously muscled and toned body, no recipient of People Magazine’s sexiest man alive. Nigel Wood should be played by Sam Rockwell (I can’t imagine anyone else bringing in the terror the way he can (and can be put in a fat suit and old-age makeup for 2026 court room scenes) And the journalist Patrick Royce reminded me of Piers Morgan. I think Royce’s behavior and career debacles closely resemble those of Morgan’s. Only the author can confirm that one. And maybe Piers Morgan can be convinced to play the role? Andrew Pearson, the successful banker, survivor, creepy tragic figure, and Freddie, the man with a thousand plans that go nowhere, who will play the ever-faithful Freddie? I’m looking forward to that inevitable DEI adaptation. Spoilers: Now I’m going to vent over and this is a spoiler territory so anyone not wishing to continue on reading or listening to the review, kindly tune out now: Spoiler: I think it would’ve been more believable if the author Abigail Dean had written both Isabel and Edward as being tied up. It was underwhelming to know in the end that Edward had simply been left in the guest bedroom without being tied up. It was hard for me to believe that the untied husband would not try to get out of the guest bedroom through some window and get help or try to fight the intruder by grabbing hold of some lamp or something. I mean Edward was not tied up. There was no guarantee that Edward or Isabel would be ‘allowed to live’ and he trusted the intruder / rapist to keep his word?! That was hard on me. The media and the other surviving husbands focussed on the salacious part of what it was like for the husband to sit through the rape next door, but for me the infuriating and unforgivable part was why didn’t Edward get up and do something. Spoiler #2: Other than that, I think Edward was more likeable as a person than Isabel and more easy to get along with than Isabel. Isabel had a problem long before she ever met Edward, she’d already tried to kill herself once before, so that kind of a girl needed therapy long before any intruder decided to ruin their lives. But Edward’s behavior after the attack, to try to pick up life as it was before the attack, was also fool-hardy perhaps. Spoiler #3: Edward’s trauma and statement in the end in court was not explored as well as it could’ve been. Spoiler #4: Isabel wrote the victim impact statement - which is the entirety of this book - the book is her victim impact statement - but she gave it to Edward instead of reading it to Nigel Woods, the court, the world or the media and the public. She gave it to the person she’d loved, the only person who’s opinion mattered to her, who had seen her at her best and her worst, and accepted her and encouraged her. How hopeless and hopeful at the same time. A beautiful, beautiful romance, I swear. Memorable Lines: The book is divided into 3 parts. And on netgaplley reader, part 1 ends on 40%, part 2 ends on 94%. So part 3 is a bit of an epilogue of sorts. I’m sharing few of the many memorable lines here - which also contain spoilers so anyone wishing to not know anything, should stop reading / listening the review: I still dream about nights like that, every now and then. A wistfulness creeps across my life, tightening each time I realize something or other will not happen again. There was the happy mess of getting ready together, plucking eyeshadow and lipstick from one another’s bags, everybody sharing the same mirror, upending glasses into something plastic for the taxi. There was the incoherent journey to the club, when the driver heard all our best secrets: that Ciaran no longer knew if he loved the girl he lived with, that Lyndsey had slept with somebody that term who said, just before he came, that the Concorde was coming in to land. That I had spoken to Edward nearly every day since September. Yes, yes, I know. At the end of it was the club, the pound for entry and the descent into smoke and noise, the stick of heels on wood, the happy mass of the dance floor. 15% I know, Nigel. You had it worse. You grew up with a brother who broke your arm twice. Your mother left your father and dated again. There were a few boyfriends, some of whom despised you. A number of whom put you in your place. Your brother was sent to a juvenile detention centre, then a prison, then a serious prison. I assume you became a policeman out of spite, which is a sentiment I can appreciate and which could, I suppose, have been a neat ending to your story. When they caught you and collated the details of your childhood—the dim social housing, the toothless matriarch, the contempt for women and the desire to belittle men—I was disappointed. You were so predictable. 10% “What I would say to you, Mr. Wood,” Mrs. Covington said, “is that I became such a fearful person, after I met you. That was how my son always knew me, as this frightened little woman. You didn’t kill me, and you didn’t rape me, and we all survived you. I’ve always been very thankful for that. But by God. By God. It sounds like a small thing, I suppose. But I was so much more fun before I met you.” 17% I remember the strangeness of the house. I lifted a picture from our bedroom wall one Saturday morning and took it to Edward, who stood at the kettle with the hood of his sweatshirt hiding his face. “Where did it come from?” I said. “Did you choose it?” It was an innocuous thing, a photograph of moorlands in Derbyshire, a white hut we had walked to one summer. “Isabel,” he said. “It’s been there for years.” “In that same place?” “Just there.” “I don’t like it,” I said. And this happened. I disposed of clothes I had loved, replaced our muddled crockery with uniform collections. I painted our bedroom, horribly, in Dead Salmon, and lined the fireplaces with diffusers. “An exorcism?” Edward said. Wouldn’t that be nice? But there was no exorcising you, Nigel. You changed the way I walked home on a Friday evening. You changed the taste of wine, the plot of a novel, the confidence of Edward’s hands. 46% Nina had left her statement on the table. A single sheet of Times New Roman. She would have printed it before she left for New York, just in case the hotel didn’t have the facilities. He thought of her packing, checking for it the way a wedding guest might check for their speech. Nina. He knew her well. He would take the thing with him and spare her the risk of it being discovered. He glanced at the paper only once, knowing better than to seek out pain that might otherwise be avoided. But the one line he saw stopped him halfway to standing, something she had never acknowledged, though he had always hoped she might know: Despite you, I’ve still been loved. 81% “You will stay here,” the Invader said. “Just like this. Do you understand? You don’t move. Whatever you hear, you will stay. Do you understand?” “Yes.” “Good. Good boy. If you leave this room, I will kill her. But if you stay here, if you’re a good little boy, I’ll only kill you.” “Only me?” “Only you. I’ll leave her. I’ll let her live.” The Invader was standing. Edward did not move. He did not move when the Invader left the room. His brain was flailing for the fix, the weakness, the thing he must have missed. It could find nothing. He did not move when the noises began. He did not move when sunlight found him, spreading slowly across the carpet and onto his naked back. He did not move when the Invader returned. This is it, he thought, and in the thought there was relief. He would never need to face her. He would never know what happened next. “Close your eyes,” the Invader said. He gripped Edward’s hair and pressed his face into the carpet. “Count to one hundred,” the Invader said. And though he could hear Isabel crying, calling for him, not knowing whether he was alive or dead, he counted. He counted all the way to one hundred, just as he was told.84% The impact of Mr. Wood’s actions might be summarised best by the fact that I have never shared this before,” Edward said. “In some sense, I’ve been lying there ever since, just as he asked me to. But I believe—for the sake of the people I love—that it may be time for me to get up off the floor.” He found Isabel’s eyes. “I’ve spent a lot of my life terribly ashamed,” he said. “To me, it didn’t matter what Mr. Wood had threatened, only that I had succumbed to it. I had done nothing. I had done nothing while my wife was tortured. I had abandoned her when she needed me the most. I believed that I had lost my role as her partner, and with it lost her respect. I understand, now, that this was Mr. Wood’s exact intention. 85% She looked at him now. There was terrible sadness in her face. He had spoken with an authority he hoped would subdue any sympathies, but she knew him better. He could see longing, too, for the lives they had not lived, or had not lived together. He watched as she stood and walked to the stand. Her hair bobbed with each step. She held her head careful and high, looking at nobody. At the front of the room, she turned to the judge. “I have nothing to say,” she said. “You’re quite sure, Ms. Nolan?” “Nothing at all.” But she stayed there a moment longer, frowning, as if there was still some decision left to be made. “He does not deserve a word of it.”85% Link to Video Review: https://youtu.be/cNPCZsJPbBE ...more |
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Apr 07, 2025 04:01PM
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Maureen Callahan brings all of her mean girl energy to this project where the storied Kennedy men are good-for-nothing, dumb, sex fiends whose toxic entitlement and recklessness ruined the lives of virgins, girlfriends and wives, through abandonment,
Maureen Callahan brings all of her mean girl energy to this project where the storied Kennedy men are good-for-nothing, dumb, sex fiends whose toxic entitlement and recklessness ruined the lives of virgins, girlfriends and wives, through abandonment, alienation, accident and murder. However, except for the two young women, Mary Jo Kopechne who could’ve been saved had Ted Kennedy called the police and / or help (instead of his party buddies), and Pamela Kelley Burkley (whose medical condition due to an accident caused by Joseph Kennedy needed lifelong proper financial support from him which she didn’t), or Martha Moxley [whose murder Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel was convicted for, a decision later vacated on technical grounds] or Rosemary Kennedy [who was incapacitated by a risky and controversial medical procedure], I did not see nor read of any female victims in this book. Certainly not the ones that made it to the book’s cover, to sell the book. Everyone in this book is an opportunist: which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has access to power, privilege, glamour and money. Maureen Callahan seems to have more of a problem with the fact that girls bedded the Kennedy men and wives stayed married to these rich playboys, than the flavors-of-the-month and the wives themselves. The wives, girlfriends and virgins had no problem being around these men. She coats them in feminist undertones and talks about the repressive times they lived in, to give gravitas to a book. None of these women had any aspirations to be anything other than being surrounded by power, privilege, fame, glamour and money and having a good time with all of it. Are the wives and girlfriends of today’s politicians any different? Callahan strategically takes away the inherent female power to choose, by writing them as docile, gullible and passive women [She infantilizes the various political wives such as Rose, Joan, Ethel, Kathleen, Mary Richardson, Maria Shriver and Carolyn Bessette. She literally calls Jackie Kennedy a prostitute for choosing to marry one of the richest men in the world!!! And Marilyn Monroe’s preference for well-established top guys from various fields, whether sports, literature or politics is set aside for a victim persona; I don’t want to make light of any virgin’s first time in the sack, but it is said that Washington is hardly the place for faithful married men and a President who dips in the White House pool with aides and babes should’ve been a red flag for any intern - it wasn’t a red flag for Mimi Beardsley Alford and Diana De Veigh. Callahan takes away both Beardsley Alford’s and De Veigh’s agency to say no or to think for themselves, in her rush to paint JFK and his cronies as exploitative, which they were]. These passages are shocking to read not because of the sex, everyone’s a consenting adult, so what? but that it occurred in the White House. The spite with which Callahan writes about JFK and RFK assassinations, you’d think they deserved to be shot. There are racist overtones when she mentions Aristotle Onassis - the only man and person to be called a ‘vulgarian’ and a ‘monster’ in this book - his crime? Living large as a billionaire. Having a sexual appetite and peculiar kinks. Or is it marrying a Kennedy? Or being an outsider as a Greek tycoon? My assumption is his biggest crime in Callahan’s eyes was being an outsider who thought he could buy his way into polite society by marrying a Kennedy - that same racist trope that Daily Mail, which Callahan is a columnist for, successfully used against Mohammed Al Fayed when his son Dodi started courting Princess Diana and died with her one Paris night. This book is a good summer beach read specifically because it focusses on the sexual peccadilloes, the bonk-fests of the rich and famous political figures, and their missteps, cruel indifference and downright criminal negligence with respect to some women. It’s a soap opera, a non-fictional telenovella. But should the reader feel sorry for any woman other than Kopechne and Kelley? I don’t think so. The only thing that really stands out as memorable in this 400 page tome is that the liberal media (such as the New York Times) dilutes the impact of negative facts regarding the Kennedys by subjective or biased reporting. With the advent of social media and podcasts, legacy media in th U.S., which is heavily aligned with Democrats and liberal, so-called progressive ideals, is a dying breed and Callahan knows it. But she’s part of the conservative media belt, and no better in her bias. Callahan’s book was in the Top 10 of bestseller lists all through the summer and autumn of 2024. And that’s because the Kennedy men of an era long gone, and the women in their lives, still make so much news and money for the authors and the publishing houses even today. To Callahans and publishers of they are a gift that keeps on giving. Review posted on YouTube: https://youtu.be/e6wUERPNUvg On Marilyn Monroe: https://youtu.be/yh8_a-5lg8I https://youtu.be/_8jYdY_MLHM https://youtu.be/oi_2TzXqbr8 Jackie's Sex Life with Onassis: https://youtu.be/cQbVRlo_eAA Ted Kennedy & Mary Jo Kopechne: https://youtu.be/i3vRkG6R_qM Pamela Kelley Burkley & Joseph Kennedy II: https://youtu.be/sk3sRPAHdyQ ...more |
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Feb 09, 2025 10:48PM
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[image] 'Fabbricante di lacrime' also known as 'The Tearsmith' is a 570 page Italian language young adult novel published by Magazzini Salani in 2021. This book is a monstrous hit, translated in either 26 or 36 languages, depending on which site’s bl [image] 'Fabbricante di lacrime' also known as 'The Tearsmith' is a 570 page Italian language young adult novel published by Magazzini Salani in 2021. This book is a monstrous hit, translated in either 26 or 36 languages, depending on which site’s blurb you read. You can read it for free in the English language with translation done by Eleanor Chapman, published in the UK by Michael Joseph, and in the U.S. by Dell, all under the umbrella of Penguin Random House Company, in 2024. It is available as an epub on the link given in the description box below. [https://spread.epub.pub/epub/65c357e6...] ‘The Tearsmith’ is written by pseudonymous Erin Doom, whose real name is quoted as Matilde by the company (Rainbow CGI) that did the graphics for the Netflix film adaptation released in 2024. There’s even a picture of the 'author' on Penguin Random House webpage. That adaptation was no.1 on Netflix for a while, but I feel the book should’ve been turned into a limited 12-part series, because there’s a lot of material in the book, story arcs, crisis, issues and characters that get short-changed, cramped or simply ignored in the movie. The movie feels rushed, though the other-worldly or dark, moody, and unsettling feel of the book is retained for the film, but since the movie is 1 hour 40 minutes long, and fleetingly mentions each timeline’s terrible truth you don’t end up being connected to either the characters, their traumas or their struggles. The actors playing the key roles of Nica and Rigel feel wooden and one-dimensional. The FL looks too mature and refined and super-model-ish to be Nica and ML looks like he’s gone through some cosmetic procedure or two to get those cheek bones - his hair style has more expressions than he does. And you don’t care about the forbidden romance either, which is what a teen romance movie is supposed to do and this one doesn’t. But the book is another story altogether: it has depth and meaning, very real-world problems, that go beyond the usual teenage rebellious streak or sexual angst. Sunnycreek Home, the orphanage in Alabama where the protagonists, Nica and Rigel, first meet is a menacing, claustrophobic and brutal place all because of the cruel and sadistic machinations of its administrator - Mrs. Margaret Fridge - she’s called a missus but whose missus she has been remains unknown. This orphanage is probably worse than the one Oliver Twist lived in - because Mrs. Fridge treats the kids as props used, abused, humiliated and tortured by her in new inventive ways. She does this to all of them - all except one, i.e. Rigel, the 7 year old boy who was left as a baby in a basket at the institute’s doorstep and has known no other place. The boy is beautiful and is named by some matron as ‘Rigel’ the seventh brightest star in the sky, thus named by the matron before Mrs. Fridge because he was 7 days old when found. Over the years each new adminsitrator has adored him and Mrs. Fridge dotes on him. She makes sure he gets piano lessons and he’s very good at playing the instrument. This would make some other boy very happy (to survive such a place and get special attention to boot) but for Rigel it’s a cross to bear, because every other kid is treated badly by Mrs. Fridge, and he feels he doesn’t deserve to be loved, suffering from abandonment issues as well as disgust at being loved by a monster like Mrs. Fridge. As Peter, one of the other boys, who later on in the story has a pivotal role in bringing Mrs. Fridge to court to answer for her crimes against children, tells Nica that Rigel screams at night and is full of rage, ‘scraping at grass like an animal….all he knows is pain.’ This is because Rigel has psychological trauma, headaches that increase in severity with age and (in the film, there’s an actual tumor in his brain that is surgically removed). Imagine a literal Russian Roulette being played out daily right in front of you and you are unable to help anyone, you can only watch the misery of the rest of the children. So while he’s pleasant with everyone, he spends a lot of his time alone, by himself, doesn’t seek out other children’s company, and is feared by other children, hence has no friends either. Parents who come to the institute for adoption always pick Rigel, who displays impeccable manners in front of them but he always refuses to leave and his wishes are accepted by Mrs. Fridge. He wears a ‘charming mask’ for adults, and this is something that I wish they’d shown in the film, but the script just shows a disheveled, jealous and mysterious Rigel who looks at everyone with an expressionless, frozen facade. He’s described in the book as follows: “Unlike many of us, he hadn’t lost his parents. No tragedy had befallen his family when he was little. They had found him in front of the institute’s gates in a wicker basket, with no note and no name, abandoned in the night with only the stars to watch over him like great sleeping giants. He was only a week old. They named him Rigel after the brightest star in the constellation of Orion, which was shining that night like a diamond web spun on a bed of black velvet. With the surname Wilde, they filled the void of his identity. For all of us at The Grave, that was where he was born. It was obvious even from his appearance that the night shone through his skin, as pale as the moon, and his black eyes stared with the steadiness of someone unafraid of the dark. Ever since he was a child, Rigel had been the jewel in The Grave’s crown. ‘The son of the stars,’ the matron before Mrs Fridge had called him. She adored him so much that she taught him to play the piano. She would sit with him for hours, with a patience that never extended to the rest of us, and with note after note she transformed him into an impeccable boy who shone out against the grey walls of the institute. Rigel seemed as good as he looked. He had perfect teeth and got good grades. The matron would sneak him candy before dinner. He was the child everybody would have wanted.” Then at the age of 7, he sees Nica enter the building. Nica is the 5 year old daughter of biologists who were killed in a car accident that she survived. Nica is the name of a butterfly species. With no next of kin to support her, she is packed off to the orphanage from hell where she is introduced to the cold and calculating administrator Mrs. Margaret Fridge who reminds her that she cannot bring anything from her past life there - which is weird and cruel when you think about it - imagine being made to feel unwanted in an institution that’s supposed to protect you and told you cannot keep mementos of your loved ones. Nica’s mother’s necklace heirloom that she brought is snatched away and unbeknownst to her, kept safe by Rigel. Oh yes, Rigel - the 7 year old has fallen for the 5 year old. I don’t know which planet that usually happens on, but that’s the story here and that’s what we have to believe because the aloof Rigel’s every move is from thereon to protect the vulnerable Nica, who is targeted by Mrs. Fridge over imagined sights and perceived disobedience. Whenever Nica displeases Mrs. Fridge, she’s tied up in a dark unlit basement for hours on end. Scared, at her wit’s end, she cries herself to sleep, delirious with pain but always is comforted by someone who quietly holds her hand in the dark without saying a word. Nica always believes that it’s her bosom friend Adeline who comforts her, but it was always Rigel. Rigel also saves Nica from punishment by taking blame for Nica’s mistakes. So Nica and Rigel co-exist, but Nica is afraid of Rigel because he is never nice to her, never talks to her and even when she tries to show care for him, he brushes her off. This is his defense mechanism. I mean, he’s not an adult any more than she is, and he knows that wrath of Mrs. Fridge will descend on anyone who dares to be next to him. As she says: “I had learnt to see beneath, beneath his smiles, his pale lips, the mask of perfection he wore with everybody else. I knew that he harboured the night within him, and that hidden in the folds of his soul was the darkness he had been plucked from. Rigel always acted…strangely with me. I had never been able to explain it. It was as if I had somehow done something to deserve that behaviour, his distant, silent glares.” Well, the pre-pubescent boy had feelings for the girl and of course she doesn’t know. She will, in time. [image] Nica has survivor’s guilt as well as a deep interest in protecting and preserving and rescuing insects, wasps, birds and butterflies. This tenderness towards small creatures is inherited from her parents, especially her mom - they were biologists and she remembers what her mother used to say. There’s a small anecdote (in Chap. 4: 'Band-Aids') about how she cured an injured sparrow and it’s foreshadowing how she conquers Rigel’s and his fears: “He pecked me when I tried to check on his wing. He tried to stay away from me. But every time, I persisted with tenderness. I made him a bed out of grass and leaves and whispered to him to be patient. And the day he got better, the day he flew away from my hands, was the first time in my life I felt a little less dirty and dull. I felt a little more alive. A little freer.” The beauty within her is her kindness, the way she makes everyone better and sees the best in everyone. She also yearns to belong to someone, a family that loves her. But she is never picked up by anyone and her chances are slim as a teenager as she admits “No one wanted teenagers. No one wanted older children, never, not under any circumstances…It was a proven fact. It was like in the dog shelter – everyone wanted a puppy, because they were cute, innocent, and easy to train. No one wanted a dog that had been there its whole life.” You may be wondering what does the name ‘Tearsmith’ have to do with such a story, and even I had trouble with it when I watched the film and read the book, but re-reading the following lines from the Prologue brings everything together and makes sense within the context of the story: Tearsmith is described in the Prologue as follows: “A world where no one could cry, and people’s souls were empty, stripped of all emotion. But hidden far from everyone lived a little man cloaked in shadows and boundless solitude. A lonely artisan, pale and hunched, whose eyes were clear like glass and could produce crystal teardrops. People went to him in order to cry, to feel a shred of emotion – because tears encapsulate love and the most heart-wrenching of farewells. They are the most intimate extension of the soul. More than joy or happiness, it is tears that make us truly human. And the Tearsmith fulfilled this desire. He slipped his tears and all that they held into people’s eyes. And so it came to be that they learnt to cry: with anger, desperation, pain and anguish. Excruciating passions, disappointments and tears, tears, tears – the Tearsmith corrupted a world of purity, tainting it with the deepest and darkest of emotions. ‘Remember, you cannot lie to the Tearsmith,’ they would say, to finish the tale.” The Tearsmith mythology with respect to this story works because these children have repressed feelings, unmet dreams and unfulfilled desires to be loved and cherished and accepted. Their hopes and longings are crushed in ‘the orphanage they call The Grave’ where they are not even respected. Tearsmith is simply a creature that makes you feel and you cannot lie to it. That is true for what Rigel feels for Nica and what Nica comes to feel for Rigel. Even if they never fell for each other, being brought up in an orphanage such as this, living though such an isolating, excruciating and dysfunctional experience as being in The Grave orphanage, they were bound together mentally in a way that only they could understand what the other had gone through. As she herself says in ‘Chap. 26 Fairy-Tale Beggars’ : “He knew my nightmares better than anyone. He knew all of the places I was cracked, and there was something protective and desperate about the way he touched me. Something that seemed to both desire and protect my vulnerabilities. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.” No person with a happy childhood with intact family or an orphan from some other welfare institute could understand what these two had gone through, and others like them, in the place they grew up in, and the scars, psychological and physical that Mrs. Fridge had left behind. With damp ceilings, mould walls, and a sadistic manager, it’s the place to crush the spirit, soul, mind and body of every child who is unlucky enough to step into its world. Especially Rigel, because he suffers debilitating headaches because of the psychological torture he goes through. As Nica says, “Everyone who ended up there seemed condemned to a fate of decrepit dead-ends, just like the road that led to it.” The book also deals with real, broken, damaged and dysfunctional teenagers just trying to grow and build something of themselves in a world where they are either misunderstood or mistreated or ill-defined because they don’t fit a mould or box. No one is suffering a terminal illness in this one (like A Fault in Our Stars), no one is a 100-year old vampire perennially in a high school lusting after a 17 year old girl (ala Twilight) and no one is in a deathly struggle for survival as it was in The Hunger Games and Divergent. And that’s what makes Tearsmith a better book than those teenage pipedreams. There is nothing exceptional about what Rigel or Nica or Peter or Adeline, Asia, or Miki or Billie or Lionel go through, just the ups and downs of life and reactions, good, bad and ugly. Chapter 26 ‘Fairy-Tale Beggars’ has this beautiful line: ‘It doesn’t matter if you are destroyed. It doesn’t matter if I am. Mosaics are made out of shattered shards of glass, and look how wondrous they are.’ And if it had been adapted into a 12-parter series, this would’ve been explored more, but everything is rushed over in the film. The sexual tension between Rigel and Nica is treated with more depth than the emotional turmoil of the orphanage. So Nica wants to escape and get the chance in life denied to her till the age of 19 when as an adult she can leave Sunny Creek Home and be on her own. A grieving couple, Anna and Norman, who have lost their teenage son, come looking for a teenage girl to take home as daughter - and Anna, the mother, sees and likes Nica, but then she sees Rigel playing the piano and likes him too. Rigel makes sure that he catches her eye and is selected as well because he cannot bring himself to be separated from the love of his life. Nica does not like this development but of course has no say in the matter. Two teenagers are taken to a quaint small house with comfy interiors, separate bedrooms and food in the fridge and on the table. They are to live as brother and sister, study in a safe, secure and loving environment - Anna and Norman are thoughtful surrogate parents. Rigel immediately thinks that all that they wanted to do was replace the pain of losing their son by having another son, so he still feels inadequate and minds his onw business. Nica is apprehensive for similar reason but also because she doesn’t want Rigel to mess it up for her. The only problem is, Rigel can never think of her as a sister and she doesn’t think of him as a brother. And there in lies the catch: There are a lot of scenes where Rigel and Nica get hot and heavy or touchy feely such as Chap. 9 (Thorns & Roses), Chap. 25 (Collision Course), Chap. 26 (Fairy-tale Beggars), Chap. 29 (Heart against Heart) , Chap. 27 (Tights), Chap. 28 (A Single Song), and the book has one of the best well-written sex scenes that I can think of that goes on and on for an entire Chap. 30 (Until the very End) only to be over-taken by the one written in Chap. 35 (A Promise). Incest or presumed incest is taboo, and what can be done or should be done when love or sexual relationship exists between adopted um, teenagers, 17 and 19? That could’ve been explored in its full intensity in the film or some series, but it isn’t. And the last topic that is rushed through in the film is the court case and conviction of matron Mrs. Margaret Fridge for abusing kids, a crime that the book says has no statue of limitations in the Satte of Alabama. All of these, even the ending, is bunched up in a hurry as if cooking french fries at Mc Donald’s. A shame really, because the novel has greyer characters and has more colorful layers than many young adult / teen romance books and deserved better live-action treatment. The book could’ve explored Norman’s relationship with Rigel (as an adoptive parent-son). By the end, Rigel is ‘sending satellites into space’, Nica is a veterinarian, he is 34, she is 32 ,and they have a 5 year old daughter, Rose: “Many of the atoms you’re made of, from the calcium in your bones to the iron in your blood, were created in the heart of a star that exploded millions of years ago.’ His slow, deep voice caressed the air like a wonderful symphony. I was sure she hadn’t understood, but nevertheless, her mouth fell open into a little O. Rigel said she was the spitting image of me when she had that expression.” (Epilogue) There’s something beautiful that the author writes in the Acknowledgments section, where she addresses her readers and says: “I hope you know that… Crying is human. Crying means feeling, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with collapsing and letting go. It doesn’t mean we’re weak, it means we’re alive, that our hearts are beating, worrying and burning with emotions. I hope you know that… You don’t need to be scared of not being perfect. No one is perfect, and fairy tales are also for those who don’t think they deserve them, even for those who think they’re too different and broken to want one at all. Look for them. Do it. Don’t give up. They’re not always easy to find. Sometimes they’re hidden in a person, in a place, in a feeling, or inside you. Sometimes they’re a bit worse for wear, but they’re there, before your eyes, waiting to be discovered. And I hope you know that… We all have our Tearsmith. And all of us, in turn, are someone else’s.” Review on Youtube: https://youtu.be/Ks3U0iYUyrE ...more |
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Nov 13, 2024 08:17AM
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Book:**, Film:**.5 You know before you even get into the thick of it that this relationship will not last, cannot last, and is not supposed to last, for multiple reasons, not just because of the 24 year age difference between the man and the girl. The Book:**, Film:**.5 You know before you even get into the thick of it that this relationship will not last, cannot last, and is not supposed to last, for multiple reasons, not just because of the 24 year age difference between the man and the girl. There’s poverty, hard work, and social isolation that the girl almost certainly will face if the village finds out about her lover, even if they get married respectably. The 40 year old Thorston Henner, handsome alcoholic womanizer, is a literal dead-end because he will never change, never learn new things and will never fit in anywhere other than his neglected and ruined fertile land. He has no direction nor spirit for anything other than the well-bred horses he keeps, the books he reads, the booze and the rough sex. His farm is in shambles, his wife has left him, his 90-year old grandmother is dead and he believes himself to be an outsider just like his mother was and is generally prone to morose ambiguity. Maria Bergmann the 16 year old girl from divorced parents, has no sunny future with Henner. But the book and the film make you wish they would, for a few summers at least. It’s the summer of 1991, set in a German village where time has stood still, which can be seen as either a blessing or a place where dreams go to die. Someday we’ll tell each other everything by Daniela Krien. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch, published in Great Britain by by MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus, London in 2013. There's an excellent book store in Lahore, Pakistan by the name of 'Readings' and I bought it for PKR 978 this year. This was first published in the German language as 'Irgendwann werden wir uns alles erzählen' by Graf Verlag, Munich in 2011. It has been adapted as a film directed by Emily Atef, the screenplay has been written by both the author Krien and the director Atef. and that is probably why the film is not only beautifully visualized and shot, languid in its pacing, but also expounds on the weird and intense sexual relationship that quietly explodes on the screen and the book’s pages between the very-much 40 man and too much 16 girl. I only wish they’d also focussed on Henner’s background and his non-sexual life with Maria. Still, I think this is one of the better book-to-film adaptations, where the book is the lesser of the two. It’s not Shakespeare nor is it a standard coming-of-age folly of youth but something’s there on the screen. The actors, both main leads and all of the side characters, the background score and the silence that frames key scenes bring the affair, the village fields and the post-German unification time period to life. I’ve seen the old man, underage girl trope used more frequently in Japanese dramas than anywhere else (this is just my observation not a fact set in stone) and the more memorable, I should say bewildering jdrama with this trope was the one from the 90s in which a train station’s attendant runs off with the wife of a rich man, who brings her 9 year old daughter along for the ride. The rich man hunts for them, while they hide. And then the wife dies, the boyfriend goes to jail and when he is out after a few years, the daughter of his lover’s, who is now 16 or 19 is waiting for him at the train station and they end up together! And I was like, what in the name of creepy hell was that? But Japanese dramas usually go where no one else does. That was the 11-episode jdrama was ‘Aoi Tori’ / Blue Bird / L'oiseau Bleu, 1997. Here, Maria Bergmann is a directionless girl. Her father was never around, citing work as an excuse to always be away from home (as she recalls on pages 108 to 113) with a miserable, lonely mother, whose misery and loneliness only grew once the husband left for good. He does leave the wife and daughter a house in town, though and Maria’s mother lives with her in-laws in that house. In May of 1991, the year that the events of the story take place, Maria goes to live at her boyfriend Johannes’ family farm in the village because she has an unhappy home life. The village is a character in the book, nothing dramatic happens there, people from the nearest town often visit just to have a quiet walk. The Brendels’ farm and Henner’s farm are separated by a road and railways tracks and are the biggest ones in the village. While the Brendels raise sheep, cattle, chickens and vegetable produce, and converted the store next to their kitchen into a thriving small shop, Henner has let the farm go disarray, only concentrating on the well-bred horses he keeps. Everyone around Maria is growing, changing or otherwise moving. The Brendels have big plans for business expansion, by getting more land on lease to grow crops and fruit trees, cattle and process the milk yield into butter and cheese. Maria’s boyfriend is passionate about photography and plans on joining an arts college in a big city. She stopped studying and may have to repeat tenth grade. Her only job prospect is working as a waitress at the local tavern, leaving with her mother for another city or getting married to some farm hand. I believe she would’ve stayed with Henner, despite his warnings about social disapproval and certain isolation, and lived the hard life on a farm with a mercurial man in the second stage of his life. Pages 165 to 181 give a glimpse of what their life together would’ve been like. Henner had started believing in life and love after a very long time, there was hope in the air, he was mending fences, gathering fruit to be turned to jam. Though he’d been living off the inheritance and making money off the horses, he had begun making plans for renting out rooms, giving riding lessons, making a baby with Maria. I thought her future was almost certainly with her mother in the new city, where her mother’s brother lived, with a new hotel being built, new staff needed, which would’ve opened up a totally different world of opportunities and society for the teenage girl. However, she chooses Johannes, Leipzig, and a future full of secrets. Youtube Link to Book & Film Review: https://youtu.be/b36WybsV6jo ...more |
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Quotes by Noorilhuda
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“I choose to believe that my father is still alive, that he has survived death, outlived us all, and possesses the soul that goes on and lives forever; We just cannot see him yet, for we have not caught up with him. our time will come just as his did. and no matter how woeful and lost I was when he passed away, I know I will be glad to go to a place where I can see him, and know he is okay and happy. It’s just not my time yet and there is no way of knowing if any of it is true." - Jane Adams”
― Noorilhuda, The Governess
― Noorilhuda, The Governess
“She waited for a man who would marvel her with his intellect, wit and physique, all at the same time. Someone who would beguile her, unnerve her, possess her, and claim her and then make her jealous with deceit and accusations. Someone who wouldn’t bore her after a few hours of company. Someone who wouldn’t be distracted by someone younger than her - even at that age, she had her insecurities........ She waited for a man who would be worth a chase and a challenge, who would beguile her and ravage her, and be true to her. She was no fool. She knew the limitations of affectation and ceremonial overtures between husband and wife. She knew the limits of compatibility, being put off by a few of her suitors instantly. She knew that love was not a guarantee to lifetime of happiness. She knew the importance of money and it’s effect on men. She knew the value of having the best in jewelry, clothes and company, for a person was judged accordingly, and if one wished to be a success, one had to look the part. And that required continuity of resources, not affection. But still she waited. She waited for a man who would surprise her beyond her expectations. She waited for a man who would be magical. She waited for a man who would never come.”
― Noorilhuda, The Governess
― Noorilhuda, The Governess
“Had he not been the keeper of the flame, of anguish, trapped under the brilliance of what she had been to him? He had been a man of permanence, how could he have swayed to emotion like this?”
― Noorilhuda, The Governess
― Noorilhuda, The Governess
Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All About Books: Literary romance? Is this a thing? | 38 | 167 | Nov 19, 2014 12:09PM | |
| Bookworm Bitches : Nice Girls Finish Last? | 1 | 23 | Nov 23, 2014 06:56AM | |
| Romance Lovers fo...: Favorite regency novels | 4 | 54 | Nov 23, 2014 07:46AM | |
| Romance Lovers fo...: Favorite Authors | 21 | 80 | Nov 23, 2014 09:28AM | |
| Of Human Bondage | 17 | 208 | Nov 26, 2014 11:58AM | |
| The Next Best Boo...: Blog List, Twitter, etc. | 81 | 464 | Nov 28, 2014 07:04AM | |
| THE Group for Aut...: How are you measuring your success? | 8 | 39 | Nov 30, 2014 08:41PM | |
| Review Group: Reviews and ratings questions for the group | 10 | 40 | Dec 14, 2014 08:50AM | |
| Book Nook Cafe: Recipes Thread #4 ~~ 2014 | 156 | 62 | Dec 17, 2014 07:11PM | |
Romance Lovers fo...:
Favorite Holiday Reads 2014
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28 | 33 | Dec 27, 2014 07:49PM |
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou
― Maya Angelou
“A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“For all the largesse of my mind’s colony where a vividly enflamed man would take off each of the precious stones and melt away the cast, his success ultimately lay in being nice to me, being nice to himself irrespective of the behavior of each; of being proud of me and of himself irrespective of worldly success; holding me in regard with an almost primitive sense of courage, irrespective of the purity of my body or spirit.”
― Noorilhuda, The Governess
― Noorilhuda, The Governess
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