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A carregar... THE KINDNESS OF WOMEN (original 1991; edição 1991)por J. G. Ballard (Autor)
Informação Sobre a ObraThe Kindness of Women por J. G. Ballard (1991)
A Novel Cure (631) A carregar...
Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. A fictionalized account of Ballard's adult life in England. As with his childhood, trauma intrudes, making life challenging. ( ) when i was in grammar school or jr. high school (middle school to some of you freaks) i read "the world according to garp" and my eyes were jerked wide open, revealing so suddenly that adulthood was a desolate place where i wasn't sure i ever wanted to be. there was a build-up of this feeling throughout the book, but i distinctly remember the exact scene where this warning exploded in my face, making everything crystal clear and filling me with a nihilism that took me decades to shake. this book gave me a shadowy echo of the same feeling, this time centered around the middle-aged years so closely ahead of me. desperation and desolation chase each other like car crash fetishists around the streets of london through most of the book, making me feel like i wanted to slam on the brakes and let it all fly past. true. there are some truly transcendent and beautiful moments, some scenes that stopped my heart a little, but mostly i wanted it to end. i also have to complain, though maybe some others won't care as much as i do, that this is less of a sequel and more of a retelling of empire of the sun. or, rather, it starts with a retelling. suddenly we are back in lunghua camp, but there are all these people who hadn't been there before, all these situations that hadn't existed in the earlier work. i wouldn't mind so much, especially with the new characters added, some of whom i quite enjoyed, but these new storylines effectively erase some of the most poignant moments, and characters, in the "first" book. some parts of this book would get two more stars, others one less. but, you know, you get what you pay for. if anyone is interested (though my tenth grade english teacher would gape at the presumption of placing an author's reality on top of his fiction, and the man still influences my decisions to this day) this site has an interesting breakdown of what is fact and what is fiction in this book: http://www.jgballard.ca/criticism/jgb_pringle_kindness.html. warning. spoilers. duh. p.s. as a ballard fan, i knew one day i would have to face my techno-aversion and actually read "Crash." i even tried once, but stalled something like ten pages into it. this book had enough of that other work in it to free me from this obligation. at least that's what my mind says. so, it was worth it for that. If you have come across The Empire of the Sun, a movie by Stephen Spielberg, that was just one part of J G Ballard’s early life. The movie is true to the original book. This book is the second part of his autobiography. To be honest some of his books are weird, like Crash for example but I would never have believed that Crash was based on true events and real people! If you like biographies, either of these will show you inside a life that is really a mixture of the place and time he was born into and the subsequent unfolding of that, never boring. J.G. (James Graham) Ballard inleiden, hoeft voor de trouwe lezers van mijn boekbesprekingen niet meer. Wie niét tot die categorie behoort, kan hier of hier zijn kennis bijspijkeren, maar zou zich dus eigenlijk dood moeten schamen. Hoe dan ook, zelfs wie nauwelijks van de auteur gehoord heeft, kent wellicht wél "Empire of the Sun", zijn autobiografische boek over zijn jeugd in het door de Japanners bezette Sjanghai tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Diezelfde gebeurtenissen vormen het startpunt van deze "De zachtheid van vrouwen", al wilde Ballard niet met zoveel woorden gezegd hebben dat ook dit boek biografisch was. Hij zei, in tegendeel, dat de meeste karakters in het boek volkomen fictief waren, maar ter gelijker tijd, dat het boek zijn levensverhaal is "gezien door de spiegel van de fictie ontstaan door dat leven". Desalniettemin: James Ballard ging wel degelijk, net zoals zijn hoofdpersonage Jim, medicijnen studeren in Cambridge. Net zoals hij lid werd van de Royal Air Force en vliegtraining kreeg op de Canadese basis Moose Jaw. Hij trouwde ook en kreeg net zoals zijn hoofdpersonage drie kinderen, maar zijn echtgenote stierf aan een longontsteking, niet aan de gevolgen van een val. Vervolgens voedde hij, zoals Jim, zijn kinderen alleen op. Ook andere passages, zoals degene die gelinkt is aan het boek "Crash" (verfilmd door David Cronenberg) en "Empire of the Sun" (verfilmd door Spielberg), zijn voor vaste lezers van de auteur duidelijk herkenbaar. Andere stukken zijn dat minder, net zoals de leidraad van dit boek: (de) vrouwen (van Ballard). En net in die leidraad zit een voor mij storend element in "De zachtheid van vrouwen": de neiging van de auteur om wel héél expliciet en zeer biologisch seksscènes te beschrijven. Da's iets waar ik nooit het nut van ingezien heb (nog los van het feit dat taal daar sowieso te kort schiet) en dat mijns inziens ook niet bijdraagt tot het verhaal. Maar los daarvan is ook dit boek van Ballard weer een aanrader, ook voor wie verder niks van de auteur gelezen heeft. Het kán zelfs de deur openen naar verdere lezing, gezien in dit boek een aantal thema's aangeraakt worden die ook in zijn vollédig fictieve (maar in sommige gevallen langzamerhand van het visionaire aan het overgaan in de werkelijkheid) werk een hoofdrol spelen. Sequel to J.G Ballard's Empire of the Sun and relates Jim's life after he leaves Shanghai at the end of WWII and the important relationships which intersect his life, some described in quite explicit sexual detail. I preferred the writing style to Empire of the Sun, and overall found the book interesting and quite sentimental. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
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In this sequel to his award-winning Empire of the Sun, young James returns to England at the end of World War II. He stumbles through medical study at Cambridge, trains briefly as an RAF pilot in Canada, and marries. When his wife dies suddenly, Jim is thrust into the violence and sexual promiscuity of the sixties. Penetrating and wise, J. G. Ballard's biting social commentary and pushing of boundaries make this semi-autobiographical novel a small classic. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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