Carregue numa fotografia para ir para os Livros Google.
A carregar... The Glass Room (edição 2009)por Simon Mawer
Informação Sobre a ObraThe Glass Room por Simon Mawer
A carregar...
Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. A very cleverly constructed novel. The Glass Room is in actual fact a glass house. Based on a well known, existing modern house constructed in the 1920's designed by Mies van der Rohe but here fictionalised. A fictional architect, fictional owners and a fictional town. But all the basics are historically correct. The house is the star but the couple who commission it, their fates and their lovers carry the story both of the house, of the events leading up to the Second World War, the fate of the jews, the period of Soviet domination and the Prague Spring of 1968. It is all well told. The characters are engaging even though they all seem to fall in love with each other under the influence of the silent but dominating and characterful house. The author does well even if he becomes a little repetitive and occasionally desperate in finding ways of describing the effects of light in a house made of plate glass. Powerful, mesmerizing; I felt this novel deeply. There are some uneven patches of story that left me questioning the author's motives, a bit too coincidental at times. I think the author fell in and then out of love with Viktor and Liesel; but his love for Hana endured, to the point that it was almost unbearable later on in the story. His portrayal of Liesel and Hana's love for each other was beautifully rendered. His use of sex in the novel is used with purpose and power. A riveting, albeit patchy, historical novel. The book is very well titled because it is the Landauer House that is the main character. The Glass Room serves as a perfect metaphor for all of the personal and political life in this novel. In that way, this novel is perfect. I couldn't put it down.
The Glass Room is a book about a culture slipping from decadence into catastrophic decline. It's a study of a marriage. It concerns itself with art, music, architecture, indignity, loneliness, terror, betrayal, sex. And the Holocaust. It should, therefore, be pretentious, unbearable schlock of the most appalling kind. But it's not. It is, unexpectedly, a thing of extraordinary beauty and symmetry. The Glass Room is a novel of ideas, yet strongly propelled by plot and characterised by an almost dreamlike simplicity of telling. Comparisons with the work of Michael Frayn would not be misplaced, and there are occasional moments of illuminating brilliance, when the novel becomes like the Glass Room of the title. "It had become a palace of light, light bouncing off the chrome pillars, light refulgent on the walls ... It was as though they stood inside a crystal of salt." Pertence à Série da EditoraPrémios
Honeymooners Viktor and Liesel Landauer are filled with the optimism and cultural vibrancy of central Europe of the 1920s when they meet modernist architect Rainer von Abt. He builds for them a home to embody their exuberant faith in the future, and the Landauer House becomes More ... an instant masterpiece. Viktor and Liesel, a rich Jewish mogul married to a thoughtful, modern gentile, pour all of their hopes for their marriage and budding family into their stunning new home, filling it with children, friends, and a generation of artists and thinkers eager to abandon old-world European style in favor of the new and the avant-garde. But as life intervenes, their new home also brings out their most passionate desires and darkest secrets. As Viktor searches for a warmer, less challenging comfort in the arms of another woman, and Liesel turns to her wild, mischievous friend Hana for excitement, the marriage begins to show signs of strain. The radiant honesty and idealism of 1930 quickly evaporate beneath the storm clouds of World War II. As Nazi troops enter the country, the family must leave their old life behind and attempt to escape to America before Viktor's Jewish roots draw Nazi attention, and before the family itself dissolves. As the Landauers struggle for survival abroad, their home slips from hand to hand, from Czech to Nazi to Soviet possession and finally back to the Czechoslovak state, with new inhabitants always falling under the fervent and unrelenting influence of the Glass Room. Its crystalline perfection exerts a gravitational pull on those who know it, inspiring them, freeing them, calling them back, until the Landauers themselves are finally drawn home to where their story began. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
Current DiscussionsNenhum(a)Capas populares
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:
É você?Torne-se num Autor LibraryThing. |
I was engrossed by the novel, captured by the characters, and the house.. The real one looks spectacular! ( )