Read Online The Modern Library by Colm Tóibín, Carmen Callil - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Colm Tóibín, Carmen Callil
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him; his interest in saints and religion becomes a secret life. His account of the world and of his own life is rigorously intelligent; its stilted style is in contrast with the deep pain which is buried in the narrative, and the play between the two is often breathtaking and always engrossing.
Robertson Davies was born in Ontario and lived much of his life in Toronto. He published three novel sequences: The Salterton Trilogy, The Deptford Trilogy and The Cornish Trilogy. Fifth Business is the first book of The Deptford Trilogy, which was completed with The Manticore (1972) and World of Wonders (1975).
Age in year of publication: fifty-seven.
Louis de Bernières 1954–
1994 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
(US: Corelli’s Mandolin )
Set on a Greek island during the Second World War, this novel combines narrative sweep, a mixture of tragedy and comedy, a number of extraordinary and lovable characters and the sense of a tightly knit traditional society in a changing world. It almost stands alone in contemporary English fiction for its ability to deal confidently with the outside world, for the warmth of its tone, for its breadth and scope and for its lack of cynicism.
It tells, using methods which remind the reader of both Charles Dickens and Gabriel García Márquez, the story of Dr Iannis and his daughter Pelagia living easily together on Cephalonia in the years before the war. When the Italian army invades the island, the Italian control is half-hearted and almost good-humoured. Dr Iannis and his daughter try to ignore the considerable charms of Captain Corelli, who is billeted with them. The novel moves from Iannis’s kitchen to the life of the village to the terrible cruelty of the war. Stories about music, medicine, fishing and horrific events in Greece in the Second World War are placed beside other stories about love and death. The tone moves effortlessly from the very funny to the deeply harrowing once the Germans arrive on the island. The writing is always fluid; the scenes are fast moving and varied and always interesting; the novel is fiercely readable, almost impossible to put down.
Louis de Bernières was born in and lives in London. His other novels include The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992). Captain Corelli’s Mandolin won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1995.
Age in year of publication: forty.
Don DeLillo 1936–
1997 Underworld
The publication of Underworld confirms Don DeLillo, if we needed confirmation, as the most exciting, original and innovative American novelist now working. He has been fascinated by what happens to language, truth and logic during a late phase of capitalism; how a society which grew around dreams of hope, of infinite optimism, deludes itself and is deluded by ritual and images and words. He loves technology, its mystery and glow, its hum and buzz; he is interested in hidden systems and codes, by the poetics of late twentieth-century paranoia.
Underworld , all eight hundred and twenty-seven pages of it, is his epic, his panoramic vision of the United States in his time. It is obsessed with waste and garbage, including the concern of J. Edgar Hoover (who has various walk-on parts in the novel) that protest groups will go through his garbage and put it on public display. The novel is also obsessed with the bomb and the Cold War, and the vast areas of the American imagination which have been filled with images of fear and destruction. In Underworld DeLillo also presents a relaxed version of ordinary life, intimate family relations, memories of childhood, tender love and sexual desire. He places these beside magnificent set scenes about public life and history, and the result is a great monument to the enduring power of the novel.
Don DeLillo, son of Italian immigrants, was born in the Bronx, New York, and still lives in New York City. His novel White Noise won the National Book Award in 1985, and Libra (1988) the Irish Times
Robertson Davies was born in Ontario and lived much of his life in Toronto. He published three novel sequences: The Salterton Trilogy, The Deptford Trilogy and The Cornish Trilogy. Fifth Business is the first book of The Deptford Trilogy, which was completed with The Manticore (1972) and World of Wonders (1975).
Age in year of publication: fifty-seven.
Louis de Bernières 1954–
1994 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
(US: Corelli’s Mandolin )
Set on a Greek island during the Second World War, this novel combines narrative sweep, a mixture of tragedy and comedy, a number of extraordinary and lovable characters and the sense of a tightly knit traditional society in a changing world. It almost stands alone in contemporary English fiction for its ability to deal confidently with the outside world, for the warmth of its tone, for its breadth and scope and for its lack of cynicism.
It tells, using methods which remind the reader of both Charles Dickens and Gabriel García Márquez, the story of Dr Iannis and his daughter Pelagia living easily together on Cephalonia in the years before the war. When the Italian army invades the island, the Italian control is half-hearted and almost good-humoured. Dr Iannis and his daughter try to ignore the considerable charms of Captain Corelli, who is billeted with them. The novel moves from Iannis’s kitchen to the life of the village to the terrible cruelty of the war. Stories about music, medicine, fishing and horrific events in Greece in the Second World War are placed beside other stories about love and death. The tone moves effortlessly from the very funny to the deeply harrowing once the Germans arrive on the island. The writing is always fluid; the scenes are fast moving and varied and always interesting; the novel is fiercely readable, almost impossible to put down.
Louis de Bernières was born in and lives in London. His other novels include The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992). Captain Corelli’s Mandolin won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1995.
Age in year of publication: forty.
Don DeLillo 1936–
1997 Underworld
The publication of Underworld confirms Don DeLillo, if we needed confirmation, as the most exciting, original and innovative American novelist now working. He has been fascinated by what happens to language, truth and logic during a late phase of capitalism; how a society which grew around dreams of hope, of infinite optimism, deludes itself and is deluded by ritual and images and words. He loves technology, its mystery and glow, its hum and buzz; he is interested in hidden systems and codes, by the poetics of late twentieth-century paranoia.
Underworld , all eight hundred and twenty-seven pages of it, is his epic, his panoramic vision of the United States in his time. It is obsessed with waste and garbage, including the concern of J. Edgar Hoover (who has various walk-on parts in the novel) that protest groups will go through his garbage and put it on public display. The novel is also obsessed with the bomb and the Cold War, and the vast areas of the American imagination which have been filled with images of fear and destruction. In Underworld DeLillo also presents a relaxed version of ordinary life, intimate family relations, memories of childhood, tender love and sexual desire. He places these beside magnificent set scenes about public life and history, and the result is a great monument to the enduring power of the novel.
Don DeLillo, son of Italian immigrants, was born in the Bronx, New York, and still lives in New York City. His novel White Noise won the National Book Award in 1985, and Libra (1988) the Irish Times
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