Visar resultat för..."We Need to Talk About Kevin"

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2005ONE MILLION COPIES SOLDEva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about motherhood. How much is her fault? In Lionel Shriver's hands this sensational, chilling and memorable story of a woman who raised a monster becomes a metaphor for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2010ONE MILLION COPIES SOLDEva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about motherhood. How much is her fault? In Lionel Shriver's hands this sensational, chilling and memorable story of a woman who raised a monster becomes a metaphor for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband, Franklyn. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

The comic autobiography of 2014A comedian's autobiography? I wonder if he's ever used humour to deflect from his insecurities?To avoid being bullied? Is there heartache behind the humour?I wonder if he's a manic-depressive? Tears of a clown? Yes, all of that. Discover the hilarious life-story of one of Britain's best-loved comedians in Kevin Bridges' brilliant memoir.'First of all, I have never written a book before, you probably haven't either, so there we have it; a connection is established between reader and writer . . .'Aged just 17, Kevin Bridges walked on stage for the first time in a Glasgow comedy club and brought the house down. He only had a five-minute set but in that short time he discovered that he really could earn a living from making people laugh.Kevin began life as a shy, nerve-ridden school-boy, whose weekly highlights included a cake-bombing attack by the local youths. Reaching his teens, he followed his true calling as the class clown, and was soon after arrested for kidnapping Hugh Grant from his local cinema on a quiet Saturday night. This was a guy going somewhere - off the rails seeming most likely. Kevin's trademark social commentary, sharp one-liners and laugh-out-loud humour blend with his reflections on his Glaswegian childhood and the journey he's taken to become one of the most-loved comedians of our time.'. . . Hopefully now you'll take this over to the till and I can accompany you for the next wee while. That's the benefit of book shops, reading the little bit and then deciding if the author deserves to be part of your carefully selected 3 for 2 deal, or part of your plane journey, train journey, your next bath, your next shite.'Praise for Kevin Bridges:'The Best Scottish Stand up of his Generation.' The Scotsman'A wonderfully dry and deadpan Glaswegian comic . . . one the most exciting talents to have emerged from Scotland since Billy Connolly' Guardian'Kevin Bridges might just become the best stand-up in the land . . . he will go and deliver a one-liner that you want to jot down and frame' The Times'Wonderfully sharp, assured stand-up from the preternaturally gifted young comic' Independent

Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these? Humbert Humbert's seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures.

In Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age. A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world’s great literary treasures – as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America. Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.

The first essay collection from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time. ‘This trenchant, unrepentant collection reminds you that she’s a brilliant writer… Order a copy in case she’s cancelled by Christmas’ THE TIMES (Book of the Year) ‘You may disagree with Lionel Shriver’s bracing journalism, but her right to spark disquiet goes to the heart of the freedom of expression issue’ Rachel Cooke, OBSERVER ‘Mutinous essays about modern politics and culture… An independent mind and a sense of humour are dangerous things to possess. The spiky, politically incorrect novelist Lionel Shriver has them in abundance’ THE TIMES ‘Testament to the fierce intelligence of a writer who wants us to think more, probe more, challenge more — and who also makes it fun’ THE SUNDAY TIMES Novelist, cultural observer and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age. A writer who embraces ‘under-expressed, unpopular or downright dangerous’ points of view, she regularly deplores the conformity of thought and attitude that has overtaken society.Bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays and op-eds for the likes of the Spectator and Guardian, speeches and reviews, and some unpublished pieces, Abominations reveals Shriver at her most iconoclastic and personal. Relentlessly sceptical, cutting and contrarian but also frequently moving and vulnerable, this collection showcases her piquant opinions on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, illness, mortality, family and friends, tennis, gender, immigration, consumerism, health care and taxes.Though some of the more divisive essays in Abominations have ‘brought hell and damnation down on my head,’ as she cheerfully explains, she also offers insights on her novels and explores the perks and pitfalls of becoming a successful artist. Readers will find plenty to challenge them here, but they may also find many nuanced and considered insights with which they agree.Abominations was a Times Book of the Year in the Literature category on 26.11.2022

'Fascinating, brilliant, horribly addictive' Guardian From the day that Sheba Hart joins the staff at St George's, history teacher Barbara Covett is convinced that she has found a kindred spirit. When Sheba is discovered having an illicit affair with one of her pupils, Barbara appoints herself Sheba's chief defender. Yet all is not as it first appears in this dark story and as Sheba will eventually discover, a friend can be as treacherous as any lover. 'Superbly gripping' Daily Telegraph

In these three works of erotic prose Georges Bataille fuses sex and spirituality in a highly personal and philosophical vision of the self. My Mother is a frank and intense depiction of a young man's sexual initiation and corruption by his mother, where the profane becomes sacred, and intense experience is shown as the only way to transcend the boundaries of society and morality. Madame Edwarda is the story of a prostitute who calls herself God, and The Dead Man, published in 1964 after Bataille's death, is a startling short tale of cruelty and desire. This volume also contains Bataille's own introductions to his texts as well as essays by Yukio Mishima and Ken Hollings.

Rusty Sabich is a prosecuting lawyer in Chicago who enters a nightmare world when Carolyn, a beautiful attorney with whom he has been having an affair, is found raped and strangled. He stands accused of the crime.This 'insider' book by a Chicago lawyer was one of the great novels of the 1980s, selling more than nine million copies, and was made into a famous film starring Harrison Ford. It's a supremely suspenseful and compelling courtroom drama about ambition, weakness, hypocrisy and American justice.

Emile Durkheim's On Suicide (1897) was a groundbreaking book in the field of sociology. Traditionally, suicide was thought to be a matter of purely individual despair but Durkheim recognized that the phenomenon had a social dimension. He believed that if anything can explain how individuals relate to society, then it is suicide: Why does it happen? What goes wrong? Why do certain social, religious or racial groups have higher incidences of suicide than others? As Durkheim explored these questions he became convinced that abnormally high or low levels of social integration lead to an increased likelihood of suicide. On Suicide was the result of his extensive research. Divided into three parts - individual reasons for suicide, social forms of suicide and the relation of suicide to society as a whole - Durkheim's revelations have fascinated, challenged and informed readers for over a century.

**NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES**We Need to Talk About Kevin meets The Secret History. The air is hazy and grey with gunpowder smoke. Everyone has been shot but me. I haven't got so much as a bruise....Is Maja a normal eighteen-year-old, the poster girl-next-door, popular and excelling at her schoolwork, caught in the middle of a terrible tragedy? Or is she guilty of the tragedy itself?Either way, everyone knows her name. She has spent nine excruciating months in jail, awaiting trial for a mass murder that killed her boyfriend and her best friend, and now the time has come for her to enter the courtroom... WHAT WILL YOU BELIEVE? This is the 'compelling and brutally candid' (Daily Mail) story of a girl whose guilt was decided long before her trial - as searing as it is timely and moving. ***What people are saying about QUICKSAND***Sensitive, moving and absorbing’  Marcel Berlins, The Times ‘This is the evolution of Scandinavian crime, in more ways than one’ Fredrik Backman'Compelling and brutally candid, especially about modern adolescence, this is not a comfortable book, but the story is so superbly told that it lingers in the mind long after the jury’s verdict' Daily Mail   'A suspenseful and addictive experience… [Giolito] expertly delves into the fickle psyche of the media and how they can change a story’s narrative with one headline and she shames the press’s tendency to report wild conjecture over facts… Though Giolito’s perspective is Swedish, it absolutely translates to a greater global crisis' Real Crime'Giolito gives us the unsettling monologue of a teenage girl as she works her way through her role in murder. It is a splendid work of fiction' Kirkus Reviews'Gioloto’s novel is haunting and immersive' Publishers Weekly'Mystery and intrigue in its purest form. Great book, recommended to all' Marg J., bookseller'A fascinating, often uncomfortable, but thoroughly engrossing read'  Sarah B.‘Sweden's latest blockbuster thriller lives up to the hype' Washington Post'Maja [is] a heroine you will not forget, victim of a toxic love story with a background so familiar to us nowadays... a super thriller – a real page-turner’Mariagrazia M.'I have never read a book by a Swedish author so when Quicksand became available I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to try. I certainly wasn't disappointed' Diane Hogg, NetGalley Reviewer 5*

'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of my tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.'Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he'll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is prepared to commit any crime to get what he wants.Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these?

It is four years since the virus came, killing every adult in its path. Not long after that the electricity failed. Food and water started running out. Fires raged across the country. Now Anna cares for her brother alone in a house hidden in the woods, keeping him safe from 'the Outside'. But, when the time comes, Anna knows they must leave their world and find another. By turns luminous and tender, gripping and horrifying, Anna is a haunting parable of love and loneliness; of the stories we tell to sustain us, and the lengths we will go to in order to stay alive.

'THRILLING' Paula Hawkins'COMPULSIVE' The Times'SEARING' Brit Bennett'DEVASTATING' Observer'UNFORGETTABLE' Ashley Audrain'BRILLIANT' Chris WhitakerAnsel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. But this is not his story.Ansel doesn't want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood. Yet now he awaits the same fate he forced on those girls, years ago.This is the story of the women who survive. As the clock ticks down, three women - a mother, a sister, a detective - reckon with the choices that culminate in tragedy, the impact on those in its wake, and the possibility of redemption.WINNER OF THE MWA EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL 2023

***THE BREAKOUT TIKTOK SENSATION***SAVING NOAH IS THE UNFORGETTABLE PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER YOU’LL BE THINKING ABOUT LONG AFTER YOU’VE FINISHED THE LAST PAGE…AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW!‘This book ruined me. 5 out of 5. One of the best I have ever read – wow, just wow’ 5***** reader review‘Oh my god, definitely a 5-star read. I have never read anything quite like this, made me question everything I believe in’ 5***** reader review‘It’s SO GOOD. I finished it in two days and ugly cried. 10/10’ 5***** reader review‘It was expertly written but will rip your heart out’ 5***** reader review---Meet Noah – a top student, award-winning swimmer, and small-town star destined for greatness.His loving mother, Adrianne, couldn’t be prouder of the man her son is becoming.Until the day that changed everything.When Noah is accused of a horrific crime, he’s sentenced to eighteen months in a juvenile rehabilitation centre. The event sends shockwaves not just through Noah's family, but through the entire town, as everyone is forced to question the boy they thought they knew. But as more shocking revelations come to light, Adrianne is forced to make the hardest decision of her life. Just how far will she go to protect her son?--- ‘I was not prepared for this book! I needed tissues because I definitely cried…an emotional read that really makes you question life. So thought provoking’ 5***** reader review ‘The writing was incredible and I have not stopped thinking about it’ 5***** reader review

The classic account of a lost boy's emotional breakthrough, from a renowed child psychotherapist'I welcome this book with all my heart' D. W. WinnicottWhen renowned psychotherapist Virginia Axline first encountered Dibs at his New York School, he was a little boy lost to the world. He would not talk. He would not play. He sat alone, defying every attempt at interaction. Axline was the last resort. This is her seminal account of how, through weekly play therapy sessions over the course of one year, Dibs's extraordinary character, and the reason for his silent withdrawal, were gradually revealed. Dibs in Search of Self is a classic of child therapy, and a moving story of transformation.'A very empowering and kind book' Tanya Byron'It should be the law that you have to read this book' Adjoa Andoh, BBC Radio 4

Alphonse Daudet's novels established him as the most successful writer in France by the end of the XIX century; but it was the LETTERS, first published in book form in 1869, which remained his favourite creation and has proved his most lasting. Throughout his working life in Paris Daudet never lost his almost umbilical attachment to Provence. These tales of that region are characterised by a tenderness and delicacy, a wistfulness and wry humour, which give moving substance to his claim that to invent, for him, was to remember.

A dark classic of Russia's silver age, this blackly funny novel recounts a schoolteacher's descent into sadism, arson and murder.Mad, lascivious, sadistic and ridiculous, the provincial schoolteacher Peredonov torments his students and has hallucinatory fantasies about acts of savagery and degradation, yet to everyone else he is an upstanding member of society. As he pursues the idea of marrying to gain promotion, he descends into paranoia, sexual perversion, arson, torture and murder. Sologub's anti-hero is one of the great comic monsters of twentieth-century fiction, subsequently lending his name to the brand of sado-masochism known as Peredonovism. The Little Demon (1907) made an immediate star of its author who, refuting suggestions that the work was autobiographical, stated 'No, my dear contemporaries ... it is about you'. This grotesque mirror of a spiritually bankrupt society is arguably the finest Russian novel to have come out of the Symbolist movement.Fyodor Sologub was born in St Petersburg in 1863. His first two novels Bad Dreams (1896) and The Little Demon (1907) were drawn from his own experiences as schoolmaster in a remote provincial town. For many years Sologub could not find a publisher for The Little Demon but when in 1907 the novel was at last published - to immediate and resounding success - he was able to leave his restricting career and devote himself to literature. In 1921 his wife committed suicide and Sologub died a few years later in 1927. Ronald Wilks studied Russian language and literature at Trinity College,Cambridge, after training as a Naval interpreter, and later Russian literature at London University. He has translated many works from Russian for Penguin Classics, including books by Gorky, Gogol, Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov.

My Education is Burroughs's last novel, first published two years before his death in 1997. It is a book of dreams, collected over several decades and as close to a memoir as we will see. The dreams cover themes from the mundane and ordinary - conversations with his friends Allen Ginsberg or Ian Sommerville, feeding his cats, procuring drugs or sex - to the erotic, bizarre and visionary. Always a rich source of imagery in Burroughs's own fiction, in this book dreams become a direct and powerful force in themselves.

William Cody grows up surrounded by his father's tales of Buffalo Bill, to whom he is distantly related, and his fantasies of the Wild West.Though he escapes his heritage by fleeing abroad and starting a new life for himself, he finds that he is always drawn back to England and to his ancestry.When his father proposes that together they should recreate Buffalo Bill's stage show, "The Congress of Rough Riders of the World" for a contemporary audience, William refuses to have any part of it. When tragedy strikes, however, it is to his father that he must eventually return.

'Venus in Furs' describes the obsessions of Severin von Kusiemski, a European nobleman who desires to be enslaved to a woman. Severin finds his ideal of voluptuous cruelty in the merciless Wanda von Dunajew. This is a passionate and powerful portrayal of one man's struggle to enlighten and instruct himself and others in the realm of desire. Published in 1870, the novel gained notoriety and a degree of immortality for its author when the word "masochism" - derived from his name - entered the vocabulary of psychiatry. This remains a classic literary statement on sexual submission and control.

Zoë Heller's darkly comic third novel, The Believers explores a family pushed to its limits. When Audrey makes a devastating discovery about her husband, New York radial lawyer Joel Litvinoff, she is forced to re-examine everything she thought she knew about their forty-year marriage. Joel's children will soon have to come to terms with this unsettling secret themselves, but for the meantime, they are trying tot cope with their own dilemmas.Rosa, a disillusioned revolutionary, is grappling with a new found attachment to Orthodox Judaism. Karla, an unhappily married social worker, is falling in love with an unlikely suitor at the hospital where she works. Adopted brother Lenny is back on drugs again.In the course of battling their own demons and each other, every member of the family is called upon to decide what - if anything - they still believe in.'Profoundly satisfying. No other novel would readily stand in its stead . . . pulses with thematic and intellectual content . . . Heller's prose is clean, warm and smart' Lionel Shriver, Daily Telegraph'Astonishingly well-observed and stunningly written, a subtle, funny family farce . . . in its thundering confidence, The Believers is the work of a writer at the top of her game' GuardianZoë Heller is the author of three novels, Everything You Know, Notes on a Scandal, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003 and The Believers. The 2006 film adaptation of Notes on a Scandal, starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, received four Oscar nominations. She lives in New York.

A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women SelectionShortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize, Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal is a darkly compelling novel that explores the taboo subject of pupil/teacher relationships, obsession and betrayal. From the first day that the beguiling Sheba Hart joins the staff of St George's history teacher Barbara Covett is convinced she has found a kindred spirit. Barbara's loyalty to her new friend is passionate and unstinting and when Sheba is discovered having an illicit affair with one of her pupils, Barbara quickly elects herself as Sheba's chief defender. But all is not as it first seems in this dark story and, as Sheba will soon discover, a friend can be just as treacherous as any lover.'Brilliant, nasty, gripping' Zadie Smith'Compelling, dark, sexy' Observer'Superbly gripping. One of the most compelling books I've read in ages' Daily Telegraph'Deliciously sinister' Daily MailZoë Heller is the author of three novels, Everything You Know, Notes on a Scandal, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003 and The Believers. The 2006 film adaptation of Notes on a Scandal, starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, received four Oscar nominations. She lives in New York.

These two novellas by the inimitable Tanizaki were among his favourites.The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi recounts the dark sexual obsessions of a sixteenth-century warlord, accidentally initiated in his youth into the morbid rites attendant upon battle. Based on invented documents that overlap with historical reality, the story unfolds a masterly balance of irony and melodrama, elegance and brutality.Arrowroot also touches on the pursuit of legend, but in a very different mode. Cast in the uniquely Japanese form of the ‘essay novel’, the narrative blends the stories of two friends on an expedition into the mountains south of Kyoto, one of them following the traces of a medieval myth, the other in search of a more recent, private past.‘After 20 years of writing novels in a fairly orthodox style, Tanizaki fused two interests - traditional Japanese storytelling and experimental narrative – into a unique style’ New York

Onboard the Fidèle, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises - from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector for charitable causes and a 'cosmopolitan' gentleman, who simply swindles a barber out of the price of a shave. Making very little from his hoaxes, the pleasure of trickery seems an end in itself for this slippery conman. Is he the Devil? Is his chicanery merely intended to expose the mercenary concerns of those around him? Set on April Fool's Day, The Confidence-Man (1857) is an engaging comedy of masquerades, digressions and shifting identity, and a devastating satire on the American dream.