Download or read book Ducks Newburyport written by Lucy Ellmann and published by Biblioasis. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 934 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2019 GOLDSMITHS PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 BOOKER PRIZE • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2019 • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 • A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF 2019 "This book has its face pressed up against the pane of the present; its form mimics the way our minds move now toggling between tabs, between the needs of small children and aging parents, between news of ecological collapse and school shootings while somehow remembering to pay taxes and fold the laundry."—Parul Sehgal, New York Times Baking a multitude of tartes tatins for local restaurants, an Ohio housewife contemplates her four kids, husband, cats and chickens. Also, America's ignoble past, and her own regrets. She is surrounded by dead lakes, fake facts, Open Carry maniacs, and oodles of online advice about survivalism, veil toss duties, and how to be more like Jane Fonda. But what do you do when you keep stepping on your son's toy tractors, your life depends on stolen land and broken treaties, and nobody helps you when you get a flat tire on the interstate, not even the Abominable Snowman? When are you allowed to start swearing? With a torrent of consciousness and an intoxicating coziness, Ducks, Newburyport lays out a whole world for you to tramp around in, by turns frightening and funny. A heart-rending indictment of America's barbarity, and a lament for the way we are blundering into environmental disaster, this book is both heresy―and a revolution in the novel.
Download or read book Things Are Against Us written by Lucy Ellmann and published by Galley Beggar Press. This book was released on 2021-06-30 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'There are three kinds of strike I'd recommend: a housework strike, a labour strike, and a sex strike. I can't wait for the first two.' Things Are Against Us is the first collection of essays from Booker Prize-shortlisted Lucy Ellmann. Bold, angry, despairing and very, very funny, these essays cover everything – from matriarchy to environmental catastrophe to Little House on the Prairie. Ellmann calls for a moratorium on air travel, rages against bras, gives Doris Day and Agatha Christie a drubbing, and pleads for sanity in a world that – well, a world that spent four years in the company of Donald Trump, that 'tremendously sick, terrible, nasty, lowly, truly pathetic, reckless, sad, weak, lazy, incompetent, third-rate, clueless, not smart, dumb as a rock, all talk, wacko, zero-chance lying liar'. Things Are Against Us is electric. It's vital. These are essays bursting with energy, and reading them feels like sticking your hand in the mains socket. Lucy Ellmann is the writer we need to guide us through these crazy times.
Download or read book Midwinter Day written by Bernadette Mayer and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps Bernadette Mayer's greatest work, Midwinter Day was written on December 22, 1978, at 100 Main Street, in Lenox, Massachusetts. "Midwinter Day", as Alice Notley notes, "is an epic poem about a daily routine". In six parts, Midwinter Day takes us from awakening and emerging from dreams through the whole day -- morning, afternoon, evening, night -- to dreams again: "a plain introduction to modes of love and reason, / Then to end I guess with love, a method to this winter season / Now I've said this love it's all I can remember / Of Midwinter Day the twenty-second of December".
Download or read book Dot in the Universe written by Lucy Ellmann and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of Ducks, Newburyport, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2019 and the Goldsmiths Prize Dot used to think she was perfect, with her pointy nose, pink skin and blonde hair. But now she lives on Abalone Avenue with a husband who chases women and swordfish. And she has a rather icky Fatal Flaw. And the universe doesn't give a damn! So DOT decides to End It All. Will death be fast? Slow? EMBARRASING? But despite her valiant suicide by tea cosy followed by a jaunt to the morgue, DOT wakes up...
Download or read book Come Thou Tortoise written by Jessica Grant and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-03-09 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A delightfully offbeat story that features an opinionated tortoise and her owner who find themselves in the middle of a life-changing mystery. Audrey (a.k.a. Oddly) Flowers is living quietly in Oregon with Winnifred, her tortoise, when she finds out her dear father has been knocked into a coma back in Newfoundland. Despite her fear of flying, she goes to him, but not before she reluctantly dumps Winnifred with her unreliable friends. Poor Winnifred. When Audrey disarms an Air Marshal en route to St. John’s we begin to realize there’s something, well, odd about her. And we soon know that Audrey’s quest to discover who her father really was – and reunite with Winnifred – will be an adventure like no other. Excerpt: Winnifred is old. She might be three hundred. She came with the apartment. The previous tenant, a rock climber named Cliff, was embarking on a rock-climbing adventure that would not have been much fun for Winnifred. Back then her name was Iris. Cliff had inherited Iris from the previous tenant. Nobody knew how old Iris was or where she had come from originally. Now Cliff was moving out. He said, Would you like a tortoise. I would not say no to a tortoise, I said. I was alone in Portland and the trees were giant. I picked her up and she blinked at me with her upside-down eyelids. I felt instantly calm. Her eyes were soft brown. Her skin felt like an old elbow. I will build you a castle, I whispered. With a pool. And I was true to my word.
Download or read book Mimi written by Lucy Ellmann and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's Christmas Eve in Manhattan. Harrison Hanafan, noted plastic surgeon, falls on his ass. So far, so good. 'Ya can't sit there all day, buddy, looking up people's skirts!' chides a weird gal in a coat like a duvet - Mimi! She kindly conjures for him the miracle of a taxi. Recuperating in his apartment with Schubert, Bette Davis, and a foundling cat, Harrison adds items to his life's work, a List of Melancholy Things (Walmart, puppetry, Velcro, whale eyes, shrimp-eating contests...). But when he receives a dreaded invitation to address his old school, Mimi reappears, with all her curves and chaos. She and Harrison fall emphatically in love. And, as their love-making reaches a whole new kind of climax, the sweet smell of revolution is in the air.
Download or read book Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World written by Sasha Fletcher and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This emotionally resonant dystopian succeeds at turning the end of the world into a new beginning." - Publishers Weekly A love story set in a bad dream about America, concerning permanent debt, secret police, making dinner, and unpaid invoices—right up until the end of the world. It’s Brooklyn. It’s winter. It’s so cold outside you could execute billionaires in the street about it. Sam lives with Eleanor and they are in love. He has three or four outstanding invoices that would each cover rent for a month. At some point, the President is going to make some absolutely wild announcements that will only end in doom. In a surreal, funny, and heart-breaking version of reality, Sasha Fletcher’s highly anticipated first novel occupies that rare register that manages to speak to an increasingly incomprehensible world. Through scenes that poetically transform the mundane into the sublime and the absurd into the tragic, Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World is about the exquisite beauty of being in love in a world that is falling apart.
Download or read book Sweet Desserts written by Lucy Ellmann and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "By the author of Ducks, Newburyport, shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize, Goldsmiths Prize and Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award Winner of the Guardian First Book Award Suzy Schwarz has learnt one or two things about life- other people know how you should live better than you do; sisters (especially Fran) can destroy your sanity and self-esteem; lust calls for careful timing because it rarely coincides with that of your partner; and most heartbreaking of all, parents die on you, leaving you grieving. The only thing that provides constant solace when times are bad (and they usually are) is food."
Download or read book The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam written by Ann Marie Fleming and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-09-04 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A full-color graphic memoir inspired by the award-winning documentary-and the life and mystery of China's greatest magician. Who was Long Tack Sam? He was born in 1885. He ran away from Shangdung Province to join the circus. He was an acrobat. A magician. A comic. An impresario. A restaurateur. A theater owner. A world traveler. An East-West ambassador. A mentor to Orson Welles. He was considered the greatest act in the history of vaudeville. In this gorgeous graphic memoir, his great-granddaughter, the artist and filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming, resurrects his fascinating life for the rest of the world. It's an exhilarating testament to a forgotten man. And every picture is true. Watch a QuickTime trailer for this book.
Download or read book little scratch written by Rebecca Watson and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Extraordinary"--THE NEW YORKER In the formally innovative tradition of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Ducks, Newburyport comes a dazzlingly original, shot-in-the-arm of a debut that reveals a young woman's every thought over the course of one deceptively ordinary day. She wakes up, goes to work. Watches the clock and checks her phone. But underneath this monotony there's something else going on: something under her skin. Relayed in interweaving columns that chart the feedback loop of memory, the senses, and modern distractions with wit and precision, our narrator becomes increasingly anxious as the day moves on: Is she overusing the heart emoji? Isn't drinking eight glasses of water a day supposed to fix everything? Why is the etiquette of the women's bathroom so fraught? How does she define rape? And why can't she stop scratching? Fiercely moving and slyly profound, little scratch is a defiantly playful look at how our minds function in--and survive--the darkest moments.
Download or read book Waiting for a Star to Fall written by Kerry Clare and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A love story at its core, though one without an ending written in the stars. . . . Timely and insightful." --Karma Brown, #1 bestselling author of Recipe for a Perfect Wife For fans of Joanne Ramos, Josie Silver, and Emily Giffin, a gripping and powerful story that asks: Just how much are you willing to forgive in the name of love? Brooke has long been caught in the orbit of Derek, a rising political superstar. First he was her boss, then they were friends and she became his confidant, the one person he shared everything with. And even though she had feelings for him--it was hard to resist; he's charming and handsome, respected and beloved--she never dreamed he'd feel the same way. Derek is so much older and could have anyone he wanted. But it turns out that who Derek wants is Brooke, and suddenly none of the reasons they shouldn't be together matter. They fall in love. And even though Brooke has to keep the relationship a secret--stealing weekends away with him, late nights with takeout after long days at work, and business trips that are always a romantic whirlwind--being close to him and her dreams of their future make everything worth it. Then it all falls apart, and Brooke is left holding the pieces of the life they'd shared. Derek becomes embroiled in a scandal--the kind Brooke never could have imagined he'd be involved in--and she is forced to re-examine their relationship and make sense of the man she loves. Poignant, heart-stopping, and resonant, Waiting for a Star to Fall is a story about love, the things we choose to believe, and how sometimes the path to happily ever after has to start with ourselves.
Download or read book Doctors Nurses written by Lucy Ellmann and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of Ducks, Newburyport, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2019 and the Goldsmiths Prize 'As lunatic and splenetic and distinctive as anything that will be published this year ... I begin to suspect she may be some sort of genius' Telegraph 'It is somehow hard not to be optimistic in the hands of a writer so angry and intelligent ... Doctors & Nurses is a novel bracingly alive, making more polite books cadaverous by comparison' Guardian The tranquillity of a rural backwater - SHATTERED! The ancient arts of medicine - EXPOSED! Her darling cleft-chinned doctor - FORCED TO FIGHT FOR HIS LIFE! It was a time of wiping. A time of bandaging. Of patients and their incessant needs. In a world where nurses never wash their hands, and doctors are the lowest of the low, one enormous nurse stands up for LOVE - a nurse that will make you fart with fear...
Download or read book Long Road to Dry River written by Jennifer Severn and published by Jennifer Severn. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'D'you think you might've got the MS because you can’t forgive your dad?' That wasn't Jennifer Severn's doctor asking—or her psychologist. It was her lawyer, but it was a good question. When Jen, aged 22, settled into a cab at Sydney Airport one rainy night in 1988, she'd taken pains to create a safe, sensible life for herself after an abusive upbringing. But that was about to take a turn. The driver was a follower of Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, and the conversation that night set her on a new, dual existence—Jen the medical sales rep and Marga Sahi the Rajneesh disciple. Was it the strain of maintaining this double life that brought on an episode of visual disturbance—double vision, no less—in 1994? Family dysfunction, inappropriate relationships, life as an 'orange person', a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis … Jen bounced between Australia, India and Amsterdam before circumstances conspired to land her in Quaama, a small rural village in dairy country on the far south coast of New South Wales. Will an unrestored 1840s shearer's cottage and a quirky rural community be her salvation? Long Road to Dry River was shortlisted for the Finch Prize for Memoir in 2018.
Download or read book The Book of Disappearance written by Ibtisam Azem and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if all the Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? How would Israelis react? These unsettling questions are posed in Azem’s powerfully imaginative novel. Set in contemporary Tel Aviv forty eight hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished, the story unfolds through alternating narrators, Alaa, a young Palestinian man who converses with his dead grandmother in the journal he left behind when he disappeared, and his Jewish neighbor, Ariel, a journalist struggling to understand the traumatic event. Through these perspectives, the novel stages a confrontation between two memories. Ariel is a liberal Zionist who is critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but nevertheless believes in Israel’s project and its national myth. Alaa is haunted by his grandmother’s memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. Ariel’s search for clues to the secret of the collective disappearance and his reaction to it intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question. The Book of Disappearance grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory for the Palestinians. Presenting a narrative that is often marginalized, Antoon’s translation of the critically acclaimed Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of Palestinians living in Israel.
Download or read book 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World written by Elif Shafak and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by Bookpage, NPR, Washington Post, and The Economist A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from internationally renowned writer and speaker Elif Shafak. In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating but her brain is still active-for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life-and the lives of others, outcasts like her. Tequila Leila's memories bring us back to her childhood in the provinces, a highly oppressive milieu with religion and traditions, shaped by a polygamous family with two mothers and an increasingly authoritarian father. Escaping to Istanbul, Leila makes her way into the sordid industry of sex trafficking, finding a home in the city's historic Street of Brothels. This is a dark, violent world, but Leila is tough and open to beauty, light, and the essential bonds of friendship. In Tequila Leila's death, the secrets and wonders of modern Istanbul come to life, painted vividly by the captivating tales of how Leila came to know and be loved by her friends. As her epic journey to the afterlife comes to an end, it is her chosen family who brings her story to a buoyant and breathtaking conclusion.
Download or read book The Thing Itself written by Adam Roberts and published by Gollancz. This book was released on 2015-12-17 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adam Roberts turns his attention to answering the Fermi Paradox with a taut and claustrophobic tale that echoes John Carpenters' The Thing. Two men while away the days in an Antarctic research station. Tensions between them build as they argue over a love-letter one of them has received. One is practical and open. The other surly, superior and obsessed with reading one book - by the philosopher Kant. As a storm brews and they lose contact with the outside world they debate Kant, reality and the emptiness of the universe. The come to hate each other, and they learn that they are not alone.
Download or read book Wayward written by Dana Spiotta and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “furious and addictive new novel” (The New York Times) about mothers and daughters, and one woman's midlife reckoning as she flees her suburban life. “Exhilarating ... reads like a burning fever dream. A virtuosic, singular and very funny portrait of a woman seeking sanity and purpose in a world gone mad.” —The New York Times Book Review Samantha Raymond's life has begun to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and at fifty-two she finds herself staring into "the Mids"—that hour of supreme wakefulness between three and four in the morning in which women of a certain age suddenly find themselves contemplating motherhood, mortality, and, in this case, the state of our unraveling nation. When she falls in love with a beautiful, decrepit house in a hardscrabble neighborhood in Syracuse, she buys it on a whim and flees her suburban life—and her family—as she grapples with how to be a wife, a mother, and a daughter, in a country that is coming apart at the seams. Dana Spiotta's Wayward is a stunning novel about aging, about the female body, and about female complexity in contemporary America. Probing and provocative, brainy and sensual, it is a testament to our weird times, to reforms and resistance and utopian wishes, and to the beauty of ruins.
