Download or read book The Cleaner of Chartres written by Salley Vickers and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If you enjoy the work of Marilynne Robinson, Penelope Fitzgerald, James Salter…you should be reading Vickers.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World There is something very special about Agnès Morel. A quiet presence in the small French town of Chartres, she can usually be found cleaning the famed medieval cathedral or doing odd jobs for the townspeople. No one knows where she came from or why. Not diffident Abbé Paul, nor lonely Professor Jones, nor even Alain Fleury, whose attention she catches with her tawny eyes. She has transformed all their lives in her own subtle way, yet no one suspects the dark secret Agnès is hiding. Then an accidental encounter dredges up the specter of her past, and the nasty meddling of town gossips forces Agnès to confront her tragic history and the violent act that haunts it.
Download or read book Miss Garnet s Angel written by Salley Vickers and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2010-02-25 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Salley Vicker’s sensational debut novel, ‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’, is a voyage of discovery; a novel about Venice but also the rich story of the explosive possibilities of change in all of us at any time.
Download or read book Bread Wine and Money written by Jane Welch Williams and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1993-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At Chartres Cathedral, for the first time in medieval art, the lowest register of stained-glass windows depicts working artisans and merchants instead of noble and clerical donors. Jane Welch Williams challenges the prevailing view that pious town tradesmen donated these windows. In Bread, Wine, and Money, she uncovers a deep antagonism between the trades and the cathedral clergy in Chartres; the windows, she argues, portray not town tradesmen but trusted individuals that the fearful clergy had taken into the cloister as their own serfs. Williams weaves a tight net of historical circumstances, iconographic traditions, exegetical implications, political motivations, and liturgical functions to explain the imagery in the windows of the trades. Her account of changing social relationships in thirteenth-century Chartres focuses on the bakers, tavern keepers, and money changers whose bread, wine, and money were used as means of exchange, tithing, and offering throughout medieval society. Drawing on a wide variety of original documents and scholarly work, this book makes important new contributions to our knowledge of one of the great monuments of Western culture.
Download or read book Chartres and the Birth of the Cathedral written by Titus Burckhardt and published by World Wisdom Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new and revised edition of Titus Burckhardt's masterpiece, Chartres and the Birth of the Cathedral, is a richly colored window onto the lofty intellectual and spiritual climate that conceived the marvel that is Gothic architecture. Featuring a new appendix with three sections, and a new Foreword by John James, a world authority on Chartres, as well as 25 new illustrations, it cannot fail to inspire the reader to become a pilgrim to Chartres.
Download or read book Dancing Backwards written by Salley Vickers and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six-day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edwin's friendship and abandoning her career as a poet for the safety of marriage and domesticity. Despite her natural reserve, she meets a rich variety of passengers traveling with her, who affect her understanding of her own past. Most significant, she meets Dino, the dancing host, whose motives in befriending Vi are shady but who teaches her to ballroom dance and inadvertently helps her to recover from her past. Moving between the late sixties and the present day, Dancing Backwards is written with the lightness of touch and psychological insight that characterize Salley Vickers's acclaimed work. This bittersweet novel is subtle, poignant, and wonderfully entertaining.
Download or read book Instances of the Number 3 written by Salley Vickers and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a man dies and leaves behind a wife and a mistress, we expect certain responses to follow. But as the narrator of Salley Vickers's second novel explains, "this is not an account of feminine jealousy, or even revenge, and not all human beings (not even women) conform to the attitudes generally expected." Indeed, in this ironic and witty novel nothing is quite as we expect to find it. Telling the story of Bridget Hansome and Frances Slater, Vickers brings to life a loving marriage and a love affair that exist side by side for years - and continue to reverberate after secretive, generous, sexually prodigal Peter Hansome dies suddenly in a car accident, on his way home from an assignation with yet another lover, about whom neither woman knows. While Frances, a London art dealer and sometime artists' model, gradually makes friends with the older, Shakespeare-loving Bridget, these two unconventional women start to learn the whole truth (or almost the whole truth) about the man whose death brought them together and whose ghost watches over them still. Wise, wry, and intellectually playful, Instances of the Number 3 explores the mysterious power of triangles in love, art, and theology. It confirms Salley Vickers as one of the most intelligent new voices in British fiction.
Download or read book Out of Water written by Colin Chartres and published by FT Press. This book was released on 2010-07-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From cities to biofuels, competition for water is accelerating. Climate change threatens to intensify the onset and severity of the water crisis in several regions of the developing world: this is already happening throughout much of Asia, the Mediterranean, southwestern Australia, and the southwestern US. Along with water shortages, unsafe water becomes an increasingly widespread problem, too. As water crises trigger food and health crises, billions may slip further into poverty, leading to greater social and political unrest, new wars, and worsening national security. Out of Water doesn't just illuminate the coming global water crisis: it presents innovative solutions in agriculture, engineering, governance, and beyond, including state-of-the art techniques for integrated water management. This book will help raise the level of debate about water to the highest levels of government, and identify workable reforms and incentives to help water users utilize this crucial resource far more efficiently.
Download or read book The Other Side of You written by Salley Vickers and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2008-03-04 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. David McBride, death exerts an unusual draw. Despite his profession, he has never come to terms with the violent accident that took his brother's life, a trauma that has shaped his personality and subsequent choice of career. But when a failed suicide, Elizabeth Cruikshank, comes into his care, he finds the deepest reaches of his suppressed history being reactivated. Elizabeth is mysteriously reticent about her own past and it is not until David recalls a painting by the Italian artist Caravaggio that she finally yields her story. As she recounts the chance encounter which took her to Rome, and her tragic tale of passion and betrayal, David begins to find a strange and disturbing reflection of his own loss in the haunted "other side" of this elusive woman. Through one long night's dialogue they journey together into a past which brings painful new insight and uncertain resolution to each of them. The Other Side of You is a powerful meditation on art, and on love in all its manifestations. In distinctive, graceful prose, Salley Vickers explores the ways both love and art can penetrate the complexities of the human heart, to invade and change our being, and the possibilities of regeneration through another's vision and understanding.
Download or read book The Librarian written by Salley Vickers and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A charmingly subversive novel about a library in 1950s England, by the acclaimed author of The Cleaner of Chartres Sylvia Blackwell, a young woman in her twenties, moves to East Mole, a quaint market town in middle England, to start a new job as a children's librarian. But the apparently pleasant town is not all it seems. Sylvia falls in love with an older man - but it's her connectionto his precocious young daughter and her neighbours' son which will change her life and put them, the library and her job under threat. How does the library alter the young children's lives and how do the children fare as a result of the books Sylvia introduces them to?
Download or read book Middle Passage written by Charles Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Charles Johnson’s National Book Award-winning masterpiece—"a novel in the tradition of Billy Budd and Moby-Dick…heroic in proportion…fiction that hooks the mind" (The New York Times Book Review)—now with a new introduction from Stanley Crouch. Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave and irrepressible rogue, is lost in the underworld of 1830s New Orleans. Desperate to escape the city’s unscrupulous bill collectors and the pawing hands of a schoolteacher hellbent on marrying him, he jumps aboard the Republic, a slave ship en route to collect members of a legendary African tribe, the Allmuseri. Thus begins a voyage of metaphysical horror and human atrocity, a journey which challenges our notions of freedom, fate and how we live together. Peopled with vivid and unforgettable characters, nimble in its interplay of comedy and serious ideas, this dazzling modern classic is a perfect blend of the picaresque tale, historical romance, sea yarn, slave narrative and philosophical allegory. Now with a new introduction from renowned writer and critic Stanley Crouch, this twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Middle Passage celebrates a cornerstone of the American canon and the masterwork of one of its most important writers. "Long after we’d stopped believe in the great American novel, along comes a spellbinding adventure story that may be just that" (Chicago Tribune).
Download or read book The Gardener written by Salley Vickers and published by Viking. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A charming new novel about two very different sisters who buy a ramshackle cottage together, from the bestselling author of The Librarian 'Two sisters, Hassie and Margot Days, after heated exchanges and months of debate, had put together the money left them by their father and bought a house in Hope Wenlock, just on the English side of the Welsh Borders. The house was timbered, roomy and, certainly on the outside, picturesque; "a jigsaw picture house", it was described by the agents (a description which had for some time set Hassie against going to view it). What she had seen, when Margot's persistence eroded her resistance, was a rambling redbrick building, covered in Virginia creeper, with a sprawling garden, invaded by weeds, yellow fungi, and clumps of brooding nettles. . .' When the sisters hire Murat, who has recently arrived in Hope Wenlock from Albania, to be their gardener, they unwittingly unleash tensions in the quiet English village they have begun to call home. The Gardener is a beautifully observed tale of sisterhood, secrets, belonging and new beginnings, from the best-selling author of The Librarian.
Download or read book French Milk written by Lucy Knisley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-04-14 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through delightful drawings, photographs, and musings, twenty-three-year-old Lucy Knisley documents a six-week trip she and her mother took to Paris when each was facing a milestone birthday. With a quirky flat in the fifth arrondissement as their home base, they set out to explore all the city has to offer, watching fireworks over the Eiffel Tower on New Year's Eve, visiting Oscar Wilde's grave, loafing at cafés, and, of course, drinking delicious French milk. What results is not only a sweet and savory journey through the City of Light but a moving, personal look at a mother-daughter relationship.
Download or read book Chartres Cathedral written by Etienne Houvet and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Here We Are written by Graham Swift and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This novel of love in the world of 1950s vaudeville is a masterwork of literary magic from the Booker Prize-winning author of Last Orders and Mothering Sunday It is 1959 in Brighton, England, and the theater at the end of the famous pier is having its best summer season in years. Ronnie, a brilliant young magician, and Evie, his dazzling assistant, are top of the bill, drawing a full house every night. And Jack is everyone’s favorite master of ceremonies, holding the whole show together. But as the summer progresses, the drama among the three begins to overshadow their success onstage, setting in motion events that will reshape their lives. Vividly realized, tenderly comic, and quietly shattering, Here We Are is a masterly work of literary magic.
Download or read book Chartres Cathedral written by Malcolm B. Miller and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author is the world's foremost authority on Chartres, and is in residence there most of the year. He shows us the history of the cathedral and teaches us how to "read" the world-famous stained glass and sculpture, explaining the references to Scripture and the teachings of the Church. Chartres alone, of all the great medieval churches, has survived into the 20th century almost intact, not only architecturally but with its vast inconographic program in 12th-and 13th-century stained glass and sculpture. Medieval art was intended not just to embellish the church but to instruct the people, for there was no printing. Scholars could therefore teach their students, the clergy preach sermons and parents read the lives of the saints to their children using the 'texts' in stained glass and sculpture. The sister churches of Chartres have been sadly vandalized to varying degrees by Reform, revolution, war or natural disaster. Here in Chartres the 'text' is virtually complete. A concise glossary of symbolic images has been included as well as a complete plan of all the windows in the cathedral, and an index.
Download or read book Cousins written by Salley Vickers and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A wonderful book. Salley Vickers spins a spellbinding account of a family in distress' Elizabeth Strout How much can love ask of us? Brilliant and mercurial Will Tye suffers a life changing accident. The terrible event ripples through three generations of the complex and eccentric Tye family, bringing to light old tragedies and dangerous secrets. Each member of the family holds some clue to the chain of events which may have led to the accident and each holds themselves to blame. Most closely affected is Will's cousin Cecelia, whose affinity with Will leaves her most vulnerable to his suffering and whose own life is for ever changed by how she will respond to it. Told through the eyes of three women close to Will, his sister, his grandmother and his aunt, Cousins is a novel weaving darkness and light which takes us from the outbreak of World War Two to the present day, exploring the recurrence of tragedy, the nature of trangression, and the limits of morality and love.
Download or read book Grandmothers written by Salley Vickers and published by Penguin Books Limited. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wonderful novel about four very different grandmothers: Blanche, who can't seem to stop stealing things from the local pharmacy; Minna, who just wants a quiet life in her shepherd's hut, though the local children have other ideas; Cherry, who's adjusting to life in a care home; and Nan, whose favourite occupation is researching funerals - whose lives and grandchildren become unexpectedly entangled.
