The Sacred Combe
The Sacred Combe

Author: Simon Barnes

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-01-14

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 147291404X

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We've all got one. A secret, special place. Hidden. Enclosed. A little greener and more fertile than the world outside. Here the birds are slightly more exotic, slightly more confiding, the grass greener and the fruit sweeter. To know such a place, to love such a place, is part of being human. Sometimes it's a place of myth, like the Garden of Eden. Sometimes it exists in fictional form, like Narnia or Shangri-La. Sometimes it comes in memories of a golden day in childhood, or in a glorious, doomed love affair. Sometimes it's a real place that we daren't go back to, for fear that it – or we – had changed. And just occasionally it's a real place. A place where you leave a small piece of your heart and return as often as you can so as not to lose it. It's a place of privilege. Simon Barnes found such a place when he woke in his first morning in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia to find elephants eating the roof of his hut. It was a homecoming, and he has been faithful to that passion ever since. Here he has known peace, danger, discomfort, fear and a profound sense of oneness with the Valley, with all nature and with the world. With the Valley he found completion. This book explores the special places of the mind and the world, with special reference to the Luangwa Valley and the glorious support of the Valley's great artist, Pam Carr. It's a book about the quest for paradise, and the eternal human search to find such a paradise everywhere.

The Timescapes of John Fowles
The Timescapes of John Fowles

Author: Harald William Fawkner

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780838631751

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This critical study explicates the complex and elusive fiction of John Fowles in terms of the tensions between time and timelessness. The author introduces insights gained from recent scientific and interdisciplinary studies of the apprehension of temporality and constructs a model for the hierarchy of levels of time in fiction.

The Recurrent Green Universe of John Fowles
The Recurrent Green Universe of John Fowles

Author: Thomas M. Wilson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 9401202915

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Ecocriticism is the emerging academic field which explores nature writing and ecological themes in all literature. Thomas M. Wilson’s book is the first to consider the work of one of the most critically acclaimed and generally popular post-war English writers from an ecocritical perspective. Fowles is best known as a novelist and author of such works as The Magus, The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Daniel Martin. Going beyond the fiction, this book also examines the many profound reflections on the natural world found in his essays, poems and his recently published Journals. John Fowles’ writings have cast light on the ways we perceive the natural world, from curious scientific observer to Wordsworthian lover of natural places, as well as many other important and, at this time, crucial themes. This volume will be of interest to critics and readers of contemporary fiction, but most of all, to anyone curious about their place in the recurrent green universe that is our earth.

Leap!
Leap!

Author: Sara Davidson

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2008-02-26

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0345478096

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Thirty years ago, Sara Davidson wrote the phenomenal bestseller Loose Change, the definitive book about the boomer generation’s coming-of-age. Now this witty social observer has again turned her discerning eye to her contemporaries, with Leap!, a no-holds-barred, illuminating, and hopeful look at the choices and challenges we face and the roads open to us. For many years Davidson earned a living as a successful journalist and screenwriter, but in her fifties she saw her life come apart: She could no longer find work, she endured a break-up with her partner, and her children left for college. For the first time ever, she had nothing to do. She felt adrift, but she found that she was not alone. In Leap!, Davidson sets out on a passionate quest to learn how to do the coming years well. Drawing on her own experience and that of others, she explores such questions as • How does a high-powered person learn to walk down the ladder gracefully? • How can women continue to be sensual and not touch-deprived? • How do we arrange to grow old with our friends? • What will be the fire at the center of our lives? • Why are we still here? Davidson interviews people from across the country and from all walks of life, including such icons as Carly Simon, Tom Hayden, Tracy Kidder, Jane Fonda, Ram Dass, and Iman, as well as teachers, writers, psychologists, businesspeople, and spiritual leaders. The candid portraits are both inspiring and cautionary. True to character, boomers will approach these years differently from previous generations, and there will be no single path. Some will feel free for the first time to take risks; others will embark upon a spiritual search; some will want to give back, to make the world a better place; others will want to play or make creativity a priority. But they will not fade quietly into the sunset. With Leap!, Sara Davidson holds up a mirror for readers, allowing them to see not only themselves and those around them but their potential future. With Davidson as a guide, the possibilities are boundless.