RA FRIDAY - A FASCINATING RASCAL

(Lee Richards in Cold Feet)

Tell me, honestly, would you resist him? Look at his gaze and smile... Could you actually deny anything to this charming rascal ? 

And what about this one?

(John Mulligan in "Drowning not waving")

I've been working hard (tough job!)  this week on imagining Richard as protean Robert  Lovelace. Mutable, versatile, untrustworthy , treacherous, vain, but handsome, fascinating, enchanting, attractive, manly, sexy… irresistible. Except your name is ...  Clarissa Harlowe! One of the  most feminist/puritan heroine in literature.  She rejected him! Anyhow, poor  creature,  it's not her fault. Sanctimonious Richardson created her like that. And her stubborness (sex phobia?) ruined the two of them: Lovelace and herself.

I’m so sure Richard will do an excellent job. He will give Lovelace new life and new charm. Are you ready to listen to BBC 4 radio drama based on Samuel Richardson's CLARISSA? Next Sunday afternoon at 3 p. m. (Greenwich time) You can listen to it online at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4

I can't wait and I've been studying hard to be ready. I've taken this task on very seriously. I've read several of the  letters in the novel  (not the entire book... three books indeed!) and found my old uni notes to recall what I studied. I've read some reviews and essays. But ... the most interesting thing was watching BBC 1991 Clarissa starring Sean Bean and Saskia Wickham.

I went on substituting RA's voice to Mr Bean's  voice all the time and what an emotion ... certain scenes were even more thrilling! Do you want to try yourself? Here you are.What if Richard played this passionate scene?

Phew! Such a tragic story! Sentimental and even melodramatic in Richardson’s epistolary novel. Better conveyed, with less redundancy, in the TV adaptation.

Such a perfect puritan heroine  meets an unscrupolous  libertine on her path. She sees him as the only means to escape from a her family’s prison , from the disgusting Mr Solmes, the man her family has  chosen as her husband. But, then Lovelace becomes her new gaoler. He wants her at any cost, he tricks and deceives her. What a pity! Maybe she could have loved him if only he didn’t betray her, stirred by his flesh, his uncontrollable desire to possess that “angel”.

Impossible not to take a liking to Lovelace and reproach him at the same time. It's impossible to like Clarissa  much:  too perfect, too naive, too good. But one must sympathize with her in her misfortune. She is generous and disinterested and she wilfully renounces her grandfather’s inheritance in favour of her father and brother. She’s always been obedient and dutiful but there is one thing she can never renounce: her independence. Never.

Lovelace and Clarissa are tragic lovers, as tragic as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to me. Watching or reading their story you are there wishing... "if only"... all the time.

And now ... guess who?

Do you recognize her? A clue? She is Hannah Howe, Clarissa's best friend in the novel.

Yeah! Hermione Norris, Ros Myers in Spooks. Much better now than in 1991, isn't she?

Eagerly waiting for Richard's Lovelace!

Meanwhile ... incredibly ...other news! Lots of news!

Richard's must sleep very little, amazing man!

1. A new voiceover for a documentary about posh schools

"Too poor for Posh School"? on Channel 4 March 11th

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m598b6zbiyQ

2. A new Georgette Heyer's audiobook read by Richard

THE CONVENIENT MARRIAGE

will be released on August 2nd

3. Filming Spooks 9 (first photos on set)

HERE

4. No Charlie for Richard. Who has lost more? Mike Ogden, of course!

I'm disappointed, though. Do you remember my enthusiasm?

Richard Armitage in Italy

Many thanks to Annette for keeping us all so well updated thanks to her hard work at www.richardarmitageonline.com

and to the ladies at C19 who are incredibly active!
Last, but indeed first and not at all least, to my fairy Merryweather for her support and proactive help!

AVAILABLE SOURCES

CLARISSA ON LINE
Why Lovelace must die
I shall enter her heart

THROWBACK THURSDAY - THE BELL JAR by SYLVIA PLATH

This is an event hosted by Jenny at TakeMeAway . It is a weekly corner to write about good reads from the past. Those books we so much loved and we don't want to forget. This week one of my favourite poets' only novel, Sylvia Plath's THE BELL JAR.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head).
(-from ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’ by Sylvia Plath, 1954)

It was 2003. I had several reasons for reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

One, I had developed a big interest for stories about depression, being insane, fragility. After watching the movie from Susan Kaysen’s Girl Interrupted and after reading Paolo Coelho’s Veronika Decides To Die , I wanted to to try The Bell Jar.

Two, I was curious to read Sylvia Plath’s only novel. I was very fond of her as a poet and wondered how her works would be like when she could more freely use letters and words into a big story.

Third and last, The Bell Jar has been constantly compared to JD Salinger’s Catcher and the Rye which is a book I do love. As a fanatic of Holden Caufield, I have developed this sudden urge to read Bell Jar and see if Esther Greenwood could be his female counterpart.

The story of Bell Jar is a first person account of Esther Greenwood. Sylvia Plath herself, her story at 19. Esther, like Sylvia, is a girl who has almost everything she could ask for. She’s an individual with a mind that is above average , extremely sensitive, intellingent and talented . With all of that provided for her, Esther is also struggling with the perennial problems of morality, behavior and identity crisis. The stress and the pressure of being an achiever burns her mind out ; the tension of sexual relations and the double standards on women’s virginity , the ups and downs of family relationships increase her sense of derangement.

Esther compares her life to that of an existence in a bell jar, where the air is stiff, heavy and unchanging. She feels as if she is watching her own life and everything that happened to her from within the jar.

Perhaps the best thing about the book is the fact that the life of Esther is synonymous with what the author, Sylvia Plath, had experienced. Like Esther, Plath had gone through a struggling ordeal in finding the real meaning of life and its hidden uncertainties and her eventual fall into the pit of madness.

The book has some similarities with JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye: both Esther and Holden are troubled young souls searching for the true meaning of life and their existence. Both escapes the reality they can’t accept. Both are considered crazy because of their atypicality and fragility.

“For the first time in my life, sitting there in the sound-proof heart of the UN building between Constantin who could play tennis as well as simultaneously interpret and the Russian girl who knew so many idioms I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it.

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end. felt like a racehorse in a world without race-tracks...” (ch. 7)

Other posts about Sylvia Plath on Fly High

Life was too small to contain her

I didn't know how to start this letter and now I don't know how to end it

GIVEAWAY WINNER + NEW GIVEAWAY!!!

Last week I posted both on Fly High and on My Jane Austen Book Club about Carrie Bebris's latest MR & MRS DARCY MISTERY, THE INTRIGUE AT HIGHBURY based on Jane Austen's Emma. 

1. Read Carrie Bebris's guest post

2. Read my review of The Intrigue at Highbury

Commenters on both blogs could win the latest Italian translation of  Bebris's Mysteries

L'ENIGMA DI MANSFIELD PARK offered by TEA Libri (Bebris's Italian publisher)

These are the Italian readers I entered for the giveaway

ON FLY HIGH

1. Karen

2. lunarossa

ON MY JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB

3. Alesya

4. lunarossa

5. Ms Lucy

AND THE WINNER IS ....

LUNAROSSA

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Now, for all my readers a new giveaway thanks to Carrie Bebris and her American publisher, Tor Books.

You can win a copy of her brand new

THE INTRIGUE AT HIGHBURY!!!

Read Carrie's guestpost and/or  my review on My JA Book Club, come back here

1. Tell why you would like to read The Intrigue at Highbury, what aspect or character intrigues you

2. Add your e-mail address

... and good luck!

Winner will be announced next week on Wednesday 17th March

18th and 19th Century Women Writers Challenge - Charlotte Turner Smith and her Elegiac Sonnets

Many of us have heard or studied great Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge or know about early romantic poets as William Blake, Thomas Gray and William Cowper. But very few have read or studied the numerous Romantic women writers and poets we have in English literature. So I thought I could dedicate my first post in the 18th and 19th Women Writers Challenge - hosted at Becky's Book Reviews -  to one of them, one of the most representative.

Charlotte Turner Smith ( 1749 – 1806) was a successful writer : she published ten novels, three books of poetry, four children's books, and other assorted works, over the course of her career. She always saw herself as a poet first and foremost .

Smith's poetry and prose was praised by contemporaries such as Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge as well as novelist Walter Scott. Largely forgotten by the middle of the nineteenth century, her works have now been republished and she is recognized as an important Romantic writer.

But more than by her works, I have always been attracted by her unfortunate hard working life which inspired her novels and poetry.

Charlotte was born into a wealthy family and received a typical education for a woman during the late eighteenth century. However, her father's reckless spending forced her to marry early. In a marriage that she later described as prostitution, she was given by her father to the violent and profligate Benjamin Smith. Their marriage was deeply unhappy, although they had twelve children together. Charlotte joined Benjamin in debtor's prison, where she wrote her first book of poetry, Elegiac Sonnets. Its success allowed her to help pay for Benjamin's release. Benjamin's father tried to leave money to Charlotte and her children upon his death, but legal technicalities prevented her from ever acquiring it.

Charlotte Smith eventually left Benjamin and began writing to support their children. Smith's struggle to provide for her children and her frustrated attempts to gain legal protection as a woman provided themes for her poetry and novels; she included portraits of herself and her family in her novels as well as details about her life in her prefaces.

Among her novels, Emmeline, The Orphan of the Castle (1788) and Celestina (1791)

For this challenge I read , little by little, and from time to time, many of her ELEGIAC SONNETS ( on line HERE).

Smith wrote in response to a public that could pay: she urgently needed revenues from her subscriptions, which opens a difficult ground for considering the relations between form and public expectation. Important also in this regard is Smith's decision to write poetry at all, when clearly the real money to be made was in prose fiction. She did eventually make her mark as a prolific novelist, but she defined herself primarily in terms of the dignity afforded the lyricist. In insisting upon her status as lyric poet, she asserts her membership in a cultural elite, one to which she would claim rightful inclusion in spite of her financial dependencies. She defiantly locates herself within the very public that knows what is worth paying for.

Smith appropriates the form that during  the  Renaissance, was linked to a particular kind of "mythologizing the woman", one that absolutely cancels her physicality. Great sonneteers had depicted idealized unreacheable beautiful women whose chastity and spirituality were basic features of their personality.

Now in her Elegiac Sonnets- written while she was in a debtors ' prison with her husband - Charlotte, a woman trying to make her way in a largely inhospitable world, tormented by the dross of domestic despair and financial crisis, laments emphatically real losses through the same 14-line-layout  that conventionally had been used to suspend the concrete actuality of the feminine in favour of mythic presence. This is Smith’s absolute novelty in her revival of the sonnet.
Romantic poetry is pervaded by a deep sense of loss and mourning that renders much of it elegiac in tone, reflecting as it does a sense of the world in which it was written as alienated, broken and torn. The affective individual, newly shaped by contemporary debates on sensibility and feeling, was expected to respond compassionately, if dejectedly, to the ruination engendered by Britain’s war with France, the failed revolution, rural poverty and an enclosed and ravaged natural landscape. The elegiac mode thus offered Romantic poets a form in which to address the perceived devastation of society through subjective explorations of grief, death, bereavement and consolation. The latter is what is difficult to find in Smith's poetry. Her sonnets are defined elegiac but the melancholic tone of loss and sorrow are not followed by the conventional consolation which is , instead , typical of elegy. Here is an example of this attitude.

SONNET XL. FROM THE SAME.
FAR on the sands, the low retiring tide,
In distant murmurs hardly seems to flow,
And o'er the world of waters, blue and wide,
The sighing summer wind, forgets to blow.
As sinks the day-star in the rosy West,
The silent wave, with rich reflection glows:
Alas! can tranquil nature give me rest,
Or scenes of beauty, soothe me to repose?
Can the soft lustre of the sleeping main,
Yon radiant heaven, or all creation's charms,
"Erase the written troubles of the brain,"
Which Memory tortures, and which guilt alarms?
Or bid a bosom transient quiet prove,
That bleeds with vain remorse, and unextinguish'd love!

Here’s a sample of how her sonnets are strictly linked to her condition of woman totally deprived of rights and freedom. She,  thus,  defies the male canon:

To Dependence

Dependence! heavy, heavy are they chains,
And happier they who from the dangerous sea

Or the dark mine, procure with ceaseless pains

An hard-eard'd pittance--than who trust to thee!
More blest the hind, who from his bed of flock
Starts--when the birds of morn their summons give
And waken'd by the lark--"the sheperd's clock."
Lives but to labour--labouring but to live.
More noble than the sycophant, whose art
Must heap with taudry flowers thy hated shrine;
I envy not the meed thou canst impart
To crown his service--While, tho' Pride combine
With Fraud to crush me--my unfetter'd heart
Still to the Mountain Nymph may offer mine.

William Wordsworth wrote: “ A lady to whom English verse is under greater obligations than are likely to be either acknowledged or remembered”

William Cowper, instead, a close friend of hers, witnessed her exhausting hard work to financially support her family: “Chain’d to her desk like a slave to his oar, with no other means of subsistencefor herself and her numerous children, with her broken constitution, unequal to sever labour enjoined by her necessity, she is indeed to be pitied (…) she will and ust ‘ere long die a martyr to her exigencies”

She couldn't recognize, in her condition of mother-martyr, the consolatory power of Art.

Slow in the Wintry Morn, the struggling light
Throws a faint gleam upon the troubled waves;
Their foaming tops, as they approach the shore
And the broad surf that never ceasing breaks
On the innumerous pebbles, catch the beams
Of the pale Sun, that with reluctance gives
To this cold northern Isle, its shorten'd day.
Alas! how few the morning wakes to joy!
How many murmur at oblivious night
For leaving them so soon; for bearing thus
Their fancied bliss (the only bliss they taste!),
On her black wings away!—
(from THE EMIGRANTS Book I lines 1-12)

In these lines,  she identifies herself with the exile from France, those tormented people escaping from a country at war. She, a woman at war against an entire society and their injust laws, conventions and istitutions which had made  her  sublime and solitary like a byronic hero. A real forerunner of the romantic mood, she conveys the same desperate restllessness we will recognize Byron's reckless atypical figures, his outcast and rebels .

WHAT I'VE BEEN WATCHING ON ITALIAN TV

 SANT'AGOSTINO
( St. Augustine , a contemporary man )

"This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections"

 

BEAUTIFUL AS A FAIRY-TALE, TRUE AS THE HISTORY OF A GREAT MAN

I didn't think I'd like this series so much when I decided to add it to my TBS list. I had seen Alessandro Preziosi at the theatre as Hamlet and read an interview in which he said that the  St. Augustine (354 - 430 A.D ) he had interpreted in a two-part TV series was another hamletic character. This was enough to make me curious to see it. So when it was broadcast on RAI UNO, our State Tv, at the beginning of February  I recorded it and have just finished watching  it ( first I wanted to cut all the ads in it since I can't bear ads interrupting a film).

I found it a very good international production. Interesting, involving,  informative, accurate and touching. Most of the characters are based on historical figures. There is a frame that deals with  old St. Augustine ( Franco Nero ) on the verge of losing everything that he has built by being attacked by the Vandals in Hippo and in doing so looks back at his past through his writings.

This narrative device was extremely effective: the flashbacks to Augustine'  s past dramatically intermingle with the tragic present of the siege of Hippo,  creating a narrative crescendo to the final climax. 

The screenplay had to cut several historical events and details, to keep a fast pace  and sum up everything in two episodes only, but it is all largely true to fact.

For example, they didn't go into the fact that there were two Emperors at the time, one in the North and one in South of Italy and therefore just eluded to the one in Milan, where St. Augustine became the court orator.

 Augustine lived in a time of  crisis, the fall of the great Roman Empire. A moment of uneasiness, anxiety and displacement. His troubled quest  for the Truth is so compelling and so contemporary. He searched for the Truth and for Happiness in the ways of the world but only got unhappiness and restlessness. He was a narcissus, an ambitious, lascivious, selfish young man . His late conversion, his awareness of holding the Truth at last,  led  him to write Confessions and City of God still nowdays considered pillars of modern phylosophy and theology.

Two women were fundamental in Augustine's learning about Truth and Love

His mother, Monica, ( Monica Guerritore ) who dedicated her life to her debauched husband and to her children  supported by a deep faith in God and who prayed all her life through for Augustine's conversion

His lover, Khalidà (Serena Rossi)  the mother of his only child, who left him, who renounced to him so as not to abstacolate his success and his search for happiness.

I was completely hooked by the performances of the two main Augustines, Alessandro Preziosi , as the young man,  and Franco Nero , as the old bishop trying to save his sieged people.T he rest of the cast was also very good.  The imagery of the film was inspired to Ravenna mosaics. More than 3,000 costumes were designed and used in this rich production. Four the main settings:   Hippo, Cartago, Milan and Tagaste .

CAST

Augustine Alessandro Preziosi , Monica Monica Guerritore , Old Augustine Franco Nero , Lucilla Katy Louise Saunders ,

Fabio Sebastian Stroebel , Khalidà Serena Rossi , Young Augustine Matteo Urzia , Valerio Johannes Brandrup , Ambrogio Andrea Giordana , Possidio Wenanty Nosul , Romaniano Cesare Bocci ,Vescovo Ammonio Lech Mackiewic, Macrobio Dietrich Hollinderbaeumer , Ilario Krzysztof Pieczynski , Paola Aglaia Szyszkowitz, Old Valerio Alexander Held , Patrizio Cosimo Fusco ,  Blesilla Sonia Aquino , Sidonio Jerzy Zelnik , Fulvio Vincenzo Alfieri , Justine Francesca Cavallin

• Interview (in English ) with film

 director, the Canadian Christian Duguay

• 
  
  Slideshow at Rai.it

GIVEAWAY WINNER & MY JA AUSTEN BOOK CLUB

As promised here we are to announce the winner of Kate Atkinson's When Will there Be Good News?

offered by Antonella - lunarossa in her interview I posted here on Fly High! last week for "My Blogger Buddies". The readers who commented and were entered in the giveaway are

1. Teabird
2. LSM71059
3. Luciana
4. Mo
5. Missbluestocking
6. Karen
7. Jane GS
8. Sher
9. Phylly3
10. hilly

And the winner is...

Teabird!!!

 Congratulations!

Enjoy your reading!

Today we had our second meeting with my reading group, my Jane Austen Book Club.  We discussed Northanger Abbey. If you want to take a look I posted a short journal and some photos on my Jane Austen - dedicated page.

RA FRIDAY - HAVE YOU HEARD ANY RUMBLE FROM THE JUNGLE?

Welcome to my  weekly corner . I know his fans are already well aware there have been several news in the RA dedicated blogoworld this week. I don't want to add  - nor I can - any newer piece. Just wanted to ... sum everything up here.
But don't you feel like there's something missing ...  I feel I forgot something...

Yes, of course! How could I do that?

Well, now it is MUCH better! We can go on...

What was I saying? About the news, yes.

1. Documentary - Rumbles in the jungle

Have you heard any rumble from the jungle?

I haven't yet. Not so far. I'm not actually interested in elephants nor in their rumbling as a form of communication, honestly. But the higly scientific documentary that  was broadcast last night on BBC 2 and BBC HD was narrated  by Richard Armitage's smooth voice .Who's interested in what he says? There's a new one-hour-long audio sample of his skills to listen to! Even elephants and their rumblings may be welcome! Then...weren't we discussing how our interest in the man has widened our horizons last week? Weren't we wondering who swoons  over his velvety voice three weeks ago? No wonder we are ready to the elephants' rumbles in the jungle!

2. Award nomination for The Great Sperm Race

Never been interested in science, but maybe it's time to start!

The nominations for the Royal Television Society's Programme awards have been announced, and The Great Sperm Race has been nominated in the Science & Natural History category. The award ceremony will be held on 16th March in London. Richard Armitage was the narrator for this  programme too, which told the story of human conception in an unusual and imaginative way. Have you seen it? I haven't. Not yet, so far.

Too many words? Do you need a break? Here it is! Relax, breathe,  stare and admire, and get ready to go on....

3. New Santander ad.

I've always hated advertising on TV and radio. Always switched over when an ad started. But I've widened my horizons. I can bear watching this. It's even pleasant.

 This second advertisement for Santander, voiced by Richard Armitage, is now running on British television. It again features the giant red Lego motif , it advertises Santander's Flexible ISA.

4.Venetia - excerpt and interview

Oh, here we come to something even more tastier! On April 1 an abridged version of VENETIA by Georgette Heyer will be released in the form of an audiobook by  Naxos (I pre-ordered it  at Book Depository, this time).  It is read by Richard Armitage, who already recorded SYLVESTER for Naxos (read and listened to).

On Naxos AudioBooks website you'll find a page with  this interview - quite a monologue by Richard :

- he tells about his experience with Heyer's reading, he wants to strangle her for the long sentence structure in her style but he loves her comedy!

- about  STRIKE BACK coming out in April on Sky One and maybe going on for other series in the future

- his reading habits and tastes

- his plans for a drama piece about Richard III (I'm going to read THE SUNNE IN SPLENDOUR soon and to re-read Richard III by Shakespeare to compare) . Does his dream come true this time? Fingers crossed for that!

- last but not least,  there's a sample from chapter one of Venetia and a review with lots of details about the story.

5. Richard Armitage in Clarissa
Richard stars as Lovelace in BBC Radio 4's adaptation of Samuel Richardson's novel, Clarissa. It will be broadcast in four parts, beginning on Sunday 14th March at 3pm.

This is my world! As a teacher of English literature, of course. Not that this is one of my favourite reads but it is astonishing  and so delightful  to notice how Richard's career intermingles with my job!
Richardson's huge novel- the longest in English literature,  three books more than 800- hundred- page -thick  in my Italian edition! -  first published in 1747, is written in the form of hundreds of letters, mostly between the heroine, Clarissa Harlowe, and her friend Anna Howe, and between Robert Lovelace and his fellow libertine, John Belford.
Clarissa's ambitious family tries to force her into a loveless marriage to improve their fortunes. But she escapes by eloping with Robert Lovelace, a rake who has little intention of marrying her, and who ultimately rapes her.

Again Richard will prove himself with a baddie, one of the worst in his career so far. Bet we will be all there enchanted by this unscrupulous libertine Lovelace = love less? Bet he will conquer all of us not only , poor wretch , Clarissa? Let's see what happens after the first episode is broadcast on  BBC Radio 4.

Don't worry , I'm not going to read the thousands of pages of Richardson's epistolary novel. I'm not that crazy! Though the first book of my three-part edition is on my night-stand ...
 
 

6. Wow! Guess what? I've been invited to a masked ball, on May 1. Maybe I'll go and I'll be accompanied by a Ser Armitage I haven't met yet ... still thinking about it, though. I'd need a wonderful dress I can't afford and ... a spell which made me... a little taller. Much taller? Then, maybe,  a second spell... a little younger. Only a little. Were is my personal  fairy, Merryweather,  when I really need her? Travelling all over the world! By the way, my partner to the masked ball  looks something like this... Do you think I shall go?
 

                              

Do you want to join us? Fancy a masked ball accompanied by a Ser Guy ,
a Ser Lucas...
or whoever you'd like to go with?
Read here and here

(Thanks, Mesmered!)

 

Many thanks to Annette who keeps us well updated about Richard's career at her site http://www.richardarmitageonline.com/

Throwback Thursday - REUNION by FRED UHLMAN

This is an event hosted by Jenny at TakeMeAway . It is a weekly corner to write about good reads from the past. Those books we so much loved and we don't want to forget. This week a literary jewel, a novella by Fred Uhlman , REUNION, in Italian "L'amico ritrovato".

Fred Uhlman was a lawyer by profession. He was a German  of Jewish origin. He was born on 19th January 1901 in Stuttgart, Germany.

'Reunion', his novella, was published in English in 1971 (in Italy , 1977). Arthur Koestler, in his Introduction to the book, called it "a minor masterpiece". "Hundreds of bulky tomes have now been written about the age when corpses were melted into soap to keep the master race clean; yet I sincerely believe that this slim volume will find its lasting place on the shelves."-- he wrote.

This short novel is a story of adolescence and frindship between two boys, whom history, that is, the rise of Nazism , separates and ultimately destroys. The narrator , Hans Schwarz, is the son of a Jewish doctor and the grandson of a rabbi, and forms an intense frindship with Konradin von Hohefels, the young aristocrat in his class. A year later everything is over . Nothing remarkable between the two adolescents has happened, except that it is 1932 and Hitler has seized power in Germany...

(the poster of the movie, screenplay by Harold Pinter from Uhlman's novella, 1989)

This is a touching little book from my bookshelf that I love reading in the original version with my students, when they don't read it in our mother tongue with their Italian teachers. It's only 70 pages. Perfection is reading also "No coward Soul", the twin novella published in 1979, which tells the same story , this time from Konradin von Hohefels's point of view. Only this way you can actually understand REUNION.

Just a brief quotation:

"I don't know where I read that 'death undermines our confidence in life by showing that in the end everything is equally futile before the final darkness'. Yes, 'futile' is the right word. Still I musn't grumble: I have more friends than enemies and there are moments when I am almost glad to be alive. When I watch the sun set and moon rise, or see snow mountain tops."

Fred Uhlman died in London on April 11, 1985.

REUNION AT AMAZON.COM

 

REUNION THE MOVIES (1989)

HENRY TILNEY - THE HERO OF NORTHANGER ABBEY

Re-reading Northanger Abbey has been such a pleasure. I was smiling all the time. Incredible witty Austen made the miracle, again. And it's not my first time! Today, getting ready to the next meeting ( Saturday, 6th March ) of my Jane Austen Book Club, I've searched the Net for materials about Henry Tilney, the male protagonist in the novel,  and I've posted some reflections and quotations on my Austen dedicated page. You'll find also several screencaps from ITV 2007 adaptation of the novel, recently braodcast on PBS Masterpiece Classic, starring Felicity Jones and J.J. Feild (some of which are mine).

CLICK AND ENJOY

GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY - CARRIE BEBRIS introducing her THE INTRIGUE AT HIGHBURY

I'm glad to introduce the author of  the Mr & Mrs Darcy Mysteries, CARRIE BEBRIS, to all of you. Today the fifth book of the series comes out. It is based on Jane Austen's EMMA . Can you imagine Elizabeth Darcy and Emma Knightley together? Walking arm in arm all taken in their gossiping about insufferable Mrs Elton... And have you got any idea of what can happen if Mr Darcy and Mr Knighley join their forces to solve a mystery? Well, better to say more than one ...THE INTRIGUE AT HIGHBURY can feed your imagination...  Here's to you Carrie Bebris introducing herself and her latest work .

Thank you, Maria Grazia, for inviting me to write a guest post introducing myself and my series. I am happy to be here!

I am an American writer with a love of all things British, especially British literature and history. After publishing two novels in the fantasy genre, I decided to switch to historical mysteries. As the mysteries I most enjoy reading usually involve some sort of literary connection (such as A.S. Byatt’s Possession and Jasper Forde’s The Eyre Affair), I wanted a premise that somehow referenced my favorite author, Jane Austen. I also enjoy mysteries involving couple sleuthing teams who engage in lively banter while solving crimes, such as The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora Charles.

This was ten years ago, before Austen paraliterature had practically become a genre of its own. I explored many ideas, but eventually found inspiration in the the hero and heroine of Pride and Prejudice and how they deal with the crisis of Mr. Wickham’s elopement with Elizabeth’s sister Lydia. Elizabeth, a strong observer of character, predicts Lydia’s disgrace; Mr. Darcy, a man of the world who knows how to get things done, tracks down the couple and makes the marriage happen. I thought, if Elizabeth and Darcy make such an effective team before they get together romantically, imagine what they could do afterward.

That became the premise of the Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery series. The newlywed Elizabeth and Darcy become reluctantly involved in mysteries affecting their family and friends. In the series debut, Pride and Prescience, Caroline Bingley becomes embroiled in an intrigue only the Darcys can solve. Successive books (Suspense and Sensibility, North by Northanger, The Matters at Mansfield, and The Intrigue at Highbury) bring the Darcys into contact with characters from Austen’s other novels. I am currently writing the sixth book of the series, based on Austen’s Persuasion.

The newest Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery, The Intrigue at Highbury (Or, Emma’s Match) is how I met Maria Grazia. When I offered several advance reading copies of The Intrigue at Highbury as giveaways in last year’s Everything Austen Challenge hosted by Stephanie’s Written Word, Stephanie asked whether I wanted to limit the contest to U.S. readers or open it up to international readers as well. Without hesitation, I chose international. I have a fair number of readers around the globe, and I definitely wanted to include them! In particular, since TEA Books began publishing my Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery series in Italian translation, I have developed a growing Italian audience. I love receiving emails from my Italian readers; they are always so full of warmth that it is like receiving a spot of Italian sunshine. So I was delighted to learn that one of the winners was Italian. I happily sent her a copy of the book . . . and I look forward to learning what she thought about it.

Well, what can I say, Carrie? It was such a pleasure to be back at Highbury ,thanks to you! I just went through the pages and thought "How nice! What a delight! Great device! Good point!" all the time. Honestly, I haven't read much Austen paraliterature so far,  but I've read, re-read,  studied and taught the original novels, Jane Austen's 6 . So I can say I am quite accustomed.  After reading The Intrigue at Highbury, I just want to discover more of this new world.
 Now it's time to read  my review at MY JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB , my Everything Austen page online.

GIVEAWAY FOR  ITALIAN READERS

 After reading my review of The Intrigue at Highbury,

• leave your comment there at MY JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB  or here at FLY HIGH under Carrie Bebris guest post ( but if you want you can comment both ... two comments = two entries!)
• remember to add your e-mail address
• comment in Italian, if you uncomfortable with English, and you'll be greatly welcome all the same

and you will have a chance ( or two)  to win  a copy of Carrie Bebris's L'ENIGMA DI MANSFIELD, the Italian translation of  The Matters at Mansfield. Winner will be announced on  10th March .

I know there are several Italians among you, so let's see if you are interested in  these delightful mystery books based on Jane Austen's world. If you are Janeites, you'll love them.

Thanks to the Italian publisher TEA for granting me this copy of Carrie Bebris's latest Italian translation, released  in January 2010. Other books by Carrie Bebris published by TEA are ORGOGLIO E PREVEGGENZA , SOSPETTO E SENTIMENTO , LE OMBRE DI PEMBERLEY.

And , of course,  thanks to CARRIE BEBRIS for her kindness

and for the delight she gives us through her work!