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books tagged “suicide”
books tagged “suicide”
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Abnormal Psychology & Modern Lifeby Susan Mineka, Robert C. Carson, James Neal ButcherISBN 0321016815 (0-321-01681-5)
Hardcover, Addison-Wesley
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Abnormal Psychology & Modern Lifeby Robert C. CarsonISBN 0321018303 (0-321-01830-3)
Softcover, Addison-Wesley
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Absalom, Absalom!by William FaulknerISBN 0375508724 (0-375-50872-4)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Absalom, Absalom!'Book summary:Absalom! Absalom! is William Faulkners major work--his most important and ambitious contribution to American literature. In the dramatic texture of this story of the founding, flourishing and decay of the plantation of Sutpen's Hundred, and of the family that demonic Stephen Sutpen brought into the world a generation before the Civil War, there rises the lament of the South for its own vanished splendor. From its magnificent and bold inception, when with his wild Negroes the founder of the great plantation appeared out of nowhere to seize his hundred square miles of land and build his mansion, through the destruction of the Civil War and its aftermath, and the drab beginnings of the new South, the narrative is colored by the authors glowing imagery, his command of a powerful and magical prose style. Beneath its brilliant surface and dark undercurrents, the novel sweeps backward and forward through time. The story in all its ramifications becomes crystallized in the mind of a relative of this strange family, young Quentin Compson, a Harvard student. At the terrifying and abrupt end of the tale there remain in the crumbling shell of the old house only the dying son of its builder, an ancient Negro woman who had been his slave, and the idiot mulatto youth who was to be the only direct descendant of the Sutpen blood.
This edition is set from the first American edition of 1936 and commemorates the seventy-fifth anniversary of Random House. [via]More editions of Absalom, Absalom!:
The Accidental: Library Editionby Ali SmithISBN 0375422250 (0-375-42225-0)
Hardcover, Pantheon Books
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Advise and Consentby Allen DruryISBN 0380010070 (0-380-01007-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Advise and Consent'Book summary:leather bound. [via]
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Appointment in Samarraby John O'HaraISBN 0375719202 (0-375-71920-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Appointment in Samarra'Book summary:A twentieth-century classic, Appointment in Samarra is the first and most widely read book by the writer Fran Leibowitz called the real F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville social circuit is electrified with parties and dances, where the music plays late into the night and the liquor flows freely. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline Englishthe envy of friends and strangers alike. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction. Appointment in Samarra brilliantly captures the personal politics and easy bitterness of small-town life. It is John OHaras crowning achievement, and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence of a major American novelist. [via]More editions of Appointment in Samarra:
The Butcher Boyby Patrick McCabeISBN 0385312377 (0-385-31237-7)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Casanova in Bolzanoby Sandor Marai, George SzirtesISBN 0375712968 (0-375-71296-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Cheri and the Last of Cheriby Colette, Roger SenhouseISBN 0374528012 (0-374-52801-2)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cheri and the Last of Cheri'Book summary:Two volumes of Colette's most beloved works, with a new Introduction by Judith Thurman.[via]
Chéri, together with The Last of Chéri, is a classic story of a love affair between a very young man and a charming older woman. The amour between Fred Peloux, the beautiful gigolo known as Chéri, and the courtesan Léa de Lonval tenderly depicts the devotion that stems from desire, and is an honest account of the most human preoccupations of youth and middle age. With compassionate insight Colette paints a full-length double portrait using an impressionistic style all her own.More editions of Cheri and the Last of Cheri:
Chicken With Plumsby Marjane SatrapiISBN 0375424156 (0-375-42415-6)
Hardcover, Pantheon Books
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The Clientby John GrishamISBN 037543349X (0-375-43349-X)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Client'Book summary:With her sparkling voice and superb acting ability, Blair Brown gives an impressive reading of this John Grisham blockbuster. The story hinges on a young boy who gets an unwanted earful of murder, politics--and dangerous secrets about both--from a conscience-stricken mob lawyer bent on suicide. "I can tell you where the body is... the most notorious undiscovered corpse of our time." Just the kind of information most children don't need, especially when the snakeskin-wearing hit man finds out what he knows. Aside from musical cues scattered as superfluously as laugh tracks on a sitcom, the production quality is stellar, preserving the crispness of Blair's voice and the nuances of her excellent interpretation. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --George Laney [via]
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Cobainby Rolling Stone (San Francisco, Calif.), Fred WoodwardISBN 0316880159 (0-316-88015-9)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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Cocker Mouth Mailby Dixie McKeoneISBN 0373311079 (0-373-31107-9)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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Dead Seriousby Jane Mersky LederISBN 038070661X (0-380-70661-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books
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Death in Holy Ordersby P. D. JamesISBN 0345446666 (0-345-44666-6)
Softcover, Fawcett Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death in Holy Orders'Book summary:Despite challenges from Ruth Rendell and (more recently) Minette Walters, P.D. James's position as Britain's Queen of Crime remains largely unassailable. Although a certain reaction has set in to her reputation (and there are those who claim her poetry-loving copper Adam Dalgliesh doesn't correspond to any of his counterparts in the real world), her detractors can scarcely deny her astonishing literary gifts. More than any other writer, she has elevated the detective story into the realms of literature, with the psychology of the characters treated in the most complex and authoritative fashion. Her plots, too, are full of intriguing detail and studed with brilliantly observed character studies. Who cares if Dalgliesh belongs more in the pages of a book than poking around a graffiti-scrawled council estate? As a policeman, he is considerably more plausible than Doyle's Holmes, and that's never stopped us loving the Baker Street sleuth. Death in Holy Orders represents something of a challenge from James to her critics, taking on all the contentious elements and rigorously reinvigorating them. She had admitted that she was finding it increasingly difficult to find new plots for Dalgliesh, and the locale here (a theological college on a lonely stretch of the East Anglian coast) turns out to be an inspired choice. We're presented with the enclosed setting so beloved of golden age detective writers, and James is able to incorporate her theological interests seamlessly into the plot (but never in any doctrinaire way; the nonbeliever is never uncomfortable). The body of a student at the college is found on the shore, suffocated by a fall of sand. Dalgliesh is called upon to reexamine the verdict of accidental death (which the student's father would not accept). Having visited the College of St. Anselm in his boyhood, he finds the investigation has a strong nostalgic aspect for him. But that is soon overtaken by the realization that he has encountered the most horrific case of his career, and another visitor to the college dies a horrible death. As an exploration of evil--and as a piece of highly distinctive crime writing--this is James at her nonpareil best. Dalgliesh, too, is rendered with new dimensions of psychological complexity. --Barry Forshaw, Amazon.co.uk [via]
More editions of Death in Holy Orders:
- Death in Holy Orders : An Adam Dalgliesh Novel: ISBN 0345467493 (0-345-46749-3)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group - Death in Holy Orders: ISBN 0375412557 (0-375-41255-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - Death in Holy Orders : An Adam Dalgliesh Novel: ISBN 0375431179 (0-375-43117-9)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print - Death in Holy Orders: ISBN 0345446666 (0-345-44666-6)
Softcover, Fawcett Books
- Death in Holy Orders : An Adam Dalgliesh Novel: ISBN 0345467493 (0-345-46749-3)
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The Dream Songsby John BerrymanISBN 0374516707 (0-374-51670-7)
Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dream Songs'Book summary:This edition combines 77 Dream Songs, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1965, and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1969. It contains 385 songs, an index of first lines, an index of titles, and a note by the author.[via]
In his essay on the work, Denis Donoghue says: "John Berryman has now completed the long poem, The Dream Songs, begun in 1955 . . . The poet resolved it [the problem of a long poem] in his own way; not Eliot's way in Four Quartets, Williams's way in Paterson, Pound's way in the Cantos, or Hart Crane's way in The Bridge . . . Mr. Berryman's answer was to conceive a diary, a dream diary."
"A major achievement," writes A. Alvarez in The Observer. "He has written an elegy on his brilliant generation and, in the process, he has also written an elegy on himself."
Of the hero of The Dream Songs, James Schevill has written: "The character of Henry is a permanent addition to American literature."More editions of The Dream Songs:
The Dream Songsby W.S. Merwin, John BerrymanISBN 0374530661 (0-374-53066-1)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Embersby Sandor Marai, Carol Brown JanewayISBN 0375707425 (0-375-70742-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Embers'Book summary:In Sándor Márai's Embers, two old men, once the best of friends, meet after a 41-year break in their relationship. They dine together, taking the same places at the table that they had assumed on the last meal they shared, then sit beside each other in front of a dying fire, one of them nearly silent, the other one, his host, slowly and deliberately tracing the course of their dead friendship. This sensitive, long-considered elaboration of one man's lifelong grievance is as gripping as any adventure story and explains why Márai's forgotten 1942 masterpiece is being compared with the work of Thomas Mann. In some ways, Márai's work is more modern than Mann's. His brevity, simplicity, and succinct, unadorned lyricism may call to mind Latin American novelists like Gabriel García Márquez, or even Italo Calvino. It is the tone of magical realism, although Márai's work is only magical in the sense that he completely engages his reader, spinning a web of words as his wounded central character describes his betrayal and abandonment at the hands of his closest friend. Even the setting, an old castle, evokes dark fairy tales.
The story of the rediscovery of Embers is as fascinating as the novel itself. A celebrated Hungarian novelist of the 1930s, Márai survived the war but was persecuted by the Communists after they came to power. His books were suppressed, even destroyed, and he was forced to flee his country in 1948. He died in San Diego in 1989, one year before the neglected Embers was finally reprinted in his native land. This reprint was discovered by the Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso, and the subsequent editions have become international bestsellers. All of Márai's novels are now slated for American publication. --Regina Marler [via]
A Farewell to Armsby Ernest HemingwayISBN 0317562185 (0-317-56218-5)
Softcover, Ingram Book Co
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The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Livesby Sebastian FaulksISBN 0375727442 (0-375-72744-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Fatal Flowersby Rosemary DaniellISBN 0380542544 (0-380-54254-4)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Forbidden Colorsby Yukio MishimaISBN 0375705163 (0-375-70516-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Good Soldierby Ford Madox FordISBN 0374927731 (0-374-92773-1)
Hardcover, Octagon Books
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The Great Shark Hunt : Strange Tales from a Strange Timeby Hunter S. ThompsonISBN 0345374827 (0-345-37482-7)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Shark Hunt : Strange Tales from a Strange Time'Book summary:In addition to being a testament to the undeniably beatifying properties of American excess--literary, political, chemical, you name it--Hunter Thompson is the high priest of the ad hominem attack. Anyone unlucky enough to get in the way of his satirical sledgehammer will end up with soup for brains. Still, even Thompson needs a good villain to get properly lathered up; that's why he peaked simultaneously with America's 37th president, Richard Milhous Nixon. Tricky Dick was Thompson's dark-jowled, pale-calved Muse, and with his departure Thompson seemed to lose his place a bit. Swatting flies with a baseball bat.
You need look no further for this writer's best: this collection of pieces, first published in 1979, spans all of Thompson's primo era, including short pieces and selections from longer works. The Great Shark Hunt sports a few articles filed by a pre-Gonzo Hunter S. Thompson, which show flickers of passion but no real fire; the first experiments with the author's drug-fueled brand of journalism at the Kentucky Derby; and finally the gigs that made him an American institution, in Las Vegas and on the 1972 campaign trail.
Thompson's style is so unique that a reader is tempted to think that he leapt, fully formed, into Gonzohood. However, along with the crazy, careening prose itself, one of the auxiliary pleasures of The Great Shark Hunt is the map that it gives of Thompson's ascent (or descent, if you prefer) from the workaday hyperbole of sports writing to the hell-blast vigor of his later work. The drugs are, by and large, a distraction--lifestyle points that get in the way of the genuinely perceptive journalism that Thompson created. (But they are there, always, and in quantity.) If you're looking for insight into the underbelly of America, Hunter S. Thompson is your best and only guide, and The Great Shark Hunt is an excellent place to begin the grim safari. --Michael Gerber [via]
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Hell's Angelsby Hunter S. ThompsonISBN 0345410084 (0-345-41008-4)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hell's Angels'Book summary:Gonzo journalist and literary roustabout Hunter S. Thompson flies with the angels--Hell's Angels, that is. He's lived with them, he knows them and their machines, he speaks their langauge,and he reports it back to the world with all the fearsome force of a souped-up cyclone burning rubber. [via]
Henry's Fate and Other Poems, 1967-1972by John BerrymanISBN 0374169500 (0-374-16950-0)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurryby Elizabeth McCrackenISBN 0380730790 (0-380-73079-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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His Bright Lightby Danielle SteelISBN 0385334672 (0-385-33467-2)
Softcover, Delta
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› Find signed collectible books: 'His Bright Light'Book summary:Like Kurt Cobain, Nick Traina lived for punk rock (his bands made two CDs, Gift Before I Go and 17 Reasons), succumbed to heroin addiction, and died of suicide. His mom, Danielle Steel, takes us through her 19 twister-like years with Nick in a memoir more affecting than her potboiler novels. Like his AWOL addict father, Nick had good looks, bad behavior, and a yen for the feminine. Five days before he died, he phoned a woman he saw in a centerfold and had a new girlfriend by nightfall. But his fun was ever haunted by manic depression. At age 11, he was a bed wetter who ate all the Tylenol and Sudafed in the house. He first considered suicide at 13, as Steel learned by reading his diaries after his death.
There is tension in this story--one doctor told Steel if she could get Nick to live to 30, he'd probably live a normal life span. (For example, Nick's troubled dad resurfaced, sober, soon after his son's death.) And Steel conveys a sense of the intelligence Nick used to conceal his learning disability, and the irreverent charm that alternated with irrational rages. Oliver Sacks has urged us not to ask what neurological disease a person has, but what sort of person the disease has got hold of. Steel gives us a vivid sense of the costs of the disease to a family--and of the person who was Nick Traina. --Tim Appelo [via]
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The Hotel New Hampshireby John IrvingISBN 034540047X (0-345-40047-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hotel New Hampshire'Book summary:The first of my fathers illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels. So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they dream on in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Prayer for Owen Meany and Last Night in Twisted River.
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The House of Mirthby Edith WhartonISBN 0375753753 (0-375-75375-3)
Softcover, Modern Library
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House of Sand and Fogby Andre DubusISBN 0375727345 (0-375-72734-5)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'House of Sand and Fog'Book summary:Andre Dubus III wastes no time in capturing the dark side of the immigrant experience in America at the end of the 20th century. House of Sand and Fog opens with a highway crew composed of several nationalities picking up litter on a hot California summer day. Massoud Amir Behrani, a former colonel in the Iranian military under the Shah, reflects on his job-search efforts since arriving in the U.S. four years before: "I have spent hundreds of dollars copying my credentials; I have worn my French suits and my Italian shoes to hand-deliver my qualifications; I have waited and then called back after the correct waiting time; but there is nothing." The father of two, Behrani has spent most of the money he brought with him from Iran on an apartment and furnishings that are too expensive, desperately trying to keep up appearances in order to enhance his daughter's chances of making a good marriage. Now the daughter is married, and on impulse he sinks his remaining funds into a house he buys at auction, thus unwittingly putting himself and his family on a trajectory to disaster. The house, it seems, once belonged to Kathy Nicolo, a self-destructive alcoholic who wants it back. What starts out as a legal tussle soon escalates into a personal confrontation--with dire results.
Dubus tells his tragic tale from the viewpoints of the two main adversaries, Behrani and Kathy. To both of them, the house represents something more than just a place to live. For the colonel, it is a foot in the door of the American dream; for Kathy, a reminder of a kinder, gentler past. In prose that is simple yet evocative, House of Sand and Fog builds to its inevitable denouement, one that is painfully dark but unfailingly honest. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Housekeepingby Marilynne RobinsonISBN 0374173133 (0-374-17313-3)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Housekeeping'Book summary:Winner of the Pen/Hemingway AwardA modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience. [via]
The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servandoby Reinaldo ArenasISBN 0380750740 (0-380-75074-0)
Softcover, Avon Books
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In Watermelon Sugarby Richard BrautiganISBN 0385284519 (0-385-28451-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Jude the Obscureby Thomas HardyISBN 0375757414 (0-375-75741-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jude the Obscure'Book summary:This is the story of a struggle between the flesh and spirit. It concerns Jude Fawley, a young Wessex villager of exceptional promise, who goes to Oxford, contracts a loveless marriage and becomes embroiled in a doomed love affair with his cousin. [via]
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Julius Caesarby Richard WilsonISBN 0333754662 (0-333-75466-2)
Hardcover, Palgrave Macmillan
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Julius Caesar'Book summary:This new critical edition of Julius Caesar provides a selection of important essays by leading contemporary critics on Shakespeare's first "Globe" play. New historicist, feminist, psychoanalytic, and Marxist readings of the tragedy have been chosen to highlight the urgency with which this drama of prophecy, interpretation, and political crisis speaks to 21st-century concerns about democracy, the medi,a and communication.[via]More editions of Julius Caesar:
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The Killer's Cousinby Nancy WerlinISBN 0385325606 (0-385-32560-6)
Hardcover, Random House Children's Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Killer's Cousin'Book summary:Ever since David Yaffe was acquitted of murder in the accidental death of his girlfriend, he has felt that "for the rest of my life, over and over, I would have to convince everyone--including me--of my harmlessness." To escape media attention and the prying stares of the curious, he is sent to finish his senior year of high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lives in the attic apartment of his Aunt Julia and Uncle Vic. They receive him coldly, and his 11-year-old cousin, Lily, is openly hostile. (The apartment previously belonged to their older daughter Kathy, who died an apparent suicide at age 18.) With a haunting series of episodes--including a sporadic humming and a fleeting shadow--David begins to sense Kathy's eerie and powerful presence.
His loneliness and self-distrust is relieved only by his friendship with Raina, an art student who lives downstairs--until Lily's spying and harassing destroys the relationship. Lily's anger escalates into more and more vicious tricks, but when David confronts Vic and Julia, they refuse to believe that Lily needs help. At last David is forced to realize that he and Lily share a complicity in murder, in a blazing climax that resolves this subtle psychological thriller. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell [via]
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King Learby Claire McEachernISBN 0321107225 (0-321-10722-5)
Softcover, Longman Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'King Lear'Book summary:From Longman's new Cultural Editions Series, King Lear, edited by Claire McEachern, presents the play along with a critical introduction and contextual materials from the era of Shakespeare. [via]
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King Learby William Shakespeare, Philip EdwardsISBN 0333155882 (0-333-15588-2)
Hardcover, Macmillan
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The Life and Death of Yukio Mishimaby Henry Scott-Stokes, Henry Scott StokesISBN 0374524645 (0-374-52464-5)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima'Book summary:Novelist, playwright, film actor, martial artist, and political commentator, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was arguably the most famous person in Japan at the time of his death. Henry Scott Stokes, one of Mishima's closest friends, was the only non-Japanese allowed to attend the trial of the men involved in Mishima's spectacular suicide. In this insightful and empathetic look at the writer, Stokes guides the reader through the milestones of Mishima's meteoric and eclectic career and delves into the artist's major works and themes. This biography skillfully and compassionately illuminates the achievements and disquieting ideas of a brilliant and deeply troubled man, an artist of whom Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata had said, "A writer of Mishima's caliber comes along only once every two or three hundred years." [via]
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The Life and Death of Yukio Mishimaby Henry S. StokesISBN 0345320158 (0-345-32015-8)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima'Book summary:Novelist, playwright, film actor, martial artist, and political commentator, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was arguably the most famous person in Japan at the time of his death. Henry Scott Stokes, one of Mishima's closest friends, was the only non-Japanese allowed to attend the trial of the men involved in Mishima's spectacular suicide. In this insightful and empathetic look at the writer, Stokes guides the reader through the milestones of Mishima's meteoric and eclectic career and delves into the artist's major works and themes. This biography skillfully and compassionately illuminates the achievements and disquieting ideas of a brilliant and deeply troubled man, an artist of whom Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata had said, "A writer of Mishima's caliber comes along only once every two or three hundred years." [via]
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Maurice Guestby Henry Handel RichardsonISBN 0385277873 (0-385-27787-3)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Maybeby Brent RunyonISBN 0375835431 (0-375-83543-1)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Maybe'Book summary:Maybe everything will be different here. Maybe I should drive away and never come back. Maybe my brother didn't mean to. Maybe my brother was right. Maybe I can get someone to have sex with me. Maybe no one will ever love me. Maybe I should be an actor. Maybe I shouldn't pretend to be deaf.
Maybe if I mouth the words no one will know I'm not singing. But maybe someone, somehow, will hear me anyway.
Brent Runyon offers a raw, wrenching novel of a boy on the edge. It's a powerful story about love and loss and death and anger and the near impossibility for a sixteen-year-old boy to both understand how he feels and to make himself heard. [via]More editions of Maybe:
Mishima: A Vision of the Voidby Marguerite YourcenarISBN 0374520615 (0-374-52061-5)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mishima: A Vision of the Void'Book summary:On November 25, 1970, Japan's most renowned postwar novelist, Yukio Mishima, stunned the world by committing ritual suicide. Here, Marguerite Yourcenar, a brilliant reader of Mishima and a scholar with an eye for the cultural roles of fiction, unravels the author's life and politics: his affection for Western culture, his family and his homosexuality, his brilliant writings, and his carefully premeditated death.[via]More editions of Mishima: A Vision of the Void:
The Music Roomby Dennis McFarlandISBN 0380714566 (0-380-71456-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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One True Thingby Anna QuindlenISBN 0385319207 (0-385-31920-7)
Softcover, Dell Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'One True Thing'Book summary:One True Thing is a film starring Meryl Streep as the cancer-stricken homemaker mother, Renee Zellweger as the daughter who quits her top-dog job to care for her, and William Hurt as the chilly professor who lets the women in the family do the heavy emotional lifting dying requires. But the real star of the project remains former New York Times everyday-life columnist Anna Quindlen, who quit her top-dog job to write novels (and who took time off from college to nurse her own dying mother).
Quindlen hit a nerve with One True Thing, which captures an experience seldom dealt with in popular culture. (One exception: the sensitive 1996 film with Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio of the play Marvin's Room.) Though the heroine of One True Thing, Ellen Gulden, is a golden girl with two brothers who'll lose her career the instant she steps off the fast track, society concurs with her dad, who says, "It seems to me another woman is what's wanted here."
The book is a mother-daughter tale that should please fans of, say, The Joy Luck Club. It's not flashy, but it has a deep feel for the way children often discover, just before it's too late, who their parents really are. "Our parents are never people to us," Ellen writes, "they're always character traits.... There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat." The mercy-killing subplot isn't gripping, but the palpable sense of deepening family intimacy certainly is. --Tim Appelo [via]
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Oscar Wilde's the Picture of Dorian Grayby Oscar WildeISBN 0321427130 (0-321-42713-0)
Softcover, Longman Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oscar Wilde's the Picture of Dorian Gray'Book summary:A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."
As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment." [via]
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The Other Side of Youby Salley VickersISBN 0374221901 (0-374-22190-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Pearlby Mary GordonISBN 037542315X (0-375-42315-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pearl'Book summary:Without preamble, Mary Gordon takes the reader straight to the heart of the matter in Pearl. On Christmas night, in 1998, Maria Meyers gets a call from the State Department. Maria, a New York liberal, keeps the illusion of control of her surroundings, and the news she gets is confusing, annoying, and frightening. Confusing because she doesn't understand why Pearl, 20 years old and Maria's only child, has done what she has done, annoying because there has been no forewarning, and frightening because Pearl might die. Maria is definitely not in control here, a condition that makes her vastly uncomfortable. The caller tells Maria that Pearl has chained herself to the flagpole at the American Embassy in Dublin, where she has gone to study the Irish language. Her action is the culmination of six weeks of starvation. She is very ill, dehydrated, and near death. She has left three letters on the sidewalk: one meant for the media, one for her mother, and one for their dearest and oldest family friend, Joseph Kasperman.
The media letter says "...I am giving my life in witness to the death of Stephen Donegan and to the goodness and importance of his life. Second, to show my support, my admiration for the Peace Agreement, and those who have worked toward it. Third, to mark the human will to harm." Pearl believes that, due to a careless remark said in anger, she is responsible for Stephen's death. She has been consorting with members of the Real IRA, those hardliners who will make no accommodation to stop the violence. Pearl breaks with them over an act which places Stephen, a hapless, slow-witted boy, in the hands of the law. Her primary philosophical concern is her conviction that the "human will to harm," is pernicious and pervasive. She wants to opt out of any further possibility of harming anyone.
On this convoluted thread, Mary Gordon marches forward with a stunning exploration of revisited themes, such as Catholic-Jewish heritage, trouble with fathers, and the nature of personal responsibility. A stylistic note: Gordon employs an omniscient narrator to make comments, in the nature of "Gentle Reader" asides. It is sometimes irritating, but a small price to pay for Gordon's careful deconstruction of everyone's thoughts and actions as Maria and Joseph arrive in Dublin, where Maria confronts Mick, the American angel of the Real IRA, Finbar, Pearl's lover, and Pearl's doctors. She is used to directing traffic and is thwarted on all sides by people whose agendas are vastly different from hers. Joseph is a shadowy figure, more acted upon than acting, and when he does decide to stand up he makes a ludicrous error. Gordon has forged an entirely satisfactory and plausible ending for a precarious set of circumstances. The book is thought-provoking, asking and inspiring the reader to take a position on issues as old as time and as new as the headlines. --Valerie Ryan [via]
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Personal Historyby Katharine GrahamISBN 0375701044 (0-375-70104-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Personal History'Book summary:Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography An extraordinarily frank, honest, and generous book by one of America's most famous and admired women, Personal History is, as its title suggests, a book composed of both personal memoir and history. It is the story of Graham's parents: the multimillionaire father who left private business and government service to buy and restore the down-and-out Washington Post , and the formidable, self-absorbed mother who was more interested in her political and charity work, and her passionate friendships with men like Thomas Mann and Adlai Stevenson, than in her children. It is the story of how The Washington Post struggled to succeed -- a fascinating and instructive business history as told from the inside (the paper has been run by Graham herself, her father, her husband, and now her son). It is the story of Phil Graham -- Kay's brilliant, charismatic husband (he clerked for two Supreme Court justices) -- whose plunge into manic-depression, betrayal, and eventual suicide is movingly and charitably recounted. Best of all, it is the story of Kay Graham herself. She was brought up in a family of great wealth, yet she learned and understood nothing about money. She is half-Jewish, yet -- incredibly -- remained unaware of it for many years.She describes herself as having been naive and awkward, yet intelligent and energetic. She married a man she worshipped, and he fascinated and educated her, and then, in his illness, turned from her and abused her. This destruction of her confidence and happiness is a drama in itself, followed by the even more intense drama of her new life as the head of a great newspaper and a great company, a famous (and even feared) woman in her own right. Hers is a life that came into its own with a vengeance -- a success story on every level. [via]
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The Picture of Dorian Grayby Oscar WildeISBN 0375751513 (0-375-75151-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'Book summary:A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."
As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment." [via]
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The Readerby Bernhard SchlinkISBN 0375707972 (0-375-70797-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Reader'Book summary:Oprah Book Club® Selection, February 1999: Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable.... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?"
The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people--parents, grandparents, even lovers--who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink's prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue, and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany's pre- and postwar generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence. --R. Ellis [via]
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Rebeccaby Daphne Du MaurierISBN 0380730405 (0-380-73040-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rebecca'Book summary:"Last Night I Dreamt I Went To Manderley Again." So the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter remembered the chilling events that led her down the turning drive past ther beeches, white and naked, to the isolated gray stone manse on the windswept Cornish coast. With a husband she barely knew, the young bride arrived at this immense estate, only to be inexorably drawn into the life of the first Mrs. de Winter, the beautiful Rebecca, dead but never forgotten...her suite of rooms never touched, her clothes ready to be worn, her servant -- the sinister Mrs. Danvers -- still loyal. And as an eerie presentiment of evil tightened around her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter began her search for the real fate of Rebecca...for the secrets of Manderley. [via]
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Resuscitation of a Hanged Manby Denis JohnsonISBN 0374249490 (0-374-24949-0)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Resuscitation of a Hanged Man'Book summary:Resuscitation of a Hanged Man is Denis Johnson's most fully realized novel to date, an enthralling and shattering reading experience, which probes the mysteries of faith, hope and love.[via]More editions of Resuscitation of a Hanged Man:
Return of the Bunny Suicidesby Andy RileyISBN 034083403X (0-340-83403-X)
Hardcover, Hodder & Stoughton
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The Return of the Nativeby Thomas HardyISBN 0330344692 (0-330-34469-2)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Return of the Native'Book summary:One of Thomas Hardy's most powerful works, The Return of the Native centers famously on Egdon Heath, the wild, haunted Wessex moor that D. H. Lawrence called "the real stuff of tragedy." The heath's changing face mirrors the fortunes of the farmers, inn-keepers, sons, mothers, and lovers who populate the novel. The "native" is Clym Yeobright, who comes home from a cosmopolitan life in Paris. He; his cousin Thomasin; her fiancé, Damon Wildeve; and the willful Eustacia Vye are the protagonists in a tale of doomed love, passion, alienation, and melancholy as Hardy brilliantly explores that theme so familiar throughout his fiction: the diabolical role of chance in determining the course of a life. As Alexander Theroux asserts in his Introduction, Hardy was "committed to the deep expression of [nature's] ironic chaos and strange apathy, even hostility, toward man." [via]
More editions of The Return of the Native:
- The Return of the Native: ISBN 037575718X (0-375-75718-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc - The Return of the Native: ISBN 0333168941 (0-333-16894-1)
Hardcover, Trafalgar Square - The Return of the Native: ISBN 0333168844 (0-333-16884-4)
Hardcover, Macmillan - The Return of the Native: ISBN 0333179072 (0-333-17907-2)
Hardcover, Macmillan - The Return of the Native: ISBN 0330344692 (0-330-34469-2)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd
- The Return of the Native: ISBN 037575718X (0-375-75718-X)
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A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 4by Madeleine L'EngleISBN 0374362998 (0-374-36299-8)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 4'Book summary:"This wasn't the first tie that I'd come close to death, but it was the first time I'd been involved in this part of it, this strange, terrible saying goodbye to someone you've loved."
These are Vicky Austin's thoughts as she stands near Commander Rodney's grave while her grandfather, who himself is dying of cancer, recites the funeral service. Watching his condition deteriorate over that long summer is almost more than she can bear. Then, in the midst of her struggle, she finds herself the center of attention for three young men. Leo, Commander Rodney's son, turns to her as an old friend seeki comfort but longing for romance. Zachary, whose attempted suicide inadvertently cauesd Commander Rodney's death, sees her as the one sane and normal person who can give some meaning ot his life. And Adam, a serious young student working at the nearby marine-biology station, discvoers Vicky, his friend's little sister, incipient telepathic powers that can help him with his experiments in dolphin communications. Vicky finds solace and brief moments of peace in her poetry, but life goes on around her, and the strain intensifies as she confromts matters of love and of death, of dependence and of responsibility, universal concerns that we all must face. The inevitable crisis comes and Vicky must rely on openness, sensitivity, and the love of others to overcome her private grief. Once again, Madeleine L'Engle has written a story that reveals in the drama of vividly portrayed characters and events the spiritual and moral dimensions of common human experiences.[via]A Ring of Endless Light is a 1981 Newbery Honor Book.More editions of A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 4:
Rookery Bluesby Jon HasslerISBN 0345406419 (0-345-40641-9)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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A Sorrow beyond Dreamsby Peter HandkeISBN 0374267200 (0-374-26720-0)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Sorrow beyond Dreams'Book summary:Peter Handke's mother was an invisible woman. Throughout her lifewhich spanned the Nazi era, the war, and the postwar consumer economyshe struggled to maintain appearances, only to arrive at a terrible recognition: "I'm not human any more." Not long after, she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.
In A Sorrow Beyond Dreams her son sits down to record what he knows, or thinks he knows, about his mother's life and death before, in his words, "the dull speechlessnessthe extreme speechlessness" of grief takes hold forever. And yet the experience of speechlessness, as it marks both suffering and love, lies at the heart of Handke's brief but unforgettable elegy. This austere, scrupulous, and deeply moving book is one of the finest achievements of a great contemporary writer. [via]More editions of A Sorrow beyond Dreams:
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Summer Sistersby Judy BlumeISBN 0385324057 (0-385-32405-7)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Summer Sisters'Book summary:Judy Blume first won legions of fans with such young adult classics as Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and Forever, in which she tackles the cultural hot button of teenage sexuality. In Summer Sisters, her third novel for adults, the author again explores the ramifications of love--and lust--on two friends. Initially, the differences between Caitlin Somers and Victoria Leonard (or "Vix," as Caitlin christens her) draw them together: privileged Caitlin is wild and outspoken, beautiful but emotionally fragile, while working-class Vix is shy, reserved, and plain in comparison. After Caitlin selects Vix to accompany her to her father's home in Martha's Vineyard for the summer, the two become inextricably connected as "summer sisters."
On the Vineyard, Vix and Caitlin first find love, then sex--and lots of it. Yet Blume soon moves beyond hot fun in the summer sun, tracing the romantic and familial travails of the two from pre-adolescence to adulthood. Solid Vix evolves into Victoria, an equally solid, Harvard-educated, Manhattan public-relations exec. Unpredictable Caitlin opts out of college and travels to Europe, where she has a string of short-lived affairs with a series of intriguing (in every sense of the word) foreigners. It is only after she returns to the Vineyard that Caitlin does the unthinkable, forever changing both her friendship with Vix and their lives. Blume once again proves herself a master of the female psyche, and Summer Sisters is likely to entertain both her postadolescent and more mature readers. [via]
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Tess of the D'Urbervillesby Thomas HardyISBN 0330344706 (0-330-34470-6)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'Book summary:Etched against the background of a dying rural society, Tess of the d'Urbervilles was Thomas Hardy's 'bestseller,' and Tess Durbeyfield remains his most striking and tragic heroine. Of all the characters he created, she meant the most to him. Hopelessly torn between two menAlec d'Urberville, a wealthy, dissolute young man who seduces her in a lonely wood, and Angel Clare, her provincial, moralistic, and unforgiving husbandTess escapes from her vise of passion through a horrible, desperate act.
'Like the greatest characters in literature, Tess lives beyond the final pages of the book as a permanent citizen of the imagination,' said Irving Howe. 'In Tess he stakes everything on his sensuous apprehension of a young woman's life, a girl who is at once a simple milkmaid and an archetype of feminine strength. . . . Tess is that rare creature in literature: goodness made interesting.'
Now Tess of the d'Urbervilles has been brought to television in a magnificent new co-production from A&E Network and London Weekend Television. Justine Waddell (Anna Karenina) stars as the tragic heroine, Tess; Oliver Milburn (Chandler & Co.) is Angel Clare; and Jason Flemyng is Alec d'Urberville. The cast also includes John McEnery (Black Beauty) as Jack Durbeyfield and Lesley Dunlop (The Elephant Man) as Joan Durbeyfield. Tess of the d'Urbervilles is directed by Ian Sharp and produced by Sarah Wilson, with a screenplay by Ted Whitehead; it was filmed in Hardy country, the beautiful English countryside in Dorset where Thomas Hardy set his novels.
From the eBook edition. [via]More editions of Tess of the D'Urbervilles:
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0375756795 (0-375-75679-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 037575234X (0-375-75234-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0333168852 (0-333-16885-2)
Hardcover, Macmillan - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0333168968 (0-333-16896-8)
Hardcover, Pan Macmillan - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0333179099 (0-333-17909-9)
Hardcover, Macmillan - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0330344706 (0-330-34470-6)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0375756795 (0-375-75679-5)
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The Tin Drumby Günter GrassISBN 0375420576 (0-375-42057-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tin Drum'Book summary:Meet Oskar Matzerath, "the eternal three-year-old drummer." On the morning of his third birthday, dressed in a striped pullover and patent leather shoes, and clutching his drumsticks and his new tin drum, young Oskar makes an irrevocable decision: "It was then that I declared, resolved, and determined that I would never under any circumstances be a politician, much less a grocer; that I would stop right there, remain as I was--and so I did; for many years I not only stayed the same size but clung to the same attire." Here is a Peter Pan story with a vengeance. But instead of Never-Never Land, Günter Grass gives us Danzig, a contested city on the Polish-German border; instead of Captain Hook and his pirates, we have the Nazis. And in place of Peter himself is Oskar, a twisted puer aeternis with a scream that can shatter glass and a drum rather than a shadow. First published in 1959, The Tin Drum's depiction of the Nazi era created a furor in Germany, for the world of Grass's making is rife with corrupt politicians and brutal grocers in brown shirts:
There was once a grocer who closed his store one day in November, because something was doing in town; taking his son Oskar by the hand, he boarded a Number 5 streetcar and rode to the Langasser Gate, because there as in Zoppot and Langfuhr the synagogue was on fire. The synagogue had almost burned down and the firemen were looking on, taking care that the flames should not spread to other buildings. Outside the wrecked synagogue, men in uniform and others in civilian clothes piled up books, ritual objects, and strange kinds of cloth. The mound was set on fire and the grocer took advantage of the opportunity to warm his fingers and his feelings over the public blaze.
As Oskar grows older (though not taller), portents of war transform into the thing itself. Danzig is the first casualty when, in the summer of 1939, residents turn against each other in a pitched battle between Poles and Germans. In the years that follow, Oskar goes from one picaresque adventure to the next--he joins a troupe of traveling musicians; he becomes the leader of a group of anarchists; he falls in love; he becomes a recording artist--until some time after the war, he is convicted of murder and confined to a mental hospital.The Tin Drum uses savage comedy and a stiff dose of magical realism to capture not only the madness of war, but also the black cancer at the heart of humanity that allows such degradations to occur. Grass wields his humor like a knife--yes, he'll make you laugh, but he'll make you bleed, as well. There have been many novels written about World War II, but only a handful can truly be called great; The Tin Drum, without a doubt, is one. --Alix Wilber [via]
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To Be Someoneby Louise VossISBN 0345443780 (0-345-44378-0)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Tragedy of Julius Caesarby William Shakespeare, D. R. EllowayISBN 0333089537 (0-333-08953-7)
Hardcover, Macmillan
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Trout Fishing in Americaby Richard BrautiganISBN 0385290837 (0-385-29083-7)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Up the Down Staircaseby Bel KaufmanISBN 0380015986 (0-380-01598-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Voyage Outby Virginia WoolfISBN 0375757279 (0-375-75727-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Voyage Out'Book summary:The Modern Library is proud to include Virginia Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out--together with a new Introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham. Published to acclaim in England in 1915 and in America five years later, The Voyage Out marks Woolf's beginning as one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and prolific writers.
Less formally experimental than her later novels, The Voyage Out none-theless clearly lays bare the poetic style and innovative technique--with its multiple figures of consciousness, its detailed portraits of characters' inner lives, and its constant shifting between the quotidian and the profound--that are the signature of Woolf's fiction.
Rachel Vinrace, Woolf's first heroine, is a motherless young woman who, at twenty-four, embarks on a sea voyage with a party of other English folk to South America. Guileless, and with only a smattering of education, Rachel is taken under the wing of her aunt Helen, who desires to teach Rachel "how to live."Arriving in Santa Marina, a village on the South American coast, Rachel and Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates. Among them is the young, sensitive Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer, with whom Rachel falls in love. But theirs is ultimately a tale of doomed love, set against a chorus of other stories and other points of view, as the narrative shifts focus between its central and peripheral characters. E. M. Forster praised The Voyage Out as "a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path."
This edition includes a new Introduction by Michael Cunningham, bestselling author of The Hours. Cunningham at once unfolds an engaging short essay of Woolf's early life and career, an insightful exploration of the themes to which Woolf returns again and again in her fiction, and a spirited defense of the relevance and lasting importance of her art. Katherine Anne Porter wrote of Woolf: "The world of arts was her native territory; she ranged freely under her own sky, speaking her mother tongue fearlessly."
From the Hardcover edition. [via]More editions of The Voyage Out:
Wake Me When It's Over : A Journey to the Edge and Backby Mary Kay BlakelyISBN 0345356527 (0-345-35652-7)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Waking up, Alive : The Descent, the Suicide Attempt and the Return to Lifeby Richard A. HecklerISBN 0345400356 (0-345-40035-6)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Waking up, Alive : The Descent, the Suicide Attempt and the Return to Life'Book summary:"Sometimes I feel like crying, but the tears just don't come...."
"I had no idea there was a state of mind like this. Everything turned black...."
"It was a zombie place where I just couldn't be a part of anything...."
These are the words of survivors who have lived through one of the most insidious conditions of our time: the desire to die. Five million Americans have attempted suicide. Every seventeen minutes, one of them succeeds. And the numbers continue to grow.
Through fifty startling interviews with suicide survivors of all ages and backgrounds, psychologist Richard A. Heckler takes us into the very heart of despair, documenting the varied paths that lead to that crucial place where one's world seems to stretch, tear, and then break apart. In these intimate accounts we begin to understand the determination and clarity of that fatal choice. But after the failed attempt, healing is possible. For the first time, with great care and penetrating insight, Heckler traces the heroic patterns of recovery. By offering clear, profound portraits of hope, this extraordinary and unprecedented book attests to the resilience of the human spirit, by bearing witness to those who stood at death's door, and found the courage to live.
"It's hard to imagine a hopeful or inspiring book on suicide until you begin reading the astonishing Waking Up, Alive."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"In this sensitive book, Richard Heckler brings compassionate light to a shadowy corner of our psyche."
--Ram Dass
Author of Journey of Awakening
"These moving accounts, written with a great heart of compassion, have a deeply healing effect on the ocean of human tears. This is a wise and ultimately life-affirming work!"
--Jack Kornfield, Ph.D.
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