![]() If you're curious to get a taste, it's available to read online here: ![]() Hallucinating, mystery, time-portal - whatever it is, it's a great story in a few short pages. My favorite story, "Till", is such a fascinating concept - it would make a great film! - about a glaciologist who falls into a large crevasse, only to discover an ancient woman frozen in the ice beside him. One story plays on the ice theme as slang for methamphetamines, and another as the icy relations between estranged lovers and family members. Training for Ironman triathlons, as in the quote above from the story "Swim Bike Run", climbing or studying glaciers as in two other favorite stories "Till", and "Glacier". She often uses Fijian characters as storytellers, who find themselves in extreme situations. The stories in Black Ice Matter were the final project for Cole, as she finished her Masters of Creative Writing from the University of Auckland, and they are indeed *creative* writing! Many of the stories share a realistic setting - usually her home of Fiji or New Zealand - and details begin to warp, or "shatter", keeping with the ice theme. ~From "Swim Bike Run" (short story) in BLACK ICE MATTER by Gina Cole, 2016. The memories popping into your head from other times in your life never leave you: they are part of you forever." "The point is she is part of the fabric of my life, and I suppose that’s just how it is. ![]()
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![]() It is an engrossing journey, but one that I never completely believed. As they pass the rusted-out hulks of factories and the weed-choked arteries of disused highways, Crace leads us further and further away from our traditional American values of progress, technology and industriousness. She is the more observant and adaptable one. Margaret is older and used to staying beneath the radar. It used to be the safest place on earth." Franklin is young and impulsive, which soon leads to trouble. The couple will have many adventures along the way.Ĭrace swiftly sets the tone of his book and makes his readers uneasy in the prologue: "This used to be America, this river crossing in the ten-month stretch of land, this sea-to-sea. Margaret and Franklin will be traveling through an America reduced to medieval methods of living where everyone hopes to make it to the East Coast to pay for passage on a ship bound for Europe- the Promised Land. She is found by a young man named Franklin, and together they begin a long journey through an America laid waste by this disease they call the flux. ![]() Her head is shaved, and she is taken to a small stone cottage where she is left to recover. In the fishing village along the riverbank- a place called Ferrytown that likes to charge exorbitant fees to any stranger traveling through- Margaret is showing definite signs of sickness. ![]() ![]() ![]() Written between the first presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and the electoral crisis of 2000, The Last Empire is a sweeping coda to the last century's conflicted vision of the American dream.From the Trade Paperback edition. From his celebrated profiles of Clare Boothe Luce and Charles Lindbergh and his controversial essay about the Bill of Rights-which sparked an extended correspondence with convicted Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh-to his provocative analyses of literary icons such as John Updike and Mark Twain and his trenchant observations about terrorism, civil liberties, the CIA, Al Gore, Tony Blair, and the Clintons, Vidal weaves a rich tapestry of personal anecdote, critical insight, and historical detail. Gore Vidal 437 Paperback 52 offers from 10.32 Product description From the Back Cover Like his National Book Award-winning 'United States, Gore Vidals scintillating ninth collection, The Last Empire,' affirms his reputation as our most provocative critic and observer of the modern American scene. ![]() In the essays collected here, Vidal brings his keen intellect, experience, and razor-edged wit to bear on an astonishing range of subjects. The Last Empire is a sweeping coda to the still-existing conflicted vision of the American dreamleaving no need to imagine what trenchant barbs Vidal would have uttered concerning the state and level of discourse of American society right now. ![]() Like his National Book Award-winning United States, Gore Vidal's scintillating ninth collection, The Last Empire, affirms his reputation as our most provocative critic and observer of the modern American scene. ![]() |