Haunted Houses
- Brand: Unbranded
Description
It didn’t occur to Emily that Nina and Anna loved each other, even though they were unhappy and sometimes hated each other. You don’t understand,’ Christine uttered in a kind of moan, and looked at Emily as if she were just a visitor. In Haunted Houses, Tillman puts together the separate stories of three American girls—Jane, Grace, and Emily—as they come of age and into their own.
Haunted Houses is about the past within the present, the inescapability of private memory and public history. Grace believes her dolls come alive at night and talk against her, and has a mother who likes animals more than people. Tillman provides a refreshing and unique outlook on life and morality, through writing a story relevant in many ways to life today. When it first appeared in Great Britain in about 1998 there was almost no response, I think there was one positive review, but it didn’t make any mark on the consciousness of the people there.Lynne Tillman: Well, I finished the first three chapters, one for each girl, and I said to myself, now they’re supposed to meet.
Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. While hers, she reminded herself, had been a moral burden, something to worry about giving, indicating loss when given.I loved this book, I savored it — it stuck in my head all through the day until I got back to it again (couldn't put it down. Whereas now, that’s one of the most common subjects; there are so many young women writing about being young women. All three striking out on their own, losing their virginity, losing themselves, gaining experience, growing up, moving on — making that comfortable distance from uncomfortable pasts — square pegs escaping the monotony of fitting in the security of round holes left open for them to drop into, it would be too easy for them to do the expected. Events and details arrest your reading on every page, conjuring experience in all its shades of feeling.
I think, I think, I am thinking that Tillman successfully rescued the young girl from the trope even before there was a trope. When I work inside the world in which I do make choices, I'm completely absorbed in what happens, in what can emerge. Jane has violent father and a dead best friend, Grace is hazed by her peers into rebellion, Emily is withdrawn and considered "not normal" by her parents, and none of them can be described with a single quirk or characteristic like I have just attempted to—they are complex, confused, real people; not conclusive and not reducible to types. Tillman charts the girls’ unsteady drift into womanhood, revealing the multiple forms of inheritance – family, gender, culture – that a girl must swallow or rebel against.this is the type of book that i have been loving recently, but each character's story missed the mark for me. From narrating the characters’ lives from a young age, she effectively showed their development from childhood to adult life and created relationships with the readers, strengthening feelings of admiration and empathy, or, conversely, distaste and antipathy. I was very naive when Haunted Houses came out because I had no idea that [the publishing industry] wasn’t a meritocracy.
- Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
- EAN: 764486781913
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