Book picks similar to
The Wild Cherry Tree by H.E. Bates
fiction
short-stories
read-for-pleasure
pub-penguin
Tristessa
Jack Kerouac - 1960
Wrapped in a spiritual atmosphere that expresses the yearnings of Kerouac to find himself, "Tristessa", translated by Jorge García- Robles, a specialist in the beat generation, is the story of the strange loving relationship that the author had with Esperanza, as well as the significant description of the atmosphere that surrounded it, which depicts some key places of Mexico City back then.Hero of the beat generation, the creator of a model of life that would be followed by thousands of young people in the entire world, a sui generis mystic, "Tristessa", which until recently was not known in Spanish and that was published in English, is one of his fresher and better achieved works. Tristessa es el nombre con el que Kerouac bautizó a Esperanza Villanueva, una joven mexicana católica, prostituta y adicta a ciertas drogas, de quien se enamoró durante una de sus estancias en México, país que visitaba con frecuencia, a mediados de los años cincuenta. Tristessa, en la traducción de Jorge García- Robles, especialista en la generación beat, es el relato de la extraña relación amorosa que tuvo con Esperanza, así como la significativa descripción del ambiente que la rodeaba, en la que aparecen retratos de algunos lugares clave de la Ciudad de México: Plaza Garibaldi, Niño Perdido, la colonia Roma. Escritor «al rojo vivo», como lo calificó Henry Miller, héroe de la generación beat, creador de un modelo de vida que seguirían miles de jóvenes en todo el mundo, místico sui géneris, Tristessa, que hasta hace poco no se conocía en español y que se publicó en inglés apenas hace diez años, es una de sus obras más frescas y mejor logradas.
Amongst Women
John McGahern - 1990
Now, in old age, living out in the country, Moran is still fighting - with his family, his friends, even himself - in a poignant struggle to come to terms with the past.
Point Counter Point
Aldous Huxley - 1928
By presenting a vision of life in which diverse aspects of experience are observed simultaneously, Huxley characterizes the symptoms of "the disease of the modern man" in the manner of a composer--themes and characters are repeated, altered slightly, and played off one another in a tone that is at once critical and sympathetic.First published in 1928, Huxley's satiric view of intellectual life in the '20s is populated with characters based on such celebrities as D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Nancy Cunard, and John Middleton Murry, as well as Huxley himself.
The Long Chalkboard: and Other Stories
Jenny Allen - 2006
Jenny Allen’s brilliant and witty narratives and Jules Feiffer’s playfully expressive drawings coax to the surface the hidden anxieties, familiar frustrations, and downright fury that we try to convince ourselves we don't really feel. The characters in these stories are reckoning with life’s little surprises. But what they don't expect sometimes turns out to be all right anyway: a little redemption bubbling up in the kitchen where “Judy’s Wonder Chili” is made. . . or hiding in the folds of an origami crane, waiting to be found by the children’s book writer in “Something Happened”. . . or revealing itself on the surface of the well-used chalkboard of the title tale.In their humor, simplicity, and subtlety, these stories--brought to life perfectly through Feiffer’s drawings--speak to our deepest adult-yet-childlike selves. There’s not a grown-up among us who won’t be completely charmed.From the Hardcover edition.
The Long Valley
John Steinbeck - 1938
Set in the idyllic Salinas Valley in California, where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themeselves in the world, these stories reflect many of the concerns key to Steinbeck as a writer; the tensions between town and city, labourers and owners, past and present. Included here are the celebrated tales, THE MURDERER and THE CHRYSANTHEMUMS.
Unearned Pleasures and Other Stories
Ursula Hegi - 1988
With compassion and her "unfailing immediacy of language," she raises the struggles of her characters to a plane of recognition that enables them to transcend despair. Life and death, age and youth, attained hopes and unearned pleasures, provide the human settings for a brilliant exploration of life at its most pointed and significant.
Twenty-Six Men and a Girl
Maxim Gorky - 2009
They are looked down upon by all around them, including the bun bakers. Their only seeming solace is the sixteen-year-old Tanya who visits them every morning for the kringles they give her.
The Green Man
Kingsley Amis - 1969
Like all good coaching inns, the Green Man is said to boast a resident ghost: Dr Thomas Underhill, a notorious seventeenth-century practitioner of black arts and sexual deviancy, rumoured to have killed his wife. However, the landlord, Maurice Allington, is the sole witness to the renaissance of the malevolent Underhill. Led by an anxious desire to vindicate his sanity, Allington strives to uncover the key to Underhill's satanic powers. All the while, the skeletons in the cupboard of Allington's own domestic affairs rattle to get out too.
The Powerbook
Jeanette Winterson - 2001
The story is simple. An e-writer called Ali or Alix will write to order anything you like, provided that you are prepared to enter the story as yourself and take the risk of leaving it as someone else. You can be the hero of your own life. You can have freedom just for one night. But there is a price to pay.
Bad Behavior
Mary Gaitskill - 1988
Daisy's valentine --A romantic weekend --something nice --An affair, edited --Connection --Trying to be --Secretary --Other factors --Heaven
Two by Duras: The Slut of the Normandy Coast / The Atlantic Man
Marguerite Duras - 1993
Contains two novellas:The slut of the Normandy CoastThe Atlantic manandAn interview with Marguerite Duras by Ana Maria Moix --An afterword by Alberto Manguel.
Little Tales of Misogyny
Patricia Highsmith - 1975
In these stories Highsmith is at her most scathing as she draws out the mystery and menace of her once ordinary subject.
Back
Henry Green - 1946
A shell-shocked romantic—slow, distant, and dreamy—he begins to have trouble telling Rose's half-sister Nancy apart from Rose herself, now buried in the village churchyard. Coping and failing to cope with the quiet realities of daily life, Charley's delusions elevate his timid courtship of a practical and unremarkable young woman into an amnesiac love story both comic and disturbing. A contemporary of Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh, Henry Green was one of the greatest English novelists of the twentieth century, and Back is his most haunting and personal work.
Storm Tide
Marge Piercy - 1998
There he meets the eminent professor, Gordon Stone, and his beautiful wife, Judith Silver, with whom he soon falls into a passionate affair. Into this explosive mix, a young woman appears--a single mother at the end of her emotional rope. Crystal desperately needs David. Yet caught between two women, David bears witness to a heartbreaking turn of events that seems as inevitable as the push and pull of ocean waves. . . .
The Coral Sea
Patti Smith - 1996
Metaphoric and dreamy, this tale of transformation arises from Smith's knowledge of Mapplethorpe as a young man and as a mature artist, his close relationship with his patron and friend, Sam Wagstaff, and his years surviving AIDS and his ascent into death. Rich in detail, it is filled with references to Mapplethorpe's work and shows the man beneath the persona. Set against photographs by Mapplethorpe, the work emerges as a hymn, a prayer, a fable wishing him Godspeed on his latest journey."She was once our savage Rimbaud, but suffering has turned her into our St. John of the Cross, a mystic full of compassion."--Edmund White