![the [blank] garden](https://theblankgarden.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/cropped-lucas-cranach-the-younger-6.png)
Dear Magda, Your novel The Door (1987, tr. Len Rix) not only begins and ends with a nightmare, but it also reads like one. The recurrent bad…… Read more “how irrational, how unpredictable is the attraction between people, how fatal its current”
Month: August 2016
Magda Szabo
Magda Szabó (October 5, 1917 – November 19, 2007) was a Hungarian writer. She graduated from the University of Debrecen. She worked as a teacher of Latin and of Hungarian,…… Read more “Magda Szabo”
each day for almost everyone in the world was a capitulation at some point
Dear Elizabeth, The Simple Truth (1955) can be a deceptively slim novel, one whose stories are structured like a set of Russian matryoshkas, each doll hidden inside…… Read more “each day for almost everyone in the world was a capitulation at some point”
Elizabeth Hardwick
Elizabeth Hardwick (July 27, 1916 – December 2, 2007) was an American literary critic and writer. She graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939, and was awarded…… Read more “Elizabeth Hardwick”
There you go again, narrating through a prism of pain
Dear Tatiana, Your novel The House in Smyrna (tr. Alison Entrekin, 2015; originally published in Portuguese in 2007) was a puzzling read for me. And not a confortable…… Read more “There you go again, narrating through a prism of pain”
Tatiana Salem Levy
Tatiana Salem Levy (1979) is a Brazilian writer. She was born in Portugal, while her parents were in exile, during the Brazilian dictatorship. Tatiana is of Jewish-Turkish…… Read more “Tatiana Salem Levy”
and the jungle passed in on them, seeking to cover them up
Dear Rose, Your novel The World My Wilderness (1950) is a powerful depiction of the way the Second World War ravaged people’s physical, emotional and moral landscapes. Wandering from…… Read more “and the jungle passed in on them, seeking to cover them up”
Rose Macaulay
Emilie Rose Macaulay (1 August 1881 – 30 October 1958) was an English writer. She studied at Oxford High School for Girls and at Somerville College at…… Read more “Rose Macaulay”
wade/ through black jade/of the crow-blue mussel-shells
Dear Adriana, As in your previous books, Crow Blue (2013, tr. Alison Entrekin, originally published in Portuguese in 2010) also depicts a journey, through which the protagonists -…… Read more “wade/ through black jade/of the crow-blue mussel-shells”
And do you know that no character is any good in this world unless that will has been broken completely?
Dear Antonia, I dare to say your semi-biographical novel, which was based on your experiences as a boarder at the Convent of the Sacred Heart between 1908…… Read more “And do you know that no character is any good in this world unless that will has been broken completely?”
Antonia White
Antonia White (born Eirene Botting; 1 March 1899, London – 10 April 1980) was a British writer. She attended St. Paul’s Girls’ School, but later left school,…… Read more “Antonia White”
