Word: brian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE (223 pp.) - Brian Moore - Atlantic-Little, Brown...
Judith Hearne is an old maid whose soul drifts like flotsam on a landlocked sea of Irish malice. It is the impressive feat of First Novelist Brian Moore, an Irish-born Montreal newspaperman, to compel the reader to follow the course of this human driftwood to its last miserable beach. Author Moore believes with G. K. Chesterton of his native city that...
...Brian Moore has told an old-maid joke, if it is realized that the point of the spinster joke is human cruelty-and that none sees the point more clearly than the spinster. There are many conspirators against the old maid. The first is Belfast, "drab facades of the buildings proclaiming the virtues of trade, hard dealing and Presbyterian righteousness," with "the dour Ulster burghers walking proudly among these monuments to their mediocrity...
...skin of man is a remarkably telltale organ," noted Western Reserve University's Psychiatrist Brian Bird. "Age, sex, race, occupation, recreation, hobbies, economic status . . . can often be read directly from the skin. But it also reveals emotions. Many people use their skin as the principal organ of expression." Well-known examples are blanching and blushing, chills and sweats, but another emotional outlet can be eczema. "In my experience with eczema," said Dr. Bird, "the most prominent hidden impulse is anger, but eczema patients peculiarly are unable to become angry openly...
...author's interviews with her make up less than half of the book's content. She is an ingenuous young lady who seems to have been as fond of her priest as her husband. Once in the astral world, she says she saw a lot of Father John, but Brian wasn't around much. She knows a few Irish songs, can dance an old Irish Mourning Jig, and doesn't like to cooperate when Bernstein, over-eager for the facts, asks her to spell things for him. For all Bridey's pleasantness, however, she is selling, the jacket notes...