Word: reader
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...title. Colwin draws a parallel between a sudden thunder-storm in the country which knocks physical things over, and marriage, pregnancy and parenthood, which knock abstract things over. Don't fret, she advises, it's not the end of the world. Yeah, and? The book does not empower the reader to face the world; it does not inspire the reader to have faith in the future; it does not capture the reader's imagination. Colwin's book barely engages the reader at all. To her credit, the sheer cozy vapidity of her work generates a vaguely uplifting feeling...
Stevens is the narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro's 1988 novel, The Remains of the Day, a drama so delicate that it touches the reader deeply without applying the pressure of sentiment. The story runs on parallel tracks: the years before World War II, when Stevens worked for his beloved Lord Darlington, an aristocrat who falls into an alliance with the Nazis; and the late '50s, when ! Stevens seeks out Miss Kenton in hopes she will return as housekeeper and, perhaps, something more. In his own ornate, unknowing words, Stevens condemns himself as the English version of a "good German...
Above all, she never descends to absolutes, to didacticism, to over-simplification. The reader, like the protagonists, leaves Amapolas with an exhilarating ambiguity of emotion. No one can tell you what to make of Consider This, Senora. Consider that...
...Lasher, Rice picks up the narrative thread left hanging at the end of The Witching Hour. At the end of The Witching Hour, Rice situates the reader in present-day New Orleans after a global jaunt through time tracking the incestuous Mayfair family of witches from their roots in Scotland to the powerful, respected family living in modern day New Orleans. In the opening chapters of Lasher, the heir to the Mayfair throne--Rowan Mayfair--has been spirited away from New Orleans by the demon Lasher. The whole of the novel is then taken up in the relentless pursuit...
Rice does manage to garner the reader's sympathy for her characters. Evil spirits and people who should seem detestable are made glamorous and enchanting. Rice wields language in a powerful way, lulling her readers into an enchanted world in which evil spirits such as Lasher lose their ominous qualities. One feels part of a fairy tale unlike any other fairy tale one's heard. Though the novel is certainly melodramatic, Lasher is also quite subtly hypnotic...