English Literature Club: books, essays,reviews.

2020-12-24 09:46:40 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
When Adela Quested and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced ‘Anglo-Indian’ community. Determined to escape the parochial English enclave and explore the ‘real India’, they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz, a cultivated Indian Muslim. But a mysterious incident occurs while they are exploring the Marabar caves with Aziz, and the well-respected doctor soon finds himself at the centre of a scandal that rouses violent passions among both the British and their Indian subjects. A masterful portrait of a society in the grip of imperialism, A Passage to India compellingly depicts the fate of individuals caught between the great political and cultural conflicts of the modern world. Open / Comment

2020-12-22 09:30:42 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Here is the story of Tom, Huck, Becky, and Aunt Polly; a tale of adventures, pranks, playing hookey, and summertime fun. Written by the author sometimes called “the Lincoln of literature,” The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was surprisingly neither a critical nor a financial success when it was first published in 1876. It was Mark Twain’s first novel. However, since then Tom Sawyer has become his most popular work, enjoying dramatic, film, and even Broadway musical interpretations. Open / Comment

2020-12-15 18:12:57 Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie

The very first collection of superb short stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings…
First there was the mystery of the film star and the diamond… then came the ‘suicide’ that was murder… the mystery of the absurdly cheap flat… a suspicious death in a locked gun-room… a million dollar bond robbery… the curse of a pharoah’s tomb… a jewel robbery by the sea… the abduction of a Prime Minister… the disappearance of a banker… a phone call from a dying man… and, finally, the mystery of the missing will. Open / Comment

2020-11-25 09:35:14 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
In an overgrown churchyard, a grizzled convict springs upon an orphan boy named Pip. The convict terrifies Pip and threatens to kill him unless the boy helps further his escape. Later, Pip finds himself in a ruined garden where he meets the embittered and crazy Miss Havisham and her foster child, Estella, with whom he instantly falls in love. After a secret benefactor gives him a fortune, Pip moves to London, where he cultivates great expectations for a life that would allow him to discard his impoverished beginnings and socialize with members of the idle upper class. As Pip struggles to become a gentleman, he slowly learns the truth about himself and his illusions, and is tormented endlessly by the beautiful Estella. Written in the last decade of Dickens’s life, Great Expectations reveals the author’s dark attitudes toward Victorian society, its inherent class structure, and its materialism. Open / Comment

2020-11-24 10:52:04 Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. In the overture to Swann’s Way, the themes of the whole of In Search of Lost Time are introduced, and the narrator’s childhood in Paris and Combray is recalled, most memorably in the evocation of the famous maternal good-night kiss. The recollection of the narrator’s love for Swann’s daughter Gilberte leads to an account of Swann’s passion for Odette and the rise of the nouveaux riches Verdurins. Open / Comment