If you know the name Kitty Genovese, you’re almost certainly aware the story associated with her. She was stabbed multiple times over the course of a half an hour while 38 bystanders watched and did nothing. Her name has been associated with urban apathy for over 50 years and her case helped give rise to Good Samaritan laws across the country and the 911 calling system. But in truth, only two people saw and comprehended what was happening to Kitty; others only heard a […]
A delightful book (which is also a lovely film)
Miss Guinevere Pettigrew is a desperate, middle-aged governess, pretty sure that she’s unlikely to find many more jobs, who by accident is sent to to the wrong address by the employment agency. Instead of a mother looking for a new child minder, she meets the glamorous and vivacious singer/actress Miss Delysia DeFosse (NOT her real name) and before she knows it, Miss Pettigrew’s rather colourless and boring life is full of high drama and romance. Delysia has not one, not two, but three suitors that […]
I feel sort of guilty that I didn’t connect with this more
The two volumes of Maus are Art Spiegelman’s attempts to document the struggles of his parents before and during the Second World War, as well as his not always harmonious relationship with his elderly father. The framing narrative shows Art interviewing his father Vladek about his recollections of the time before and during the war, as well as trying to deal with his temperamental parent, despite their many differences. The illustrations are famous and the subject matter is, of course, very worthy. So why didn’t […]
Disposable tin soldiers
A child of the 80s, I grew up on a distorted view of Vietnam. Free love was a whispered aphorism that seemed almost impossible in the age of Ronald Reagan, televangelism, and HIV. Peace on earth, a barely remembered dream amidst the bluster of Cold War bravado and the cinematic blood lust of Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The 60s were dead. But in its place, like some perverse cosmic satirist with a zeitgeist-altering pen, was a hyper-visualized mirror image that exaggerated its […]
Plenty of explosions, but not as many sweeping camera angles.
Bravely etched into the opening chapter of this book is the proclamation that the harrowing account of the attack in Benghazi will not include a rundown of the crimes, real or imagined, of the Obama administration. This is not a political book. And thank Christ for that. Don’t get me wrong, I love history, and I see politics as history experienced unclouded by the mists of time. I enjoy reading about political machinations, and try to view the world through various partisan lenses. But there […]
“What did it feel like to die? Was it a peaceful sleep?”
I’ve read of few of Laurie Halse Anderson’s YA novels. This one is skewed for a slightly younger audience than say, Speak or The Impossible Knife of Memory, but manages an interesting glimpse into the past, led by a strong female character. Late in the summer of 1793, yellow fever killed an estimated 5,000 people (in a city of 50,000) in less than three months. 20,000 residents fled the city, while the rest waited out the disease as their family and neighbors dropped like flies. Fever 1793 lets us watch the epidemic through the […]
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