Three Act Tragedy: “Mr. Satterthwaite sat on the terrace of ‘Crow’s Nest’ and watched his host, Sir Charles Cartwright, climbing up the path from the sea.”
Also Published As: Murder in Three Acts
Detective: Hercule Poirot
Amateur Detectives: Mr. Satterwaite, Sir Charles Cartwright, Hermoine “Egg” Lytton
Published: 1934
Length: 224 pages
Setting: Cornwall, Monte Carlo,
Parker Pyne Investigates: “…. the mere sight of Mr. Parker Pyne brought a feeling of reassurance. He was large, not to say fat; he had a bald head of noble proportions, strong glasses, and little twinkling eyes.”
Detective: Mr. Parker Pyne
Published: November 1934
Length: 251 pages
Setting: London, Geneva, Paris, Venice, Trieste, Constantinople, Damascus, Iraq, Tehran, Shiraz, Delphi, Palma, Dartmouth and other places
“The Atlantic wears away our coasts.”
Victor Hugo must have been a pretty amazing person. Not only did he have an exceptional grasp of history, but his attention to detail far surpasses your average person and his descriptions illustrate this unusual ability. Add to that his artistic capacity for drawing, and you have quite an impressive composition of talents. He exhibits all three talents in The Toilers of the Sea, or Les Travailleurs de la Mer.
Running afoul of Napoleon III in 1851, Hugo fled France to Brussels and Jersey, finally settling in Guernsey in 1855 where he purchased Hauteville House in St. Peter Port. He spent 15 years in exile here. In his studio at the top of his house, with a stunning view of the harbour, it is there he finished his most famous novel, Les Miserables. While in Guernsey, Hugo rambled all over the island, often with his son, Charles, and his mistress, Julliette Drouet. In a notebook, he scrawled copious notes about the reefs, tides, currents and absolutely anything that caught his imagination. Les Travailleurs de la Mer was born out of his excursions.
“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”
I first read Middlemarch during the summer of 2014 and was mesmerized. The lives of the inhabitants were painted in detail and somehow came alive until I was part of the community and involved in all their celebrations and struggles. I finished it in three weeks and then longed to go back. Well, it’s been over ten years since my last read of it and with some more maturity and the input of others, I was curious as to how I would respond upon my second reading.
I’m a little late on this one but here it is. Another chance to choose from my Classics Club list .
“When I reached ‘C’ Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.”
I went into this read with some trepidation. I had some experience with books set in this time period of the early to mid-1900s and I haven’t found them very edifying: The Good Soldier, Testament of Youth, The Great Gatsby, etc. There is some sort of depressing pall that seems to have affected the world after the First World War and authors appear to have contracted an especially virulent dose of it. Nevertheless, I thought I would give Waugh and try and see if he could surprise me.
“He was dead—the head of a high tribunal, the upright magistrate whose irreproachable life was a proverb in all the courts of France.”
In The Diary of a Madman, a renowned and respected judge of the highest order dies at the age of eighty-two. All his life he had dedicated to pursuing the most vicious criminals and to defending the weak and helpless. Defendants trembled because It was as if he could read the minds of those who were to be tried in his court. At his funeral, soldiers carried his coffin and there were many tears as this respected and venerable magistrate was finally laid to rest.
“A miller fell slowly but surely into poverty, until finally he had nothing more than his mill and a large apple tree which stood behind it.”
(The 1819 Version)
One day a poor miller met a strange old man who promised him that he would make him wealthy if, in three years he would give the dearest thing to him that was standing behind his mill. Thinking the odd man was referring to the apple tree, he quickly concurred.
Pablo Neruda as a young man
~ source Wikipedia
The light that rises from your feet to your hair,
the strength enfolding your delicate form,
are not mother of pearl, not chilly silver:
you are made of bread, a bread the fire adores.
The grain grew high in its harvest of you,
in good time the flour swelled;
as the dough rose, doubling your breasts,
my love was the coal waiting ready in the earth.
Oh, bread your forehead, your legs, your mouth,
bread I devour, born with the morning light,
my love, beacon-flag of the bakeries:
fire taugh you a lesson of the blood;
you learned your holiness from flour,
from bread your language and aroma.
