Alfred lowenstein body7/23/2023 ![]() As the wealthy, self-proclaimed ''worst film director in the world (after Ingmar Bergman),''Īdolphe knows how to appreciate a juicy love story. ''Don`t enjoy your suffering too much,'' counsels Charles` friend, the outrageously flamboyant old transvestite Adolphe. Fortunately his two wordly-wise sidekicks are never far away to snap him out of it. an endeavor fraught with the perils of maudlin prose and weepy self-aggrandizement. Despite talent, lithe good looks and fascinating ''Garbo'' eyes, Charles is fabulously unlucky in love and given to writing about his misalliances in long, purple passages Although Harvey`s silken mandala of a tale gets stretched somewhat thin in this noticeably less glistening transitional book, you may find yourself engaged in lively interior dialogs with his three witty, questing protagonists at story`s end.įor both novels are about conversation and friendship and the art of savoring the invisible strands interconnecting us all.Ĭharles Hallam is a gay, young British/Buddhist writer. In ''The Web,'' gay British/Buddhist author Andrew Harvey continues the gossamer zen comedy he spun last year in novel one-''Burning Houses''-of a projected trilogy. She was challenged when her own son was beaten by the principal of the school he attended, and she discovered unspoken links with her sisters in the village when a newborn baby died, as her own infant daughter had years before. Insatiable thirst for attention and knowledge. She started a bush school and found much satisfaction in her pupils` She learned to pound grain and listen to family histories simultaneously. As she settled into the tempo and expectations of the village, she was transformed from dutiful wife/mother/observer to thoughtful Surrounded by crowing roosters and gawking neighbors, confusion turned to distress, and then to despair: ''What was I doing here? I wanted to cry.''įortunately, the culture shock was short-lived and Alverson soon was swept up in the onrushing tide of day-to-day living: water to haul, melons to plant, pythons to kill. Within a day of their arrival, however, the bloom had faded. Her anthropologist husband wanted to complete his fieldwork studies by living in a primitive tribal homestead, and she and her two young sons blithely agreed to the adventure. Two years of living in the bush of Botswana apparently left an indelible mark.Īlverson first set foot in southern Africa in 1972. It`s been 12 years since she last hauled firewood and smeared the floor of her mud hut with manure, but still she thinks in Tswana terms and images. Although Marianne Alverson is writing about a trip between cities in America, her story-telling is distinctly African.
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