Summer by Edith Wharton

Summer by Edith Wharton

Publisher: Seahorse Publishing (2013)

153 pages, eBook (Purchased Myself for $0.99)

Book Rating: 5 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Summary:

Unhappy with her lot in life, Charity quickly becomes enchanted by the young stranger from the big city that is staying in her small village, her dreams of escape escalating to new heights, while she turns a blind eye to the realities of life.

My Thoughts:

Edith Wharton wrote this as a companion novel to Ethan Frome. The stories are similar, but this story is of a woman’s ruin, instead of a man’s. Charity Royall is not a very likable heroine, but she is realistically depicted. She is a spoiled, selfish, naive young woman with a huge chip on her shoulder, a sharp tongue, a contempt for anything or anyone that highlights her own vast ignorance, and an incorrect belief that none of the ills of the world can touch her. Her dislike for and inability to see the value of many types of knowledge, scholarly and otherwise, was a very unattractive trait. I don’t understand people who revel and delight in their own ignorance. Her relationship with Lucius Harney started out innocently enough but escalated into something close to an addiction, as if she were desperately clinging to her dreams of escape from her small village through her association with him. Though their sexual relationship is not described, it is implied, the result of which leads her “up the mountain” to face the sad reality of her past, and only then does she begin to feel some sort of appreciation for Mr. Royall’s role in her life. I really felt for Mr. Royall in this story. Charity is so mean to him, for so much of it, but despite his deficiencies, his stability and determination were like a beacon of comfort and I wish Charity could have seen it sooner. This story is definitely about a young person who believes herself invincible, having to learn the hard way.

Edition Notes:

This Seahorse edition is supposedly annotated according to its description, but it is not. It does contain a detailed author’s biography at the end, but other than that it is just the main text. That said, if you don’t mind missing out on the annotations, this is a very good ebook edition, very well organized for maneuverability within the text and pleasingly organized. A very decent reading copy for the price.

Quotes:

“The springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larch woods surrounding it.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 1

“The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young man just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into the duck-pond.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 1

“—listened to a gentleman saying unintelligible things before pictures that she would have enjoyed looking at if his explanations had not prevented her from understanding them.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 1

“—sat at her desk under a freckled steel engraving of the deceased author, and wondered if he felt any deader in his grave than she did in his library.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 1

“Her bewilderment was complete: the more she wished to appear to understand him the more unintelligible his remarks became—the weight of her ignorance settled down on her again like a pall.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 1

“She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in her responded.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 2

“Today the sense of well-being was intensified by her joy at escaping from the library. She liked well enough to have a friend drop in and talk to her when she was on duty, but she hated to be bothered about books.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 2

“—unexpected demands came so rarely that they exasperated her like an injustice . . .” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 2

“Charity immediately perceived that something bitter had happened to him, and that he was trying to talk down the recollection.“ -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 2

“—his black eyebrows quivered as though the blaze of her scorn had blinded him.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 2

“—his humbled pride was her surest protection.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 3

“Her heart was ravaged by life’s cruelest discovery: the first creature who had come toward her out of the wilderness had brought her anguish instead of joy.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 3

“—in spite of his shyness he had the air of power that the experience of cities probably gave.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 4

“But everybody knew that ‘going with a city fellow’ was a different and less straightforward affair: almost every village could show a victim of the perilous venture.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 5

“‘It’s queer, you know,’ he continued, ‘that just over there, on top of that hill, there should be a handful of people who don’t give a damn for anybody.’ The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to her own revolts and defiances—” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 5 

“They just herd together like the heathen.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 6

“Education and opportunity had divided them by a width that no effort of hers could bridge, and even when his youth and his admiration brought him nearest, some chance word, some unconscious allusion, seemed to thrust her back across the gulf.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 6

“—always full of scruples about her scruples.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 7

“But there’s one thing as old as the hills and as plain as daylight: if he’d wanted you the right way he’d have said so.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 8

“For all your sneers and your mockery you’ve always known I loved you the way a man loves a decent woman.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 8

“It seemed to be enough for him to breathe her nearness like a flower’s—.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 9

“The Lake at last—a sheet of shining metal brooded over by drooping trees.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 10

“It was as if all the latent beauty of things had been unveiled to her.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 10

“—so penetrated with the joy of her presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking or feeling.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 11

“—in his absence a thousand doubts tormented her, but as soon as he appeared she ceased to wonder where he had come from, what had delayed him, who had kept him from her.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 12

“—the best way to help the places we live in is to be glad we live there.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 13

“It was rather a terror of the unknown, of all the mysterious attractions that must even now be dragging him away from her, and of her own powerlessness to contend with them.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 13

“She understood now the case of girls like herself to whom this kind of thing happened. They gave all they had, but their all was not enough: it could not buy more than a few moments . . .” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 13

“—the memories of her former journey, instead of flying before her like dead leaves, seemed to be ripening in her blood like sleeping grain.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 15

“—wild gleams of sunlight were blowing across the fields.” -Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 16

“—but his silent presence gave her, for the first time, a sense of peace and security. She knew that where he was there would be warmth, rest, silence—“-Edith Wharton, Summer, Chapter 18

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Publisher: Seahorse Publishing (2013)

98 pages, eBook (Purchased Myself for $0.99)

Book Rating: 5 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Summary:

A young engineer new to town, finds himself drawn to Ethan Frome and the sad story of his life that surrounds him, and by piecing bits together here and there he begins to flesh out the story that everyone seems reticent to speak of.

My Thoughts:

Ethan’s story is one of dashed hopes, squandered dreams and the heavy burden of duty and responsibility. Ethan was a strapping young man of promise, pulled from his passion for his studies to care for parents and take over the farm, which led to a marriage entered out of a sense of being beholden to the woman that nursed his mother, which kept him apart from the woman he loved and led them to drastic measures that ended badly for all involved. This is such a sad, depressing story, but I like the mysteriously quiet character at the center of it all and the way the narrator goes about finding out about him. Many of us, at one time or other have seen someone and wondered how they came to be what they are, but few of us have had the time or inclination to find out. I’m usually not one for infidelity, but I think this story questions where that line is drawn, and what forms of happiness can be granted between two people restricted by society and duty.

Edition Notes:

This Seahorse edition is supposedly annotated according to its description, but I could find no evidence of it. It does contain an author’s biography at the end, but other than that it is just the main text. That said, if you don’t mind missing out on the annotations, this is a very good ebook edition, very well organized for maneuverability within the text and pleasingly organized. A decent reading copy for the price.

Quotes:

“Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“He’s looked that way ever since he had his smash-up—” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“That man touch a hundred? He looks as if he was dead and in hell now!” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“Most of the smart ones get away—Somebody had to stay and care for the folks. There warn’t ever anybody but Ethan. Fust his father—then his mother—then his wife.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“I had been struck by the contrast between the vitality of the climate and the deadness of the community.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“—that’s what Ethan’s had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface—I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access—” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“He was not the kind of man to be turned from his business by any commotion of the elements—“ -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“—a flash of watery sunlight exposed the house on the slope above us in all its plaintive ugliness.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

“Once or twice in the past he had been faintly disquieted by Zenobia’s way of letting things happen without seeming to remark them, and then, weeks afterward, in a casual phrase, revealing that she had all along taken her notes and drawn her inferences.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 1

“Zeena herself, from an oppressive reality, had faded into an insubstantial shade. All his life was lived in the sight and sound of Mattie Silver, and he could no longer conceive of its being otherwise.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 1

“The motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 2

“It was formed of Zeena’s obstinate silence, of Mattie’s sudden look of warning, of the memory of just such fleeting imperceptible signs as those which told him, on certain stainless mornings, that before night there would be rain.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 3

“It seemed to him as if the shattered fragments of their evening lay there.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 4 

“But that had been out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 5

“When the door of her room had closed on her he remembered that he had not even touched her hand.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 5

“She had taken everything else from him; and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for all the others.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 7

“—and gathering up the bits of broken glass she went out of the room as if she carried a dead body . . .” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 7

“Must he wear out all his years at the side of a bitter querulous woman? Other possibilities had been in him, possibilities sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena’s narrow-mindedness and ignorance.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 8

“—it was the most confusing hour of the evening, the hour when the last clearness from the upper sky is merged with the rising night in a blur that disguises landmarks and falsifies distances.” -Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Chapter 9

Movie Adaptations:

Ethan Frome (1993)

Liam Neeson, Patricia Arquette, Joan Allen

Movie Rating: PG

My Rating: 4 Stars

Adaption: Verbatim-Tweaked-Veiled

Eye Candy: Plain-Pretty-Sultry

This adaption follows the book fairly closely, with a few exceptions; it replaces the engineer narrator with a minister and takes Ethan and Mattie’s relationship beyond the kissing that it had been limited to in the book. I think overall, it still does a good job at maintaining the spirit of the book, but I was a bit disappointed that it took the mostly innocent relationship between Ethan and Mattie and made it somewhat torrid. There were a few invented scenes and dialogue, but it was mainly in keeping with what had been in the book.

The Bear Got Me by Matthew Licht

The Bear Got Me by Matthew Licht

11 pages, eBook

Where I Got It: EastoftheWeb.com

Story Rating: 5 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Daring - Ominous - Wry

Summary:

A man driving to an obscure military base in the wilds of Alaska, decides to observe the bear he sees chasing his car.

My Thoughts:

Interesting story of a man doing crazy things he most likely would not have considered doing, had he been in a more populated area or less bored. It’s kind of scary what people will do to entertain a bored mind.

Quotes:

“He reached back and scrunched the parka down. Didn’t want a spectral, vaguely human-shaped presence looming behind him.” -Matthew Licht, The Bear Got Me

“Something moved in the rearview mirror again. Garson thought the snorkel coat must’ve filled with warm air and returned to blimp-like life, reached behind to scrunch it down again, felt nothing.” -Matthew Licht, The Bear Got Me

“The rearview mirror took on the fascination of a movie screen.” -Matthew Licht, The Bear Got Me

“He didn’t want to roll up the windows. That’d be cheating.” -Matthew Licht, The Bear Got Me

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Publisher: Starbooks Classics Publishing (2013)

637 pages, eBook (Purchased Myself for $1.99)

Book Rating: 5 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Summary:

With one sister’s imprudent marriage and the other two more comfortably settled, the mending of the rift between the sisters only comes about when the rich relations agree to taking on the eldest daughter of the poor sister, and young Fanny is sent to live at Mansfield Park, being both advantaged beyond her family’s means and isolated by her lesser standing in society.

My Thoughts:

Much of this story revolves around the connection between the Crawfords (the showy, urbanely sophisticated brother and sister who come to stay with relations at the parsonage in Mansfield) and the Bertrams of Mansfield Park. Henry Crawford is a “player” and takes his amusement in overcoming the challenges in making young women in love with him, before carelessly moving on to the next. Mary Crawford, though cautionary in her advice to her brother, is more accepting of social “follies” than is proper and on many occasions shows herself to be money-grubbing and selfish in her thoughts and actions. The unhappy result of this connection for more than one of the Bertrams is what follows, and in the course of everything, Henry sets his sights on the biggest challenge yet, trying to win the heart of Fanny. Having seen the 1999 movie adaption I had felt Mr. Crawford was denied his chance of reformation in Fanny’s repeated refusals, but the sequence of events in the book and the different way in which things play out from the movie, finds me in no doubt as to Fanny’s correctness in belief and my disappointment in Mr. Crawford’s actions, given his feelings. I must confess that Edmund and Fanny had been nothing more than siblings through most of this (certainly with regard to Edmund’s affections), so the conclusion came as a bit of a contrived surprise, but was happily enough received as a conclusion to the tale, along with a few words as to everyone else’s ultimate fate.

Edition Notes:

This Starbooks Special Illustrated Edition with Literary History and Criticism is the best ebook version of Mansfield Park that I’ve found. It is organized for optimum maneuverability, is prettily arranged, very readable, includes illustrations by the Brock brothers combining the illustrations from their 1898 and 1908 editions, and includes the literary history and criticism section from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, though there isn’t much to it other than quotations from the text and a few paragraphs in explanation. For a standalone copy, this is it, but if you are looking for an ebook collection of Jane Austen’s novels, I’d recommend The Complete Illustrated Novels of Jane Austen by MobileReference.

Quotes:

“By the end of eleven years, however, Mrs. Price could no longer afford to cherish pride or resentment, or to lose one connexion that might possibly assist her. A large and still increasing family, a husband disabled for active service, but no the less equal to company and good liquor, and a very small income to supply their wants, made her eager to regain the friends she has so carelessly sacrificed . . .” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 1

“He thought of his own four children, of his two sons, of cousins in love . . .” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 1

“—but her love of money was equal to her love of directing, and she knew quite as well how to save her own as to spend that of her friends.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 1

“—it was impossible for her to aim at more than the credit of projecting and arranging so expensive a charity . . .” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 1

“She spoke of her farther as somewhat delicate and puny, but was sanguine in the hope of her being materially better for change of air. Poor woman! she probably thought change of air might agree with many of her children.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 1

“Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 2

“The rooms were too large for her to move in with ease: whatever she touched she expected to injure, and she crept about in constant terror of something or other . . .” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 2

“She was a woman who spent her days in sitting, nicely dressed, on a sofa, doing some long piece of needlework, of little use and no beauty, thinking more of her pug than her children, but very indulgent to the latter when it did not put herself to inconvenience . . .” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 2

“His daughters, he felt, while they retained the name of Bertram, must be giving it new grace, and in quitting it, he trusted, would extend its respectable alliances . . . “ -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 2

“—he recommended the books which charmed her leisure hours, he encouraged her taste, and corrected her judgment: he made reading useful by talking to her of what she read, and heightened its attraction by judicious praise. In return for sure services she loved him better than anybody in the world except William: her heart was divided between the two.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 2

“I consider the blessing of a wife as most justly described in those discreet lines of the poet—‘Heaven’s last best gift.’” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 4

“An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged: no harm can be done.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 5

“—there is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry. Look where I will, I see that it is so; and I feel that it must be so, when I consider that it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 5

“Cut down an avenue! What a pity! Does it not make you think of Cowper? ‘Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.’” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 6

“A young party is always provided with a shady lane.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 7 

“Yes, certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. ‘I cannot get out,’ as the starling said—Mr. Rushworth is so long in fetching this key!” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 10

“And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr. Rushworth’s authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 10

“You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 21

“—as ignorant in business as in books, with opinions in general unfixed, and without seeming much aware of it himself.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 21

“In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete: being prepared for matrimony by a hatred of home, restraint, and tranquility; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 21

“—every addition to the party must rather forward her favorite indulgence of being suffered to sit silent and unattended to.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 23

“Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connexions can supply . . .” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 24

“It would be something to be loved by such a girl, to excite the first ardours of her young unsophisticated mind! She interested him more than he had forseen.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 24

“Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 39

“—the temptation of immediate pleasure was too strong for a mind unused to make any sacrifice.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 48

Movie Adaptations:

Mansfield Park (1999)

Frances O’Connor, Jonny Lee miller, Alessandro Nivola

Movie Rating: PG-13

My Rating: 4 Stars

Adaption: Verbatim-Tweaked-Veiled

Eye Candy: Plain-Pretty-Sultry

This adaption takes liberties of construction and depiction that I think change the tale itself. It made me sympathetic to Mr. Crawford (perhaps past the point that I ought to be so) and made me think Sir Thomas a tyrant (when he was everything kind and indulgent in the book), and I think it also inserted a modern view (slavery/women’s rights and independence) where it did not belong. Contrary to the self-possessed young woman in the film, the Fanny in the book was an unapologetic doormat. I would not call it a faithful adaption of the book, except in the most general sense, but there are things about it that draw me nonetheless. I can’t help but like the idea that Mr. Crawford might have been reformed, if Fanny had felt differently toward him and he hadn’t been driven away in defeat and despair. Taken as a story all its own, it is an entertaining film.

Mansfield Park (TV Movie 2007)

Billie Piper, Blake Ritson, Douglas Hodge

My Rating: 3 Stars

Adaption: Verbatim-Tweaked-Veiled

Eye Candy: Plain-Pretty-Sultry

This adaption is no more faithful to the book than the 1999 movie, and in some ways it is even more altered, and I’m not sure the alteration was for the better. I thought some of the parts well cast, but Fanny was sometimes too forward, Lady Bertram too aware of her surroundings, and Mr. Crawford too creepy to do justice to the book. As in the other adaption, there is again an attempt to incorporate modern views, particularly with regard to slavery, which had no part in the book, and really such cares of the outside world were never incorporated into any of Ms. Austen’s books, choosing to focus on more domestic concerns. I suppose it is entertaining enough, but for me, it lacks the uncertainty with regard to Mr. Crawford and therefore lacks engagement.

An Uncomfortable Bed by Guy de Maupassant

An Uncomfortable Bed by Guy de Maupassant

3 pages, eBook

Where I Got It: EastoftheWeb.com

Story Rating: 4 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Paranoid - Humorous - Intriguing

Summary:

A man is so certain that his friends intend to play a practical joke on him that he can’t sleep.

My Thoughts:

Cute story of a man spending all day in expectation of something, at first with pleasure, but as time goes on with increasing nervousness. It’s odd how having to wait extraordinarily long for something can make you less eager to receive it.

Quotes:

“My friends were fond of practical joking, as all my friends are. I do not care to know any other sort of people.” -Guy de Maupassant, An Uncomfortable Bed

“During the entire evening, everyone laughed in an exaggerated fashion. I smelled a practical joke in the air, as a dog smells game.” -Guy de Maupassant, An Uncomfortable Bed

“I searched in my memory for all the practical jokes of which I ever had experience. And I did not want to be caught.” -Guy de Maupassant, An Uncomfortable Bed

Rules of the Game by James Wood

Rules of the Game by James Wood

6 pages, eBook

Where I Got It: EastoftheWeb.com

Story Rating: 4 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Honest - Bitter - Sad

Summary:

The less than satisfactory aftermath of a sexual encounter.

My Thoughts:

It’s sad that both the man and the woman in this story became involved in this “relationship”, if you can call it that, when it is clear it makes neither one of them happy. But, it is clear they will continue to do it anyway, despite the ill result. Why do people do that?

Quotes:

“She heard him in the lounge now, mixing the drinks, taking his time. Waiting. Delaying. giving her time to cover herself.” -James Wood, Rules of the Game

“They were never anxious to see her naked body once the love-making was over. It was one of the unwritten rules of the game.” -James Wood, Rules of the Game Bed

“The warrior returning to the battlefield, she thought, even though the skirmish was over, the enemy conquered. The disarrayed sheets formed the hillocks and trenches of no-man’s land, and the unclean peace of an armistice filled the room.” -James Wood, Rules of the Game

Essence and Attribute by Fernando Sorrentino

Essence and Attribute by Fernando Sorrentino

2 pages, eBook

Where I Got It: EastoftheWeb.com

Story Rating: 4 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Quirky - Bizarre - Ambiguous

Summary:

A man who becomes obsessed with a wart on his finger.

My Thoughts:

Very strange. I’m not sure if the narrator is crazy or merely became crazy over the course of the story . . . perhaps delusional.  Interesting how he fixates on it, without being worried about it.

Quotes:

“Proudly, fearfully, hesitatingly I exhibited him to my friends.” -Fernando Sorrentino, Essence and Attribute

“I scorned their words, I consulted with no one, I had nothing further to do with them, I gave myself over entirely to studying the evolution of the elephant.” -Fernando Sorrentino, Essence and Attribute

“At that time I was afraid I might disappear, cease to be me . . .” -Fernando Sorrentino, Essence and Attribute