TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| An Ethical Question: Does a Nazi Deserve a Place Among Philosophers? A soon-to-be published book has revived the long-running debate about whether the German philosopher Martin Heidegger can be separated from his philosophy. feeds.nytimes.com |
Nation | Theatre review Olivier, London"Don't read the Terry Pratchett novel," I was urgently advised. "Just go and experience this as a piece of theatre." Which I duly did but I can only report that I found the National's latest attempt to extend the frontiers of children's theatre a bewildering mythical melange: whether the fault lies with Pratchett's book, Mark Ravenhill's adaptation or even Melly Still's restlessly inventive production I'm not sure.The story starts with an angry boy on a beach: he's Mau, a south Pacific islander and victim of a tsunami that seems to have all but annihilated the local population. He is soon joined, however, by Daphne, a pert Victorian miss who, along with a subversive parrot, has survived a shipwreck while en route to a reunion with her father. What follows is a mix of coming-of-age ritual and piece of nation-building in which Mau and Daphne seek to construct a new world.Mau, elected chief by the surviving islanders, grows to manhood and learns bravery, courage and fearlessness. Daphne, meanwhile, achieves a post-colonial maturity through delivering a baby, milking a pig and even rescuing Mau from death. But, inevitably, their idyll is interrupted by the arrival of the remnants of Victorian civilisation.What does it all signify? You could see it as a Tempest-like story of cultural collision in which Mau is forced to acknowledge his nation's lost historic glories. Or it could be a modern Coral Island about a displaced adolescent's adjustment to the world of nature. It might also be about the human urge to overcome death embodied, on the island, by Locaha and, in the Victorian world, by a Russian flu pandemic.But what you get on stage is a loose congregation of myths that boils down to a series of set-pieces: Mau confronting a shark, Daphne making a Dantesque journey into the underworld and both of them learning to kill. What the story lacks is the spellbinding clarity you find in the best children's fiction.It is all staged with a hectic panache. Sill and her co-designer, Mark Friend, have created a stage dominated by three translucent screens through which we glimpse floating corpses, swimming dolphins, predatory man-eaters.Puppets, created by Yvonne Stone, represent a giant sow, bendy-limbed elders, even a growing baby. Gary Carr and Emily Taaffe as Mau and Daphne disport themselves with great dignity and there is a nice study of a talking, walking parrot from Jason Thorpe.Although it makes a spectacular island fling, it rarely achieves narrative coherence. Perhaps I should have read the book, after all.TheatreTerry PratchettMark RavenhillMichael Billingtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Hardcover Fiction Top 5 at a Glance1. U IS FOR UNDERTOW, by Sue Grafton2. THE LOST SYMBOL, by Dan Brown3. I, ALEX CROSS, by James Patterson4. UNDER THE DOME, by Stephen King5. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett feeds.nytimes.com |
Exiles From Themselves The immigrants in Ha Jin’s latest story collection seem to be in exile not only from the China of their dreams and memories, but from their very sense of who they are. feeds.nytimes.com |
The Salati Case by Tobias Jones | Book review A fast-talking, pocket-sized box-ticker of a private-dick novel, The Salati Case sees Tobias Jones revisit the modern Italian underworld he combed through in his 2003 non-fiction book The Dark Heart of Italy. Indeed, the main obstacle facing his narrator and protagonist, Castagnetti, hired to confirm whether an heir to a Parma family's fortune is missing or dead, is the paranoia, corruption and complicity of the upper echelons of Italian society, which the detective slips past with little concern for personal safety. Angry, violent and uncompromising, with a shaved head, dead parents and a sideline in beekeeping, Castagnetti will be back, no danger: he is too good a creation to be restricted to a single case.Fictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |