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Showing posts from March, 2014

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was published in 2012, and on the longlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize in the U.K. The author is Rachel Joyce, a playwright for BBC Radio 4 for 20 years, and this book is her first novel. Harold Fry, sixty five, retired from his job for a local brewery, lives off a pension with his wife Maureen. He had an unfortunate childhood, and away from society because of his introverted nature. The relationship with Maureen has cooled off long before. One day, he receives a letter from Queenie Hennessy who was his colleague of twenty years ago. She says in the letter that she is dying of a cancer and lives in a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Harold writes a letter to her but knows it's not enough to express his heart. He leaves the house to post the letter, but he hesitates to do and goes on to the next post... He stops a petrol station to get something to eat, and tells a waitress Queenie's story. The girl talks about her aunt who had a c

Too Much Happiness

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Too Much Happiness is a collection of ten short stories, published in 2009, and the author is Alice Munro, a Canadian writer. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. I didn't know her name until she won the Nobel Prize, but I wanted to read her works when I found her books at a local library. I've read the works of Raymond Carver before. But I don't think I like short stories very much because they often have little description of the situation, and depict many things with few words. Short stories are often more difficult than novels. Some stories in this book give readers some thoughts about  life through long time. Dimensions Doree who is a chambermaid had bitter experience. Her young three children were murdered by her insane husband. She sometimes visits her ex-husband in jail by bus. One day when she is on the bus to visit him, an accident happens... Fiction Jon and Joyce who have high IQ score drop out of college and go away. Jon learned woodwor