Freak.

That's what they call seventeen-year-old Donna Underwood at Ironbridge High School. A horrific fey attack

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When James Wood's first collection of essays, The Broken Estate, was published in 1999, the reviewers hailed a master critic. John Banville described Wood as a 'a close reader of genius-illuminating & exciting & compelling', & Malcolm Bradbury described him as 'a true critic: an urgent, impassioned reader of literature, a tireless interpreter, a live & learned intelligence'; Adam Begley, in the Financial Times, said that ' Wood is not just a keen critic, our best, but a superb writer'; in the Independent, Natasha Walter described The Broken Estate as 'a book that makes you feel, having closed it, as if your mind has been oxygenated'. The common thread in Wood's latest collection of essays is what makes us laugh
- & the book is an attempt to distinguish between the perhaps rather limited English comedy (as seen in Waugh, for example) & a 'continental' tragic-comedy, which he sees as real, universal & quixotic. A particularly acerbic, & very funny, essay
- which has been widely celebrated
- deals with Zadie Smith, Rushdie, Pynchon & De Lillo; its title, ' Hysterical Realism', has already entered the phrasebook of literary language. With its brilliant studies of Shakespeare, Dickens & Dostoevsky, Naipaul, Pritchett & Bellow, The Irresponsible Self offers more exhilarating despatches from one of our finest living critics.


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It was situated on a perfect natural harbour at the mouth of a great river leading into a huge new l&. Manhattan Island was to grow into the most powerful city in the most powerful country in the world.

The Island at the Centre of the World returns to the origins of New York

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It was situated on a perfect natural harbour at the mouth of a great river leading into a huge new l&. Manhattan Island was to grow into the most powerful city in the most powerful country in the world.

The Island at the Centre of the World returns to the origins of New York

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Fleeing the gathering storm-clouds of war in 1939, a party of British débutantes are shipwrecked on an uncharted tropical ...

The inhabitants of Halcyon Island are ruled by the laws of the Deliverer & follow the same customs & traditions that have prevailed for hundreds of years. The laws state ' No incomers', but when Thomas & Molly find a shipwrecked canoe with a boy & girl, barely alive, inside they are determined not to reject them outright. New blood on the island is bound to cause a disturbance, but the effects the incomers have on the close-knit community are beyond anyone's predictions. ...

Towards the end of 1831, the authorities unearthed a series of crimes at Number 3, Nova Scotia Gardens in East London that appeared to echo the notorious Burke & Hare killings in Edinburgh three years earlier. After a long investigation, it became known that a group of body snatchers
- two men in particular, John Bishop & Thomas Williams, called the ' London Burkers'
- were supplying the anatomy schools with fresh 'examples' for dissection. The case became known as ' The Italian Boy' & caused a furore which led directly to the passing of controversial legislation which marked the beginning of the end of body snatching in Britain. The case revealed something else as well: some extremely unpleasant aspects of life in London, a city that had increased in size by one-third to over one-&-a-half million inhabitants between 1801 & 1831, & which was continuing to expand at a phenomenal & unprecedented rate. In The Italian Boy, Sarah Wise not only investigates the case of the London Burkers but also, by making use of an incredibly rich archival store, the lives of ordinary lower-class Londoners. She shows how the case challenged their notions of community & criminality, & how it made many feel that at the heart of their great city lay unknown, unknowable mysteries. Here is a window on the lives of the poor
- a window which is opaque in places, shattered in others
- but which provides an unprecedented view of low-life London in the 1830s.



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Towards the end of 1831, the authorities unearthed a series of crimes at Number 3, Nova Scotia Gardens in East London that appeared to echo the notorious Burke & Hare killings in Edinburgh three years earlier. After a long investigation, three bodysnatchers were put on trial for supplying the anatomy schools of London with suspiciously fresh bodies for dissection. They later became known as The London Burkers, & their story was dubbed ...

Edmund has escaped from his family into a lonely life. Returning for his mother's funeral he finds himself involved in the old, awful problems together with some new ones. He also rediscovers the eternal family servant, the ever-changing Italian girl, who has always 'a second mother' This particular return to mother holds some surprises for Edmund. ...

Edmund has escaped from his family into a lonely life. Returning for his mother's funeral he finds himself involved in the old, awful problems together with some new ones. He also rediscovers the eternal family servant, the ever-changing Italian girl, who has always 'a second mother' This particular return to mother holds some surprises for Edmund. ...