Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

Pullman's book should appeal to anyone interested in Christianity who is open-minded enough to appreciate a revisiting of the Bible from a slightly different perspective. The Gospels provide you with the most important source of Jesus's life. Pullman used the Authorised Version, the New English Bible and the New Revised Standard Version. It is NOT to be seen as a work of blasphemy. Pullman is a storyteller and a Christian so the story respects the teachings of the Gospels and shows an interesting and extremely readable interpretation, sensitive but also thought-provoking. It is something different and original but plausible and overly sad. The story is a visionary one retelling the birth, the life and death of Jesus Christ. Imagine: What if Jesus Christ had a twin brother? Or what if his twin brother betrayed him and not Judas  Iscariot? Simply put, we are presented with two Almighty people, Jesus who is the charismatic one but selfish and Christ who broods, a pragmatist

Cross opens the novel dramatically with the death of John Cox, a demolition worker who was so badly burnt that he was identified by his medical records. He was considered an expert so it is hard for his girlfriend, Annie and his sister, Hayley to accept that he would not take the necessary precautions and so they travel to Siberia to discover the ugly truth. His mother, Chris is in such a state that she burns his personal possessions and almost demolished his furniture in his bedroom. She can't bring herself to talk about him; she is so distraught. Hayley has constant visions of him; wherever she goes she sees his face. Uncanny. Is she suffering from delusions? What does it mean? The plot thickens quickly with an amnesia victim suffering from tickfever who stumbles upon a peasant family in Siberia, filthy and smelly with badly soiled clothes and five ticks embedded in his swollen flesh. It is Frosya who finds him and nurses him back to health. Before she burns his clothes, sh

The word continuum refers to a link between two things or a continuous series of things that blend into each other so gradually and seamlessly that it is impossible to say where one becomes the next. This is what the poet is trying to achieve through creating poetry, continuous ideas and this poem shows his frustration when he feels that nature is hindering his creativity. One of the things that Curnow liked doing was to capture the essence of a child by showing the childlike engagement  a child might have with its environment. The first stanza shows his childlike humour in the way he depicts the moon which "rolls" and "falls." Even the language is simplistic. like that of a child. " All poems are rash acts." Allen Curnow. The persona/poet is unable to get off to sleep, "off the subject" or "off the planet." He can't stop thinking either. He goes outside barefooted into the "washed out creation." The sky has prob

" She was a phantom of delight    When first she gleamed upon my sight:   A lovely apparition, sent   To be a moment's ornament." It has been  a treat for me to indulge in some beautiful writing by a well-respected Indian writer, revered by the British writer Graham Greene who was his mentor, his friend and instrumental in promoting Narayan worldwide. In the literary world he is regarded as one of the best novelists that India has ever produced. I am more than happy to endorse this. The English Teacher was not seen as a deliberate attempt to produce Narayan's autobiography but this seems to be the writer's legacy. His earlier novels were more deliberate attempts to depict his own life story and they are both wonderful reads: Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts. Narayan's inspiration revolves around two main ideas: disillusionment with teaching undergraduates with their "grim tolerance" of literature, wanting to be spoon-fed rather th

"You betrayed me. You told Bangs...What an idiot I've been to trust you. All that filth and lies you've been writing...You're exploiting me." The book was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2003 after receiving incredible reviews, the film followed in 2006. Sheba, a teacher of pottery meets Barbara Covett, a history teacher at St. George's. Their friendship blossoms but turns sour once Sheba realises that her so-called friend has chronicled her affair with Steven, a minor at the school and once it is published she will live richly off the proceeds. Sheba (Bathesheba) comes from a privileged middle/upper class affluent family but she has not nourished the success and happiness she deserves. She drifted into marriage at twenty, with Richard, an older man who has already had a failed marriage behind him and children. He is trendy but a decent guy, well-educated but not wonderfully exciting . Bill Nighy takes on this role with gusto. By the end of the novel

The future is bleak in this dystopian story of love, prejudice and discrimination. It is one of a series: Knife Edge, Checkmate, Double Cross, An Eye For An Eye and Callum. Sephy is a Cross, privileged, one of the ruling class from a wealthy but dysfunctional family. Her father is a political figure, more concerned about his own image than considering the welfare of his family. His wife had an affair and then became an alcoholic and this is how she deals with her miserable life. Callum is a Nought, sometimes called a blanker who refuses to tolerate the prejudice in society. He is a fighter who turns into a cold-blooded killer but his redeeming feature is his undying love for Sephy that survives throughout all of this adversity. Sephy is a fighter too and she suffers just as much as Callum. It's a retelling of Romeo and Juliet with a different kind of "ancient grudge." She is prepared to stand up for her beliefs of equality and suffers physical and verbal abuse but thi

"There was a baby.A couple on the run. And they were different. They were not right." Rachel Simon's literary career started with her bestselling memoir of her intellectually challenged sister, Beth in "Riding the Bus with my Sister." Her motivation for writing both books was not just about Beth but other less fortunate individuals who were institutionalised. In 1972 a programme was shown on US tv about the Willowbrook State School which "horrified" her family. "I came to feel remorse that institutional tragedies had unfolded in a parallel universe" one that was alien to Simon. There seemed to have been a "secret history" which had been "kept out of sight for so long." It wasn't just the American "secret shame" but worldwide. Doris Lessing uses shocking but real images based on a German lunatic asylum in "The Fifth Child." In the UK Panorama exposed the "shocking treatment" of its disab