Tag: family

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Billionaires secretive networks

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A seat inside The Global Family Office Community (GFOC), one of the most discreet and secretive networks in the world, where community of families that control fortunes worth billions of pounds is effectively a floating private members’ Clun for the world’s  wealthiest families meeting around the world at  private dinners, retreats, seminars and conferences. Over 2, 500 families are now members of this elite exclusive club. They are not chasing the next big deal, but advice, perspective and this is one place they discuss the problems money cannot solve, “No one is pitching anything at them, it’s a safe place where they can come … Continue reading Billionaires secretive networks

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Female resilience and solidarity

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Award-winning Iranian-American novelist and filmmaker, Laleh Kahdivi’s  funny novel about a daughter discovering her mother’s secret past. When in Los Angeles, a senior accoutant Heti’s mother, Anahita, dies, she leaves behind a spotless legacy: affectionate parent, modern career woman, and life of the party. Heti moves in a daze until her grief is upended by the arrival of an unmarked package arrives from England, containing photographs of Anahita as a young woman- robed,  (her country of origin appears to be Iran by is unnamed), standing in front of a burning building in a black robe and pointing a gun at a group … Continue reading Female resilience and solidarity

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Who can survive?

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Scottish Irvine Welsh, by now quite American, after 17 years since the Trainspotting author one-time provocateur-in-chief of the British literary scene first moved stateside to Chicago, home city of his second wife, and since their divorce he has kept a house in Miami. In what ought to be constitutional impossibility, there are times when Donald Trump, recumbent in Mar-a-Lago, is just 70-miles from the man who once wrote that “Whin yir oan Junk, aw ye worry aboot is scorin”. A divided Las Vegas family is forced to confront the past and reckon with a dangerous future, although Trump is seldom … Continue reading Who can survive?

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Devastation of separation and the pain of betrayal

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Avni Doshi, the Booker Prize finalist author of Burnt Sugar  comes a fascinating novel of rupture and rebirth, of one woman’s journey to understand the fault lines in her marriage, her home, and her family, her betrayal, renunciation, and renewal, who swims to the other side and comes up for air. When my husband comes into the bedroom we have shared thirteen years and tells me he doesn’t want to be married anymore, I reach for my neck. My head is missing. A husband announces he is leaving, that he was never happy. A woman is left behind with their two … Continue reading Devastation of separation and the pain of betrayal

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Memoir of self-development

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  When Irish writer, Brian Dillon was sixteen his mother died and he simply gave up all schoolwork. But his real education was going on elsewhere: with books, music, films and television. When at least he made it to university, his head was already full of avant-garde writing, art and ideas. Could academia liveup to the hopes and dreams he had invested in it? Halfway through college his father died, and the stakes of reading and writing seemed even higher. Ambivalence explores what learning meant to is author, what it enabled and denied between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six, … Continue reading Memoir of self-development

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Oppression turns into rebellion as children stripped of their innocence

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Tahmima Anam’s Uprising reveals a group of children witnessing their mothers living lives of cruelty and servitude on a desolate sinking island off the coast of Bangladesh. Bought and sold by Amma, the ruthless madam who was once herself sold into slavery, as the victim becomes the perpetrator, the women have accepted their fates as sex workers. Yet their children weave fantastic tales, imagining that someday they will escape the island and enjoy a life of freedom.  When Kusum Khan, a young educated woman from the city, is brought to the island, she too is subjected to Amma’s violent induction. … Continue reading Oppression turns into rebellion as children stripped of their innocence

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Women plagued by brittle relationships

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Award-winning novelist, Riley who won a Betty Trask and Somerset Maugham award, and a Windham-Campbell prize worth $175,000, from her analyst’s couch, drills into the gaps between her characters to reveal strained relationships with their parents, particularly their mothers set in north of England or in the US.  Palm House is narrated by Laura Miller, a writer living in precarious life of house shares and freelancing in London. Laura Miller and Edmund Putnam is the deputy editor of a literary magazine called Sequence, who have been friends for a long time whose happy meeting of minds, with long evenings spent huddled … Continue reading Women plagued by brittle relationships

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Redemptive power of friendship

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Set in 2011, Crux is a story of intense friendship between two Californian teenagers, bookish Dan and his near-feral best friend Tamma, a lesbian from the wrong side of the tracks and grit, two-down-and-out teens escape the hopelessness of their lives and chase a different future through rock-climbing- from Gabriel Tallent, the New York Times bestselling author of My Absolute Darling. Dan and Tamma are two teenagers in their last year of high school in the southern Mojave Desert, are passionate climbers, one is a gifted golden child, the other a mouthy burnout, who spend their evenings and weekends conquering … Continue reading Redemptive power of friendship

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Good Parenting leads to happiness

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As a follow-up to The Marriage Book (published in 2000) parents of four, Nicky and Sila Lee, who run a variety of courses at Holy Trinity Brompton, have produced this comprehensive manual on parenting.In five sections, containing a number of chapters in each, the writers address issues which concern all parents, including “The five ways of showing love”, “Handling ang (ours and theirs) “ and “Building a child’s spiritual life”.The couple talked to other parents when writing the book, and they acknowledge thanks to them for their shared experiences, as well as to their own parents, and their four children, … Continue reading Good Parenting leads to happiness

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Self taught social empathy

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Would you predict that a British aristocrat would so energize American antifascist and civil rights struggles that Time magazine would crown her “Queen of Muckrakers”? Jessica Mitford, known as Decca, was brought up by eccentric English family to marry well and reproduce her wealth and privilege, not to advocate for the rights of others. Her beautiful sisters have been subjects of books and movies dedicated to their naughty, glamorous lives. Decca ran away to America to forge a rebel’s life. As this richly researched book details, Decca broke the Mitford mould. Instead of setting for life as a professional Beauty, … Continue reading Self taught social empathy