Tag: family

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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

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Lonely and adrift in Manhattan

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Gish Jen is the award-winning author of The Resisters returns with an autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship. Gish’s mother Agnes Jen – Loo Shu-hsin – born in 1925 to wealthy Shanghai family where the chauffeurs wore leather gloves, expensive Persian opium was served to society women via a sous chef, and girls are expected to behave and be quiet.  No domestic chores were required of her as a child, but the sudden disappearance possibly sacking of her beloved nurse-maid Nai-ma caused an open wound, potentially poisoning her future maternal facility, combine this with the Cultural Revolution, a famine, other … Continue reading Lonely and adrift in Manhattan

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Defied her deprived background to get into Oxford reaching the pinnacle

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“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision. The class system in England reveals deep-seated societal values and prejudices, often influences opportunities and lifestyle”-V.S. Naipaul Bridget Maeve Phillipson, the current Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities, since July 2024, who was on free school meals, working class northern England, from single parent family who had grown up in poverty in council accommodation on benefits but defied her deprived background to … Continue reading Defied her deprived background to get into Oxford reaching the pinnacle

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What it means to be a dad today?

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In the midst of the “masculinity crisis”, award-winning historian, Augustine Sedgewick, author of Coffee-land  reveals an ambitious history of masculinity and family, from the Bronze Age to the modern day, in Fatherhood and dares to offer a more caring and affirmative vision of the roles men currently play in society. How successive generations of men have shaped our understanding of what it means to be and have a father, and in turn our ideas of who we are, where we come from and what we are capable of. What is fatherhood, and where did it come from? How has the role … Continue reading What it means to be a dad today?

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Mother who raised and inspired two superstars

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Tina Knowles, the mother of icons Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: the woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. A life of grief and tragedy, love and heartbreak, the nurturing of her superstar daughters, and the perseverance and audacity it takes for a girl from Galveston, Texas to change the world. Why half of Destiny’s Child Beyoncé’s original four piece, left the group in 2000 in a flurry of bad-mouthing and lawsuits: we’re just old that “Beyoncé saw … Continue reading Mother who raised and inspired two superstars

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You can’t outrun the past

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When New York law professor, Tom Layward’s wife, Amy’s infidelity was revealed, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned eighteen. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact. It is a commitment born of spite and pride, unlikely to stand the test of time. As soon as his daughter is settled in her dorm, though, he gets in his car and starts driving. His destination – friends, relatives, exes, the basketball courts beloved of his youth – is anywhere but home. It doesn’t help that Tom’s job in … Continue reading You can’t outrun the past

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Lives entwined but divided by love

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Zanzibar-born British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, he said  “ I wouldn’t have picked me”, although his work does not fit the traditional mould of recent Nobel laureates. His novels were out of print in the US when his Nobel Prize was announced, who praised Gurnah’s “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee”. Gurnah, a refugee fled Tanzania during the 1960s Zanzibar revolution, and settled and lived in England for over fifty years. His latest novel “Theft”, is a captivating story of the intertwined lives of three young … Continue reading Lives entwined but divided by love