Kingdom by the Sea (Essential Modern Classics) (Collins Modern Classics)

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In these final lines, the speaker is still lying down by the tomb of the one that he loved. This fairy tale took a dark turn when the angels sent a chilly wind to take Annabel Lee, and now it ends not with happily ever after, but with a broken-hearted man who sleeps by the grave of his lover every night. While this is a tale of undying love, it is certainly not a typical fairy tale.

This is a book in three very clear parts. The first part sets the scene of Gabby & Mike, their life, their children and Mike’s jobs. The second covers Gabby & Mike’s time in Pakistan and the third comes after they have left. Although I enjoyed all three parts of this book I would have been quite content if it had finished after the second part. Yes, there were unfinished threads but it worked for me. I wasn’t quite so keen on the third section and didn’t feel it flowed as well as the earlier part of the book.This book provokes a lot of negative reactions: I can see why, though as a non-native I don't share the outrage. Also, and I hope, meaningfully and purposefully, the harshest criticisms and most bile is reserved for the English. Theroux rather likes the Welsh, has a lot of sympathy and understanding for the Northern Irish and can get on with at least some Scots. It's the English of all breeds that he can't understand and can't stand. He describes many a variety from the retired-to-the-seaside-to-die, hedge pruning and tea-drinking to tabloid-reading, Butlins visiting variety but he dislikes them all - and he damns them with their own words, pithily, wonderfully, right on target. The author concludes the English do the small things well and the big things badly. He writes at length, “every large hotel at which I had stayed in England seemed run down or overpriced, understaffed, dirty, the staff overworked and slow. All the smaller places were preferable, the smallest always the best. The English were talented crafts people, but poor mass-producers of goods. They were brilliant at running a corner shop but were failures at supermarkets. Perhaps this had something to do with their sense of anonymity? Person to person, I had found them truthful and efficient, and humane. But anonymity made them lazy, dishonest, and aggressive. Hidden in his car, the Englishman was often impatient to the point of being murderous. Over the phone, he was unhelpful and often rude. They were not timid, but shy. Shyness made them tolerant, but it also gave them a grudge against foreigners, whom they regarded as boomers and show-offs. It was hard to distinguish hotels in England from prisons or hospitals. They ran most of them with the same indifference or cruelty.” In a Kingdom by the Sea by Sara MacDonald is essentially a contemporary love story, exploring the woes of a nearly fifty-year-old coming to the end of a long relationship. With underlying elements of mystery, for instance, what happened to Dominique in the early 1970s and what exactly is Mike up to, the novel also explores the hidden truths of a country stereotyped by violence and terrorism. After making a list of the book’s incidents] I discovered a very interesting thing. I was trying to remember a character’s name, and realized she doesn’t ever identify herself as anything but “the Mermaid”--her father’s old name for her. There is another character in the book who is actually named Merman. Both characters are after Harry’s affection, the touch of his youth, brightness, attention. The Mermaid’s “seduction” works in a different way from Merman’s (which is overtly sexual), but Harry does lift her up, eat her food, sleep in her bed wearing her son’s clothes. It’s like he’s always seduced by the sea--the sea creatures keep coming at him as he makes his way along the shore--and they’re always dangerous, and if he listens to the siren’s song he’s always on the verge of drowning, of getting in over his head. At best it's outdated, at worst it's deliberately misleading -- without him making the same trip again, it's tough to say which it is. Clearly the British economy wasn't what it was now when Theroux wrote this.

These lines serve a few different purposes. First of all, the speaker lets the readers know that they were in fact, children. He doesn’t use the word “youth” or even “young” so as to let the reader think that they were perhaps in their early teenage years. He specifies that both of them were children. In line 8, he repeats that they lived in the Kingdom by the Sea. This repetition not only reminds the readers of the setting of the poem, but it also has a rather rhythmic effect that helps the poem to continue to read as a fairy tale with an almost lullaby quality to it. Some have called Poe’s poems “hypnotic” and perhaps this rhythmic repetition is the reason for this hypnotic effect on readers. Without visiting castles and cathedrals Theroux decides to walk, train, hitch-hike and bus the coast of Britain as far as is possible (not forgetting the ferry to Northern Ireland). He just wants to observe and speak with people on the journey to get a sense of the places he visits. He has been living in London for 11 years but had not seen Britain. Nowhere in Britain is more than 65 miles from the sea so he decided his route would be round the coast. He does not want any stunts as this would distract him from the journey. Paul Theroux undertook his journey round the coast of the United Kingdom exactly 25 years ago, in 1982. Even more than normally, his book is very slight on information, strong on description and dominated by the author's perceptions, feelings and judgements. Being his usual miserable persona, Theroux doesn't spare the locations he visits and the people he meets just because they happen to be British. Wry, observant and always seeing the empty half of the glass (unless it's filled with sludge), he travels the length of the coast of the UK by train and on foot, avowedly skipping castles and cathedrals and under-sampling cities. Summary: Beautifully written, gloomy, depressive and funny at the same time, this exploration of coastal UK at the time of the Falkland War as a metaphor for a crumbling empire is now a travel classic. Highly recommended.

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I always enjoy reading a book written by a true storyteller, and this is the case with ‘In a Kingdom by the Sea’. The story flows beautifully, the characters are believable, complex, and draw you into their world. The settings are contrasting, but both are atmospheric and described using vivid imagery so that you can enjoy the sensory experience, as you become immersed in the secrets and mysteries of the plot. Paul Theroux's round-Britain travelogue is funny, perceptive and 'best avoided by patriots with high blood pressure...'

In these lines, there is an abrupt shift. This is no longer a common fairy tale. Suddenly, Annabel Lee catches a cold from a “wind that blew out of a cloud”. The speaker attributes the reason for this cold to the covetousness of the angels. He explains that their feelings of jealousy were in fact “the reason that…a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee”. In line 16, the speaker refers to Annabel Lee as “my Annabel Lee”. This possessive tone allows the readers an even deeper insight into the feelings the speaker had for her. He felt that the two of them loved one another as much as any two people could love, and he felt that he could call her his own. Line 15 simply says that Annabel Lee has been chilled. The readers do not know if she has simply caught a cold, or if her body is cold and dead-chilled. I was set on an acting career and after working as an ASM in The Theatre Royal Windsor I won a place at the London Academy of Music and Drama.I think this is a book I'll need to reread at a different point, when I'm less edgy and can better appreciate Theroux's travel narrative. One suggestion I'd make for the publisher is to add a map showing his route -- as it was I was constantly googling the names of towns to figure out where Theroux was in his journey.

Paul Theroux lebt schon elf Jahre in London als er erkennt, dass er nicht viel von Großbritannien und den Briten kennt, zumindest nicht aus erster Hand. Um das zu ändern macht er sich auf eine Reise entlang der britischen Küste.

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This is a book that I could relate to as a woman very well. I felt the happiness, anger, depression, fear, etc. as if it were myself! So the writing is solid. I only wish Mike were less happy. Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most renowned writers. His short stories and poetry have infiltrated the canon of literature since he first began writing. At the age of only thirteen, he had written enough short stories to publish a book. He did not publish until later on in life, however. He only lived to be forty years old, but in his short lifetime, he wrote some of the most famous literature. Before becoming a famous and known writer, Poe experienced a lifetime of misfortune. It began when his parents died. He was left an orphan. The man who took him in sent him to boarding school and left nothing to him when he died. Elf Jahre in einem fremden Land zu wohnen und nicht viel darüber zu wissen, ist auch eine Kunst. Paul Theroux kann man zugute halten, dass er während seiner Arbeit als Reiseschriftsteller schon viele fremde Orte und deren Einwohner kennen lernt und deshalb daheim Ruhe haben will. Trotzdem: gerade wenn man viel unterwegs ist um Länder und Leute kennen zu lernen, sollte man das doch auch in der Heimat tun. I have, happily, managed to put my hands on the review I wrote when I first read this book in 1992, and here 'tis. A bit long-winded and full of spoilers! This is honest if a little depressing as he riffs on caravan parks, nuclear power stations, the railways and owners of B&Bs and guest houses. He certainly meets some characters. Just wait until he gets to Cardigan Bay and hear his thoughts on Holyhead. He gives all the people he meets names. It’s hard to know what are real names or not but that does not really matter. He is travelling at the time of the Falkland’s War (‘this Falkland’s business’ as the people he meets are wont to say). I was 12 in 1982 and England was not that sophisticated. There was high unemployment as the country was in transition from industry, manufacturing and mining to a more service-oriented country. Financial services being the biggest. Places were run-down and hardly endearing and this certainly comes to the fore in this book.