Celtic Datebooks
Celtic Datebooks
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It is 1903 and Thomas Edgar has returned from a scientific expedition, collecting butterflies in the wilds of Brazil and pursuing a fabled butterfly with black wings on one side and lustrous yellow on the right. However, after a long absence he does not utter a word to his young wife, Sophie, when she welcomes him home. He is emaciated and covered in cuts and scars and in an almost catatonic state, and this is the seed from which the mystery grows. The story admittedly takes a while to get going, but the reader's patience is well rewarded as you become deeply involved with the characters. The novel feverishly builds as the mystery unfolds.
Slowly the story unfolds, told both from Thomas's and Sophie's perspective, through his letters, journals and memories. Throughout the book is the contrast of restraint to the uncontrolled - echoed in the juxtaposing of the prim Edwardian society they live in to the wild, rampant rainforest, and this is echoed by the personal restraints being eventually unleashed in Sophie and Thomas. Sophie battles to conform to the rigid Edwardian society's expectations of behaviour and desperately fights to conceal her husband's unacceptable state. Despite the patriarchal Edwardian society it is Sophie who has to take control of the situation, before it ruins her marriage.
The expedition was funded by a mysterious Brazilian rubber baron, who we eventually meet along with a whole new and dangerous world of decadence and excess. Just as Thomas admires the butterflies he so avidly seeks, so are his fellow expedition members impressed by the wealth and lifestyle of their sponser, but there is a brutal price to pay, as there is with collecting butterflies.
This is the author's first novel and she already shows a wonderful skill with her beautiful prose and story-telling. She seems destined to be in the top books lists. Her vivid descriptions, especially of the menacing Amazon jungle, bring the book alive and you can almost taste the salty perspiration dripping as we follow Thomas on his dangerous explorations through the unknown jungle. It has the same underlying passion and menace that Jean Rhys's ''Wide Sargasso Sea' explored so successfully and leaves the reader impatient for the next novel.
Amber Westfield is an arts journalist and an expert and writer on New Age interests. She writes for New Age UK - the top New Age site for all the latest on festivals, summer and winter solstices, books, holidays, and galleries of pictures covering Stonehenge solstices, Glastonbury festival and equinox celebrations.
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Datebooks, 1964/65: A Facsimile Edition $42.62 Sunday, June 21, 1964 "Studio--To date have again done mainly drawings. Coming along. Sometimes I feel they're good, often I get discouraged. Staying at studio gets a little easier + more pleasant. I usually take break + come home. Tom stays."---Eva Hesse In 1964--65, Eva Hesse lived with her husband, sculptor Tom Doyle, in Kettwig-on-the-Ruhr, Germany, at the invitation of a European art collector. During this time, as she did throughout most of her life, Hesse kept diaries and made extensive notations in datebook calendars. These two datebooks, published for the first time as facsimile editions, are accompanied by a third volume that includes an essay on their significance in the artist's career as well as full transcriptions and annotations. The 1964/65 datebooks impart astonishingly rich personal details about the artist's life: whom she met and where she traveled, which books she read, and which films and exhibitions she saw and what impression they made on her. Hesse's notations also reveal invaluable insights into the German art scene of the mid-1960s, her transition from a painter to a sculptor and her often conflicted artistic ambitions, the stresses of her marriage, and the difficulties of returning to Germany, the country that in 1938 she fled with her family to escape Nazi persecution. |
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Celtic $209.99 Celtic - Wall Tapestry |
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Celtic FC - Classic Celtic $5.99 Celtic FC - Classic Celtic |
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Celtic Bead $58 Celtic Bead |
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Celtic Shamrock $10 Celtic Shamrock |
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Celtic Cross $10 Celtic Cross |
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Bloem Celtic $6 Bloem Celtic |
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Celtic Pentagram $6 Celtic Pentagram |
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Celtic Joy $11.49 Celtic Joy |
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Celtic Skies $10.49 Celtic Skies |
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Celtic Christmas $8.99 Celtic Christmas |
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Pure... Celtic $8.99 Pure... Celtic |
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Celtic Chillout $4.99 Celtic Chillout |
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Celtic Tapestry $11.49 Celtic Tapestry |
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Celtic Harp $5.99 Celtic Harp |
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Celtic Woman $12.49 Celtic Woman |
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Celtic Tranquility $4.99 Celtic Tranquility |
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The Celtic Collection $5.99 The Celtic Collection |
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Celtic Wedding $6.49 Celtic Wedding |
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A Celtic Rhapsody $10.49 A Celtic Rhapsody |
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The Celtic Harp $6.49 The Celtic Harp |
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The Celtic Tenors $9.49 The Celtic Tenors |
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Celtic Fiddle $4.49 Celtic Fiddle |
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Celtic Pride $4.99 Celtic Pride |
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Celtic Minstrel $8.99 Celtic Minstrel |
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Celtic Glory $8.49 Celtic Glory |
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Celtic Box $12.49 Celtic Box |
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Celtic Compass $13.79 Celtic Compass |
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Celtic Moods $7.49 Celtic Moods |
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Celtic Experience $4.49 Celtic Experience |
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Celtic Favourites $4.99 Celtic Favourites |
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Cowboy Celtic $12.49 Cowboy Celtic |
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Pure Celtic - Pure Celtic (Import) $39.68 Pure Celtic |
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Celtic Thunder: Celtic Thunder: The Show $13.99 Celtic Thunder: Celtic Thunder: The Show |
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