Marilyn's Last Sessions

Marilyn's Last Sessions
Author: Michel Schneider
Publisher: Canongate Books
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2011-11-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1847679145

4.25 am, 5 August 1962, West Los Angeles Police Department ‘Marilyn Monroe has died of an overdose’, a man’s voice says dully. And when the stunned policeman asked ‘What?’, the same voice struggled to repeat ‘Marilyn Monroe has died. She has committed suicide.’ If life were scripted like the movies, this extraordinary phone call would have been made by the most important man in Marilyn Monroe’s life – Dr Ralph Greenson, her final psychoanalyst. During her last years Marilyn had come to rely on Greenson more and more. She met with him almost every day. He was her analyst, her friend and her confessor. He was the last person to see her alive, and the first to see her dead. In this highly acclaimed novel, Marilyn’s last years – and her last sessions on Dr Greenson’s couch – are brilliantly recreated. This is the story of the world’s most famous and elusive actress, and the world she inhabited, surrounded by such figures as Arthur Miller, Truman Capote and John Huston. It is a remarkable piece of storytelling that illuminates one of the greatest icons of the twentieth century.

Death and the Penguin

Death and the Penguin
Author: Andrey Kurkov
Publisher: Melville House
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2011-06-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1612190766

"No summary can do justice to the strange appeal of this unusual, short book, which is at once a crime novel, a comic novel and a serious political satire on contemporary Ukraine." —Anne Applebaum, The Wall Street Journal With the collapse of the Soviet Union, newly-free Ukraine is a shell-shocked land . . . In poverty-and-violence-wracked Kyiv, unemployed writer Viktor Zolotaryov leads a down-and-out life with his only friend, Misha, a penguin that he rescued when the local zoo started getting rid of animals it couldn't feed. Even more nerve-wracking for Victor: a local mobster has taken a shine to Misha and wants to borrow him for events. But Viktor thinks he’s finally caught a break when he lands a well-paying job at the Kyiv newspaper writing “living obituaries” of local dignitaries—articles to be filed for use when the time comes. The only thing is, the time always seems to come as soon as Viktor finishes writing the article. Slowly understanding that his own life may be in jeopardy, Viktor also realizes that the only thing that might be keeping him alive is his penguin.

Mayflies

Mayflies
Author: Andrew O'Hagan
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2021-05-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0771018916

An unforgettable coming-of-age novel that becomes a profound mediation on life, death, and lifelong friendship. Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life. In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news--news that forces the life-long friends to confront their own mortality head-on. What follows is an incredibly moving examination of the responsibilities and obligations we have to those we love. Mayflies is at once a finely-tuned drama about the delicacy and impermanence of human connection and an urgent inquiry into some of the most important questions of all: Who are we? What do we owe to our friends? And what does it mean to love another person amidst tragedy?

The Illuminations

The Illuminations
Author: Andrew O'Hagan
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2015-03-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374174563

"Originally published in 2015 by Faber and Faber Limited, Great Britain."

Be Near Me

Be Near Me
Author: Andrew O'Hagan
Publisher: Emblem Editions
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2010-06-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1551994135

The Canadian debut of the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Our Fathers and Mayflies. In a small Scottish parish in a post-industrial town by the sea, an English priest with secrets in his own past becomes stalked by the fear of scandal, class hatred, and lost ideals. When Father David Anderton takes over a Scottish parish, not everyone is ready to accept him. Over the spring and summer of 2003, Father David befriends two young, troubled students, Mark and Lisa. Their natural energy and response to the world bring out his own feelings of protectiveness, as well as longings for parts of himself—and his past—that he has come to lose. This relationship and the way it develops leads to the book’s climax, as Father David finds himself facing accusations of abuse. Told from the point of view of Father David, we feel, beneath his need for order and emotional distance, the passionate undercurrents that have brought him to where he is. In this riveting novel, where every word counts, Andrew O’Hagan’s brilliant writing leads us into a story of art and politics, love and faith. Be Near Me possesses a depth of feeling and a literary artistry that render it O’Hagan’s masterpiece.

The Winter Rose

The Winter Rose
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 1441
Release: 2008-01-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1401395864

It has been twelve years since a dark, murderous figure stalked the alleys and courts of Whitechapel. And yet, in the summer of 1900, East London is still poor, still brutal, still a shadow city to its western twin. Among the reformers is an idealistic young woman named India Selwyn-Jones, recently graduated from medical school. With the help of her influential fiancé--Freddie Lytton, an up-and-coming Liberal MP--she works to shut down the area's opium dens that destroy both body and soul. Her selfless activities better her patients' lives and bring her immense gratification, but unfortunately, they also bring her into direct conflict with East London's ruling crime lord--Sid Malone. India is not good for business and at first, Malone wants her out. But against all odds, India and Sid fall in love. Different in nearly every way, they share one thing in common--they're both wounded souls. Their love is impossible and they know it, yet they cling to it desperately. Lytton, India's fiancé, will stop at nothing to marry India and gain her family's fortune. Fractious criminal underlings and rivals conspire against Sid. When Sid is finally betrayed by one of his own, he must flee London to save his life. Mistakenly thinking him dead, India, pregnant and desperate, marries Freddie to provide a father for hers and Sid's child. India and Sid must each make a terrible sacrifice--a sacrifice that will change them both forever. One that will lead them to other lives, and other places...and perhaps--one distant, bittersweet day--back to each other.

Mr. Chartwell

Mr. Chartwell
Author: Rebecca Hunt
Publisher: Dial Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2011-02-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0679604340

July 1964. Chartwell House, Kent: Winston Churchill wakes at dawn. There’s a dark, mute “presence” in the room that focuses on him with rapt concentration. It’s Mr. Chartwell. Soon after, in London, Esther Hammerhans, a librarian at the House of Commons, goes to answer the door to her new lodger. Through the glass she sees a vast silhouette the size of a mattress. It’s Mr. Chartwell. Charismatic, dangerously seductive, Mr. Chartwell unites the eminent statesman at the end of his career and the vulnerable young woman. But can they withstand Mr. Chartwell’s strange, powerful charms and his stranglehold on their lives? Can they even explain who or what he is and why he has come to visit? In this utterly original, moving, funny, and exuberant novel, Rebecca Hunt explores how two unlikely lives collide as Mr. Chartwell’s motives are revealed to be far darker and deeper than they at first seem.

A Night Out with Robert Burns

A Night Out with Robert Burns
Author: Robert Burns
Publisher: Canongate Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2009-01-15
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 184767450X

The Scottish poet Robert Burns has been idolised and eulogised. He has been sainted, painted, tarted-up and toasted. He is famous as the author of 'Auld Lang Syne', and he has long been the patron saint of the heartsore and the hungover. But what about the poems? Beneath the cult of Burns Nights and patriotic yawps, there is the work itself, among the purest and most truthful created in any age. This is a Burns collection like no other, introduced, arranged and contextualised by the award-winning novelist and essayist Andrew O'Hagan. Above all, it is an accessible edition made for the pleasure of reading that brings Burns' timeless work to full, riotous, colourful life.