Vastralaya

Evan Shively (Perseus271)

Edgar Colt

Vitor Miguel

Prisma Soulstorm

Serena

Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

For Your Own GoodWhat is this thing? A parable of spiritual self-development? A re-telling of the Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch? A case study in Stockholm Syndrome? Whatever Auster meant it to be, it is uninspiring, unedifying, and, as far as I can tell, meaningless - a collection of miscelaneous writerly nits and pieces dumped in the same bin bag of a novel because the mess was getting underfoot. It may be a dot on the literary map of Auster’s journey but not much more.Exceptionally cruel child abuse in the cause of a carnival levitation act is not the most promising of story lines. Nor are the characters involved in the story - the obnoxious St. Louis street urchin, the Hungarian rabbi and mystical teacher, the ricketty black genius from Georgia, the drunken Wichita widow on the make, and the toothless Sioux matron who rode with Wild Bill Cody. They are little more than just weird ‘types’, ingredients thrown together to see what the resulting goulash might taste like. And aside from the ‘wax on, wax off’ 33-Step Program by the Mr. Miyagi-like Hungarian Master, there is no intellectual or spiritual take-away.The relentless prose of the senescent narrator as he relates his largely non-adventures is relieved only occasionally by his youthful voice of sarcasm, resistance, and regret. But that too gets old rapidly. The mystery of the missing 60 years or so between the two is not enough to sustain the reader’s attention. Sure “there comes a time in every levitator’s career when the air is fraught with peril” But that doesn’t really conjure up any sympathy. Nor does it explain the transition by the urchin from carnival act to baseball-obsessed mobster and on to launderette manager with a sexual penchant for the elderly. It frequently appears that Auster loses interest in his own story when he has nothing on the shelf to fill in page-bulk. An absurd fantasy about the baseball player Dizzy Dean goes on interminably; While crucial decades are compressed into single sentences. Motivations are absent, forced, or just silly. Something is driving these people but it’s never described much less defined. And whatever it is has no connection with life as it exists on this planet, except perhaps Auster’s deadline. It is not inconceivable that Auster internalised Robertson Davies’s Deptford Trilogy, written two decades previously, and decided it would be better re-written in the style of Gabriel Garcia Márquez - a sort of North American magic realism. A very strange melange, quesadillas with maple syrup perhaps. It’s not a great theory but at least it stops further fruitless search for significance beyond Auster’s implicit advice to steer clear of Kansas. But that I already knew.

After his death sometime in his 43rd year, suburbanite Lester Burnham tells of the last few weeks of his life, during which he had no idea of his imminent passing. He is a husband to real estate agent Carolyn Burnham and father to high school student Jane Burnham. Although Lester and Carolyn once loved each other, they now merely tolerate each other. Typical wallflower Jane also hates both her parents; the three suffer individually in silence in their home life. Jane tries to steer clear of both her parents. Carolyn, relatively new to the real estate business, wants to create the persona of success to further her career, aspiring to the professional life of Buddy Kane, the king of the real estate business in their neighborhood. Lester merely walks mindlessly through life, including at his job in advertising. His company is downsizing, and he, like all the other employees, has to justify his position to the newly hired efficiency expert to keep his job. Things change for Lester when he falls in love at first sight with Jane's more experienced classmate, Angela Hayes. Both Janie and Angela can see Lester's sexual infatuation with Angela, who courts such attention from any man as a sign that she is model material, she having once appeared in Seventeen and is a career to which she aspires. Lester's infatuation with Angela gives him a reenergized view on life, where he openly doesn't care anymore what anyone thinks about what he does, anyone except Angela. This infatuation coincides with the Fittses moving in next door: homophobic disciplinarian US Marine Colonel Frank Fitts who rules the house with a military fist (that fist being both figurative and literal), his semi-comatose wife Barbara Fitts, and their bright and quietly subversive 18-year-old son Ricky Fitts, who openly abides by his father's rules while behind the scenes lives by his own quite different perspective. Much like Lester's infatuation, Ricky immediately becomes infatuated with Jane; he considers girls like Angela as ordinary. The entry of Angela and the Fittses into the Burnhams' lives ultimately leads to each of the players confronting what is truly in his or her heart.

Amélie is a story about a girl named Amélie whose childhood was suppressed by her Father's mistaken concerns of a heart defect. With these concerns Amélie gets hardly any real-life contact with other people. This leads Amélie to resort to her own fantastical world and dreams of love and beauty. She later on becomes a young woman and moves to the central part of Paris as a waitress. After finding a lost treasure belonging to the former occupant of her apartment, she decides to return it to him. After seeing his reaction and his new found perspective - she decides to devote her life to the people around her. Such as, her father who is obsessed with his garden-gnome, a failed writer, a hypochondriac, a man who stalks his ex girlfriends, the "ghost," a suppressed young soul, the love of her life and a man whose bones are as brittle as glass. But after consuming herself with these escapades - she finds out that she is disregarding her own life and damaging her quest for love. Amélie then discovers she must become more aggressive and take a hold of her life and capture the beauty of love she has always dreamed of.

U.S. Army Private Witt (AWOL) is found and imprisoned on a troop carrier by his company First Sergeant, Welsh.The men of C Company,1st Battalion,27th Infantry Regiment,25th Infantry Division have been brought to Guadalcanal as reinforcements in the campaign to secure Henderson Field and seize the island from the Japanese. They arrive near Hill 210, a key Japanese position. Their task is to capture the hill at all costs. What happens next is a story of redemption and the meaninglessness of war. Regardless of the outcome.

In the decaying steel mill town of Sheffield in Northern England, friends Gaz and Dave, both now unemployed and on the dole after the closure of most of the town's steel mills, steal scrap metal from the closed mills to supplement their meager income, often with Gaz's twelve year old son, Nathan, on the days Gaz has custody. Still, Gaz is behind in child support payments to his ex-wife, Mandy. When Mandy threatens to sue for full custody in that Gaz can't support Nathan in any way, Gaz, seeing the long line up of women clamoring to get in to see a touring Chippendales styled dance troupe, thinks he can solve his financial and thus custody problems by forming his own male exotic dance troupe with some of his fellow un- or underemployed ex-mill workers. In addition to Dave, he has in mind middle-aged Gerald, their former foreman who has not told his spending-happy wife Linda that he has been unemployed for six months, and Lomper, a mild-mannered security guard who they just met in the act of him trying to commit suicide in his depression. The obvious problem is that with the exception of Gerald who knows how to ballroom dance, they are not generally stripper material, either in looks, skill or temperament, with especially slightly overweight Dave having body image issues, he believing his wife, Jean, having a wandering eye because of what he considers his unappealing looks. In an open casting among those at the employment office, they are able to recruit further misfits Horse, an older man who does know the contemporary dances of his era, and younger Guy, who can't dance and can't sing but loves

Sam (Hugh Laurie) and Lucy Bell (Joely Richardson) are a married couple who seem to have it all: good looks, successful careers and an enthusiastic love life. The only thing they lack is the one thing they want most - a baby. They try everything in their efforts to reproduce: New Age chanting, acupuncture, creative lovemaking, but all this hectic schedule achieves is improvement in their cardiovascular systems. Ovulation charts soon replace spontaneity, when the couple reluctantly deliver themselves into the hands of medical professionals. At the same time, as Sam comes to find his job increasingly unfulfilling, he sets his sights on writing a screenplay, but writer's block strikes. Encouraged to "look within" by his hippie friend Druscilla (Dame Emma Thompson), Sam is inspired. He will write a comedy about a couple trying for a baby, but Lucy is horrified at the idea, and forbids him to tell their story. Sam and Lucy's love for each other, the most important thing they both have, will now truly be put to the test with surprising results.

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