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I don't know if people will ever be able to talk to animals the way Doctor Doolittle could, or whether animals will be able to talk back. Maybe science will have something to say about that. But I do know people can learn to "talk" to animals, and to hear what animals have to say, better than they do now. --From Animals in Translation

Why would a cow lick a tractor? Why are collies getting dumber? Why do dolphins sometimes kill for fun? How can a parrot learn to spell? How did wolves teach man to evolve? Temple Grandin draws upon a long, distinguished career as an animal scientist and her own experiences with autism to deliver an extraordinary message about how animals act, think, and feel. She has a perspective like that of no other expert in the field, which allows her to offer unparalleled observations and groundbreaking ideas.

People with autism can often think the way animals think, putting them in the perfect position to translate "animal talk." Grandin is a faithful guide into their world, exploring animal pain, fear, aggression, love, friendship, communication, learning, and, yes, even animal genius. The sweep of Animals in Translation is immense and will forever change the way we think about animals.


*includes a Behavior and Training Troubleshooting Guide
 
Among its provocative ideas, the book:
argues that language is not a requirement for consciousness--and that animals do have consciousness applies the autism theory of "hyper-specificity" to animals, showing that animals and autistic people are so sensitive to detail that they "can't see the forest for the trees"--a talent as well as a "deficit" explores the "interpreter" in the normal human brain that filters out detail, leaving people blind to much of the reality that surrounds them--a reality animals and autistic people see, sometimes all too clearlyexplains how animals have "superhuman" skills: animals have animal geniuscompares animals to autistic savants, declaring that animals may in fact be autistic savants, with special forms of genius that normal people do not possess and sometimes cannot even see examines how humans and animals use their emotions to think, to decide, and even to predict the future reveals the remarkable abilities of handicapped people and animals maintains that the single worst thing you can do to an animal is to make it feel afraid

• Sales Rank: #66598 in Books
• Brand: Harcourt
• Published on: 2006-01-02
• Released on: 2006-01-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.00" h x .92" w x 5.31" l, .79 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 358 pages

Features

• Great product!

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Philosophers and scientists have long wondered what goes on in the minds of animals, and this fascinating study gives a wealth of illuminating insights into that mystery. Grandin, an animal behavior expert specializing in the design of humane slaughter systems, is autistic, and she contends that animals resemble autistic people in that they think visually rather than linguistically and perceive the world as a jumble of mesmerizing details rather than a coherent whole. Animals—cows, say, on their way through a chute—are thus easily spooked by novelties that humans see as trivialities, such as high-pitched noises, drafts and dangling clothes. Other animals accomplish feats of obsessive concentration; squirrels really do remember where each acorn is buried. The portrait she paints of the mammalian mind is both alien and familiar; she shows that beasts are capable of sadistic cruelty, remorse, superstition and surprising discernment (in one experiment, pigeons were taught to distinguish between early period Picasso and Monet). Grandin (Thinking in Pictures) and Johnson (coauthor of Shadow Syndromes) deploy a simple, lucid style to synthesize a vast amount of research in neurology, cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology, supplementing it with Grandin's firsthand observations of animal behavior and her own experiences with autism, engaging anecdotes about how animals interact with each other and their masters, and tips on how to pick and train house pets. The result is a lively and absorbing look at the world from animals' point of view.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Scientific American
Temple Grandin has been known to crawl through slaughterhouses to get a sense of what the animals there are experiencing. An autistic woman who as a child was recommended for institutionalization, Grandin has managed not only to enter society’s mainstream but ultimately to become prominent in animal research. An associate professor at Colorado State University, she designs facilities used worldwide for humane handling of livestock. She also invented a "hug machine" (based on a cattle-holding chute) that calms autistic children. In Animals in Translation, co-authored with science writer Catherine Johnson, Grandin makes an intriguing argument that, psychologically, animals and autistic people have a great deal in common—and that both have mental abilities typically underestimated by normal people. The book is a valuable, if speculative, contribution to the discussion of both autism and animal intelligence, two subjects on which there is little scientific consensus. Autistics, in Grandin’s view, represent a "way station" between average people, with all their verbal and conceptual abilities, and animals. In touring animal facilities, Grandin often spots details—a rattling chain, say, or a fluttering piece of cloth—that disturb the animals but have been overlooked by the people in charge. She also draws on psychological studies to show how oblivious humans can be to their surroundings. Ordinary humans seem to be less detail-oriented than animals and autistics. Grandin argues that animals have formidable cognitive capabilities, albeit specialized ones, whereas humans are cognitive generalists. Dogs are smell experts, birds are migration specialists, and so on. In her view, some animals have a form of genius—much as autistic savants can perform feats of memory and calculation far beyond the abilities of average people. Some dogs, for example, can predict when their owner is about to have a seizure. Delving into animal emotion, aggression and suffering, Grandin gives tips that may be useful for caretakers of pets and farm animals. She also notes that humans seem to need, and thrive on, the proximity of animals. Indeed, she states provocatively, in the process of becoming human we gave up something primal, and being around animals helps us get a measure of that back.

Kenneth Silber

From Bookmarks Magazine
Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, debunked common assumptions about autism in Thinking in Pictures (1995). In her latest book, she sheds new light on animal behavior. Comparing an autistic person’s frontal lobes (which can receive mixed messages from the brain) to animals’ less developed ones, Grandin argues that autism can help us understand animals’ more defined actions. She offers funny, thought-provoking insights into their conduct—Mozart’s pet starling inspired his music; some dogs sense people’s oncoming seizures. A thoughtful, concluding "troubleshooting" guide to animal behavior contains useful advice. A few poorly edited, repetitive chapters, not to mention the controversial brain research cited, irked some critics. Overall, however, readers will leave Animals with greater understanding of why Fluffy feels—and acts—the way he does.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Most helpful customer reviews

237 of 249 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating and delightful read
By bookarts
I savored every moment of reading this book. Grandin has an enthusiasm for her subject that she combines with endless quantities of fascinating research and observations about animals. The book isn't exactly what I expected - I thought it would focus more on her own interactions with animals. However, because the book is so engagingly written and the information is so interesting, the difference between what I expected and what I got didn't diminish my enjoyment in the least.

Grandin does a much better job of making the scientific information more interesting and less dry than in her previous book, Thinking in Pictures, which contained long passages about medications that could be used to treat autistic people. I found that book to be much more uneven. Animals in Translation, however, held on to my attention from the first page to the last. While she also includes a generous amount of scientific information in this book, it is all so interesting and sometimes surprising, that I was never bored. If you have pets or are simply interested in animals and/or biology, this is a must-read.

124 of 136 people found the following review helpful.
2 1/2 stars, because it is half a good book
By citywulf
When the author focuses on what she knows - autism, neurobiology, and domestic livestock - this book offers many insights. By applying some excellent existing research in neurobiology about what animals are truly capable of perceiving and feeling (read some of the referenced books for confirmation of emotions in animals) and applying her own experiences with domestic livestock and insights founded in her autism (a much more visual world than "normal" people (her word, not mine)), Dr. Grandin shows how a more visual, detail-oriented animal encounters the world.

Sadly, Dr. Grandin - perhaps wanting to appeal to a wider audience - tries also to include predator species such as our companion dogs and cats in her book. Her lack of direct experience with predator species is palpable in everything she writes about them. Her data sources are extremely outdated(Monks of New Skete, anyone?) and her own discussions are highly anecdotal ("my neighbor's dog..." "my childhood cat..."). Her word choices reveal her discomfort with the subject matter (much use of terms such as "probably" "pretty much" "nobody knows why"). Nor does she make any effort to validate her suppositions. Her "Troubleshooting" chapter should be avoided like the plague (recommending a shock collar for chasing behavior can create aggression, as the dog learns to associate the chase object with pain).

If you read this book, take it with a grain of salt and by no means use it as your only reference. Her own references are excellent and can be used for further study. Also, for those interested primarily in dogs, Patricia McConnell has an exceptional new book, For the Love of a Dog, that is grounded in more recent data and a lifetime of working with dogs.

128 of 150 people found the following review helpful.
A novel look at animal behavior, but with room for improvement.
By Monika
What author Temple Grandin has attempted to do here is to use her own experiences as an autistic person to gain insight into the way animals perceive and react to the world around them. She explains that autism seems to impair the ability of the neocortex, or frontal lobes of the brain, to obtain and process information, and that animals likewise have less well-developed frontal lobes than normal humans do. Her theory is that the impairment of an autistic person's brain, in essence, makes them far closer to other animals than to non-autistic humans in how they view the world. As a result, Grandin has largely been able to help people better relate to their pets, and also to design more humane slaughterhouse equipment and more effective auditing procedures for slaughter facilities.

The book starts off well, with Grandin offering many insights that show that, in some ways, she really does have a better understanding of animal perception and thought than "normal" humans. Her principle examples revolve around the fact that animals, like autistic people, are detail-oriented. Their inability to generalize and see the "big picture" often leads to fixations on small things that the average person would not notice. Grandin illustrates this with stories from her inspections of meat plants, where something as simple as an abrupt change in lighting, or a reflection on a puddle - things which have entirely escaped the plant operators' notice - have been causing cattle to balk and refuse to go where they are being directed. She goes on to explain exactly why these details, which don't seem like much of a reason to be afraid, are so disturbing to the animals. Her observations, while not things that would immediately jump out at most people, make a lot of sense once she has explained them. Grandin also includes a useful checklist of things to look for when trying to determine what may be frightening an animal.

However, there are also some not-so-positive aspects to the book. In many places Grandin deviates from her theme of using autism to understand animals, and starts making speculations that not only have no connection to autism, but which seem to have little to back them up at all beyond the author's own opinions. She uses phrases like "statistics have shown" but then fails to elaborate on these supposedly evidential statistics, giving no information on who collected the information, when the study was done, or how large of a sample was used. This particularly comes into play when she discusses pit bulls - a topic she turns to repeatedly throughout the book. Grandin makes no attempt to hide her great distaste for pit bulls (she does not specify whether she is referring to American Pit Bull Terriers in particular, or all of the various breeds that fall under the generic "pit bull" label) and also Rottweilers, German Shepherds, and Chows.

In addition, Grandin puts forth some opinions on dog training that range from strange to absurd. Two things in particular caught my attention. First, she strongly advocates the outdated "alpha" theory for establishing dominance over one's dog. And secondly, I found myself greatly puzzled when she posed her theory that leash laws result in undersocialized dogs. She goes on to reminisce about how, when she was a child, dogs in her neighborhood were allowed to roam free, and that there were rarely any fights. Perhaps this was the case in her neighborhood, but in most places allowing one's dogs to roam free without supervision poses many risks. And leash laws in no way prevent a dog from being well socialized - they just require that a dog owner take an active role in introducing their pets to other animals and humans.

Finally, I was slightly dismayed with Grandin's writing style itself, though I'm not sure whether this is just a lack of writing skill, or a by-product of her autism. Grandin is obviously well-educated and experienced, but the text felt more like a junior high research report with a lot of scientific words thrown in. She often uses the same phrases repetitively, and also uses juvenalized terms for some things. However, the author does admit that written language does not come naturally to her, and that she often draws on a collection of "stock phrases" to communicate, which is what makes me wonder if this aspect of the writing is actually due to the nature of her autism. However, she also makes the mistake of repeatedly using terms like "I believe" or "my opinion is" when putting forth her theories. While these theories obviously ARE her ideas, making statements of the "I think" variety in scientific writing makes the arguments sound weaker, especially when she fails to back up her claims with research or other evidence. Many times she simply concludes an argument with the statement "and I can prove it!" but then fails to go on to give actual proof.

On the whole, the book is a bit of a mixed bag. Though my previous three paragraphs focused on things I found disappointing, I do not mean to give the impression that Grandin's work is all bad. It's certainly not. She does have a lot of good insights, and when she backs up her assertions with specific evidence, her ideas are quite fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the beginning of the book, where she explains the differences in detail-perception between animals, autistic people, and non-autistic people, and also the sections devoted to animal language / communication, and the co-evolution of dogs and humans. In the end I would probably still recommend Grandin's book to readers, with the provision that one should take a slightly hesitant approach in deciding which of her arguments should be readily accepted, and which need further proof.

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^^ PDF Ebook The Great Stink, by Clare Clark

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Clare Clark’s critically acclaimed The Great Stink “reeks of talent” (The Washington Post Book World) as it vividly brings to life the dark and mysterious underworld of Victorian London. Set in 1855, it tells the story of William May, an engineer who has returned home to London from the horrors of the Crimean War. When he secures a job trans­forming the city’s sewer system, he believes that he will be able to find salvation in the subterranean world beneath the city. But the peace of the tunnels is shattered by a murder, and William is implicated as the killer. Could he truly have committed the crime? How will he bring the truth above-ground?  With richly atmospheric prose, The Great Stink combines fact and fiction to transport readers into London’s putrid past, and marks the debut of a remarkably talented writer in the tradition of the very best historical novelists.

• Sales Rank: #975385 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-02
• Released on: 2006-10-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.00" h x .93" w x 5.25" l, .74 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 372 pages

Features

• CORRUPTION IN VICTORIAN LONDON

Amazon.com Review
It takes a world of confidence to name your debut novel The Great Stink, and to set it in a sewer. Not even a modern sewer--charmless though that may be--but the crumbling, cholera-laden, rat-infested, fungus-rich sewers of London in the mid-Victorian period, from which pockets of deadly gas frequently burbled to the surface. Clare Clark's unsavory but completely absorbing first novel is a Dantean tour of this reeking underworld and its denizens: both the scavengers--human and animal--and the reformers, who brave the tunnels in the service of public hygiene and social progress after the 1858 Act of Parliament that called for the rebuilding of the sewer system.

The Great Stink juxtaposes two darknesses, both embodied in the filthy tunnels: the lawless desperation of the very poor, and the despair of madness. One of the junior engineers most useful in mapping the existing sewer is William May, a studious, methodical veteran of the Crimean War who manages to conceal from everyone but his wife the horrors he brought out of battle with him. The tunnels don't frighten William; they provide isolation and silence for the bloody rites that keep the Mr. Hyde in him at bay. It seems only a matter of time before William's self-destruction turns outward. Long Arm Tom, his counterpart among the poor, is a "tosher." He enters the tunnels illegally, scraping the sludge for coins or other booty, and trapping hundreds of rats for fighting against dogs at local taverns (all the rage for sporting gentlemen since dog fights have been outlawed). Kindness is a liability in Tom's world, but two acts of pity--one toward a dog, and one, more grudgingly, toward William--provide the resistance that changes the course of this otherwise relentlessly dire story.

The very weak-stomached may need a cup of mint tea or a bowl of potpourri beside them as they wade through the sewer with Tom and William. Clark has spared readers none of the stink, nor the sharp pleasures of suspense. --­Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Dickens fans should devour British author Clark's debut novel, a gripping and richly atmospheric glimpse into the literal underworld of Victorian England—the labyrinthine London sewer system. When the "great stink" of the title—the product of an oppressive heat wave combined with putrid sewage overflow—threatens to shut down the British capital in 1855, the politicians agree to fund massive repairs. That immense public works project is a natural magnet for the corrupt, and engineer William May, a psychologically scarred Crimean War veteran, soon finds his ethics challenged. When he courageously decides not to rubber-stamp the use of inferior brick, he puts his life, his sanity and his family at risk. May's vague recollection of a murder he may have witnessed in the depths of the sewer system results in his becoming the prime suspect and being incarcerated in an asylum. That the mystery's eventual resolution depends a bit too much on a deus ex machina in no way detracts from Clark's considerable achievement in bringing her chosen slice of Victoriana to life. She shows every evidence of being a gifted and sensitive writer in the same league as such historical novelists as Charles Palliser.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
The critical establishment is awash in second-grade (and second-rate) puns! Maybe they just can’t help themselves; in The Great Stink, her debut novel, Clark turns the London sewer system into a character that is as engaging as her humans. The book wears its influences (can we hear another Dickensian?!) and research (Clark is a former history student) on its sleeve. The result, despite a largely predictable plot, pleases the balance of reviewers, most of whom see a lot of promise in Clark. And give the young author credit: there is bravery in a first-time novelist setting her work in a sewer. Imagine the puns the critics would have emerged with if the book had really stunk.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Most helpful customer reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful.
"London, the largest metropolis in the world, was poisoning itself."
By Luan Gaines
William Henry May, mapmaker and surveyor, joins England's battle against the Russians in the Crimean War, but is wounded and consigned to a filthy hospital ship, where he languishes almost unto death. Given to unaccountable rages and despair, May never imagines he will survive to be recalled to London. He has frozen into uncaring acceptance of his predicament, but recovers the will to live, the raw emotion so painful that he begins to cut himself, the self-mutilation a relief for his overburdened mental state.

When May is hired in the rebuilding project of the London sewers, a huge and expensive undertaking, his prospects have changed radically for the better. Married, with one son and a baby on the way, William is a changed man, but still tormented by nightmares, unhinged by his experiences in the war. William, nicknamed "The Sultan of the Sewers", continues to disintegrate in this dark hell, where his psyche finds peace only in cutting, his wife purposefully oblivious to her husband's suffering. This is the landscape of 1880's London, with little opportunity for advancement, men desperate to carve out a niche that will keep their families from starvation.

As gruesome and as poverty riddled as any Dickensian tale, this novel exposes the indigenous city poverty, personified by the denizens of the sewers, those who make a scant living collecting the mud-encrusted detritus of others. Vast numbers of poor people create income from the even the filthiest refuse, bought and sold for profit. The great rotting underground sewers are a metaphor for the class distinctions that leave the destitute to wallow in the most extreme conditions, soothed by cheap gin, while the Fancy, the rich, indulge in betting to alleviate their boredom, visiting the slums for sport. Even the bureaucracy is corrupt, the sewer project approved, while the funds are withheld by a bickering Parliament.

As the project progresses, the sewers become less navigable, the flushers left to ever more ingenious ways in and out. Under the threat of exposure, agents supplying bricks attempt to force May to accept substandard materials, especially Alfred England, whose bricks have been contracted by May's superior. The stress of constant threats to his family should he not agree to the illegal contracts drive May deeper into the chaos of his own mind, thoughts of death and war merging with everyday reality. Indeed, in the face of murder, who better to blame than the insane, self-mutilating William May?

With remarkable detail that requires a strong constitution, the author reveals the complex underpinnings of city management and graft. In a complex blend of murder, greed and madness, the London bureaucracy ripe for plundering by privateers, the protagonist becomes the unwitting victim of greedy villains. In this unhealthy mix, all are caught in the rude stew of city waste, men with their own personal demons and small enjoyments. Not an easy book to read, with its unflinching detail, The Great Stink is a timely reminder of the skeleton that must be maintained, a framework for civilization, where opportunity offers freedom from a life of discontent and distorted appetites. Luan Gaines/2005

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
DARK DARK book....that will remind you of Dickens.
By sb-lynn
I am giving this book 5 stars, because I found the story and the history of the London sewers so fascinating. I appreciate wonderful fiction that educates me as well as entertains.

Summary, no spoilers:

The is the story of William May, a soldier from the Crimean War.

May has been psychologically damaged from that war, and the horrible treatment he received at the hospital afterwards.

He is married to a very sweet, optimistic woman, but it's is hard for her to keep her mental and emotional balance with someone as severely disturbed and depressed as William.

William, back from the war, is now a surveyor who is assigned the task of helping to redo the decrepit sewer system under the streets of London.

The story features the sights (and SMELLS!) of this amazing underground world, and the book features assorted sundry characters and a murder to boot.

I guarantee you will learn a lot reading this book. And if you are like me, you will find the first 4/5 so depressing, that you may want to consider a Prozac drip.

Saying that, when I was done with the book I was glad I had read it.

I applaud the effort and research that went into this book.

It is not a fast read, but a worthwhile one.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Clark gives Dickens a run for his money!
By Dave Schwinghammer
There's no doubt Clare Clark modeled THE GREAT STINK after Dickens. Readers will be surprised at how well she succeeded.

Clark's acknowledgments tell us quite a bit about how she planned her novel and where she got the title. One of her sources was THE GREAT STINK OF LONDON by Stephen Halliday about the great engineer Joseph Bazalgette's attempt to completely overhaul the sewers of London. Another, Marilee Strong's study of self-injury, A BRIGHT RED SCREAM, provided motivation for one of the novel's main characters, William May. A primary source, LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR, gave credibility to her other main character, Long Arm Tom.

The story starts when a Russian soldier bayonets William May during the Crimean War. Robert Rawlinson, who was in charge of sanitary reforms during the war, took an interest in May and helped get him a job as a surveyor working on the Bazalgette's sewer project. The problem was that May was suffering from what sounds like battle fatigue or clinical depression. He began to cut himself to drive away the dark moods, and he used the sewers to do it. Despite his affliction, William May is a highly principled young man, and when a senior engineer solicits a bribe from one of the brick makers, May refuses to go along. The senior engineer sets out to ruin him.

Clark shifts back and forth between May's dilemma and that of Long Arm Tom whose vocation will definitely remind you of Dickens. Long Arm Tom is a rat catcher. He sells them for a penny a piece to gin joints where "Fancies" bet on how many rats a ratter (a dog) can kill in two minutes. Tom adopts one of these ratters when her owner dies. She's one of the best ratters in the history of the sport. The fact that Tom makes a living in the sewer provides a tie to William May. Another Dickens character is the lawyer who takes William May's case when he is arrested for murder. Watch what she does with this guy's hands; she learned from the master.

The scatological descriptions and the emphasis on cutting will bother some, but if you can get past this, this is a really entertaining read. You're never quite sure if William May will make it. Long Arm Tom and his dog Lady add a certain amount of warmth to a sometimes brutal novel.

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** Fee Download Frog Went A-Courtin', by John Langstaff

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“A favorite old nursery ballad now appears in resplendent new dress. . . . Illustrator Feodor Rojankovsky somehow manages to combine quaintness with sophistication and his doughty frog, the coy mouse . . . and others make charming company.”--The New York Times Book Review

• Sales Rank: #150322 in Books
• Brand: Sandpiper
• Published on: 1972-04-26
• Released on: 1972-04-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 11.00" h x .15" w x 8.50" l, .35 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 32 pages

From the Back Cover
Nobody knows how or when this story really started. We do know that it was written down in Scotland more than 400 years ago. But it has always been the kind of story that was told and sung to children, instead of being read to them.

About the Author
No Bio

No Bio

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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Swamp based enjoyment
By E. R. Bird
The time was when the song Frog Went A-Courtin' (or as I remember it Froggie Went A-Courtin') was known to every man woman and child in the continental United States. Today, this is not the case. The story of the frog dandy and his lovely rodent bride is no longer sung half so much as it once was. What is to blame for this strange turn of fortune? Interspecies dating fears? A loathsome repugnance to frog songs? I have no idea. Just the same, it's a delight to think that books like the 1956 Caldecott winning "Frog Went A-Courtin'" can carry on the song's tradition, regardless of how often it is sung today.
In a respectful author's note at the beginning, writer John Langstaff explains the origins of the song. Transposed from Scotland to America (there's a wonderful picture of a small yellow frog jumping from one bank entitled "Scotland" to another bank entitled "America" accompanying the explanation) the song has changed and grown over the course of many many years. Langstaff is quick to give credit where credit is due. Says he, "Sometimes the grownups might forget some of the words, and the children would make up words they liked better, and put them in the song". As a result, Langstaff credits the song to the hundreds of adults and children that passed it on to one another. His version is a combination of these, and perhaps the best possible. The narration is smooth and the lyrics scan perfectly. All in all, an enjoyable tale.
The illustrations are really what make this tale top notch. Artist Feodor Rojankovsky paired with Langstaff on a number of different picture books over the years. In this story, every scene is well thought out and delicate. The details are brought fully to life through Rojankovsky's adept inks and colored pencils. The froggy wears shiny black boots with spurs, flipper shaped for his comfort. Bugs and beetles wear the latest 1955 fashions and gleam blue-black against their surroundings. Totally aside from the beauty of the illustrations is the fact that every animal in this book is perfectly presented. You have little doubt that Rojankovsky spent much of his time discovering exactly how many legs a bumblebee has so that he could draw one playing the banjo [just] right. In a lovely parting shot the mouse and the frog are on a steamer headed for a honeymoon in France. Froggie has doffed a beret and the two are reclining on the deck, happy as you please. The book is endlessly charming and entirely too wonderful to ever be forgotten. Do yourself a favor immediately and locate yourself a copy tout de suite.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
The Frog Went A-Courtin to Find a Mouse.
By EKU Student
Frog Went A-Courtin', is a story of a fantacy genre which was written in Scotland over 400 years ago, where it was told and sung to the children. As people began to move from Scotland to America they brought the "Frog and Mouse" song with them. John Langstaff explained this in the front of the book. Today, it is mainly read aloud, but the great illustrations, done by Feodor Rojankovsky, give great detail with a broad range of color use. The book was awarded a Caldecott Medal for "The most distinguished American picture book for children." The book tells a story of a frog who went out to seek a bride and meets a mouse. The mouse will not marry until her uncle "Rat" gives consent. Then with the uncle's consent various animal's contribute to the Frog and the Rats wedding. The wedding seems to be going great until the cat comes in to destroy it. With the guest running off, the book ends with the Frog and the Mouse resting on the deck of a ship going to France.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
mmm-hmmm
By M. Heiss
I dare you to read this to your kids without adding the mmm-hmmm's.

I don't think it can be done -- they are just THERE.

So, we always read it as a sing-along. (This book has the music at the back, for your little ones to plunk on the piano.)

Great illustrations with lots of personality.

Mmmm-hmmm!

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Movie Tie-in Edition

When All the King's Men was first published in 1946, Sinclair Lewis pronounced it "massive, impressive...one of our few national galleries of character." Diana Trilling, reviewing it for the Nation, wrote, "For sheer virtuosity, for the sustained drive of its prose, for the speed and the evenness of its pacing, for its precision of language...I doubt indeed whether it can be matched in American fiction." The Washington Post declared, "If the game of naming the Great American Novel is still being played anywhere, Warren's All the King's Men would easily make the final rounds."

Set in the 1930s, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the rise and fall of demagogue Willie Stark, a fictional character who resembles the real-life Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana. Stark begins his political career as an idealistic man of the people but soon becomes corrupted by success and caught between dreams of service and an insatiable lust for power. As relevant today as it was more than fifty years ago, All the King's Men is one of the classics of American literature.

• Sales Rank: #2131294 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.17" h x 5.32" w x 7.98" l,
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

Amazon.com Review
This landmark book is a loosely fictionalized account of Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, one of the nation's most astounding politicians. All the King's Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern-fried politician who builds support by appealing to the common man and playing dirty politics with the best of the back-room deal-makers. Though Stark quickly sheds his idealism, his right-hand man, Jack Burden -- who narrates the story -- retains it and proves to be a thorn in the new governor's side. Stark becomes a successful leader, but at a very high price, one that eventually costs him his life. The award-winning book is a play of politics, society and personal affairs, all wrapped in the cloak of history.

From Publishers Weekly
Nonfiction Reprints
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This reconstituted edition of the 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning dissection of Louisiana politics gets a serious makeover by scholar Polk, who rescues the cuts and alterations made by the original editors as well as returning protagonist Willie Stark to his original name, Willie Talos. There is also an appendix and editorial notes. Considering this title's importance in American letters and the quite reasonable price, libraries should invest in this edition.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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297 of 308 people found the following review helpful.
great novel, bad edition
By headband
Yes, this is a great novel, though I personally think the last three pages were a big mistake. But this review is about the "new, corrected edition" by Mr. Polk, which, I'm afraid, is a literary and scholarly travesty. Readers will be well advised to stick with the original 1946 text.; the fact that it has been a force in American life for over 50 years, and that in the 43 years before his death Warren never gave any indication he was dissatisfied with it, should be reason enough. (A cynic would argue that the only reason for the new edition was to extend the copyright.)
Polk went back to Warren's original typescript draft to restore many of the passages, phrases, and stylistic features that were changed or deleted in the editorial process before publication (and approved by Warren); and he claims that his editorial decisions have created a superior novel. The first problem is that, except for a very sketchy 10-page essay, Polk gives the reader no help in judging for himself. A respectable scholarly edition would at the least indicate, at the bottom of each page or the back of the book, each instance in which the first edition text has been changed and where the change came from (the draft was edited by several hands, including Warren's). A reader who wants to assess Polk's work will have to have both editions in hand and scan page by page, and even then will not know whose decisions Polk has overruled. Thus Polk puts himself beyond criticism.
Polk's essay tries to justify his decisions, but his illustrations are merely anecdotal and offer no consistent editorial principles or methodology. I haven't the space here to go through a critique point by point; suffice it to say, I'm not convinced by any of his examples, including the reversion from Willie Stark to Willie Talos. Polk seems to be one of those editors who believes that the closer you get to the author's very first words on paper, the better or the more authentic your version will be, since then you are closest to the "white heat of creativity." But this is one of the silliest forms of romanticism still in existence. And I suspect it runs directly again Warren's own philosophy of history. Polk may think he has restored history, but in fact he has falsified it, for the history was the event of publication.
Polk writes: "Many may feel that Warren's at least tacit approval of the [original] editors' changes-indeed, his gratitude for them-should argue against a new edition. But his `approval' may have come from fatigue, from pressures of one sort or another, from the years of constant work on it. Indeed, his very closeness to the novel may have prevented him from exercising his own good judgment, and in any case this version indicates that he had written better than he knew." Ah, but surely Mr. Polk knows? No, these are the lamest of speculations, for which there is no evidence, and the surest signs that Polk's fantasies are in danger of effacing Warren's work.

223 of 234 people found the following review helpful.
The best book I ever read. Don't miss it!
By Linda Linguvic
Born in Kentucky, Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) had a long and prestigious literary career, his huge body of work including poetry, essays, textbooks, history and novels. "All the King's Men", written in 1946, won a Pulitzer Prize and I can well understand why. First of all there are the words, lots of them, words that flow and caress and make liberal use of just the right tiny details to get to the essence the people he dscribes. Never have I seen such artful characterization and I found I was re-reading some of these descriptions just for the pure beauty of the way he used his words. And yet those words never got in the way of the story; they enhanced it. It is also a piece of history as the author brings alive the South of 1920s and 1930s.
The story is about Willie Stark, man of humble origin who rose to power as a governor of an unnamed Southern state and is supposedly loosely based on the life of Huey Long, the Governor of Louisiana. But the main character is really Jack Burden, the narrator of the story. He's a reporter when he meets Willie Stark early in his career and is there as witness his political rise. Later, he works directly for Willie and becomes a key player in the blackmailing and political intrigue that surrounds the Governor. We come to know Jack through the people in his life as well as his own internal introspections and watch the swirl of events that grow in depth and complexity. Nothing is quite what it seems at first, and there are multiple sub-stories that unfold as the basic action of the book moves along. And then, just when I think I understand it all, there is yet another and another layer of depth and meaning. Everything has an effect on everything else. I found the book impossible to put down, thinking about it all the time, not only as it related to the story itself, but also how it applies to my own life.
This is perhaps the best book I ever read and I can't heap enough praise on it. It is clearly a masterpiece and I give it my very highest recommendation. It's a present to yourself to read it. Don't miss it!

99 of 106 people found the following review helpful.
An Absolutely Wonderful Book!
By Dennis Phillips
It is extremely hard to sit down and write a review for any piece of classic literature for there is very little a reviewer can say that is new. Of course, for a book to be considered a classic most of its reviewers have to have had a favorable opinion of the work and all a new reviewer can do is concur or disagree. In this case, I couldn't possibly agree more with previous reviewers who have written rave reviews of this book.

This is not so much the story of Willie Stark, who was Willie Talos in the original manuscript, as it the story of Jack Burden, the man telling the story. It really seems to be the story of a young man and his road to maturity. That young man is Jack Burden and Stark seems to be just a convenient focal point around which Warren weaves his story. The plot is very well laid out and flows very well from beginning to end, which is quite an accomplishment when one considers all of the subplots to be found in this book. As Burden tells his story he often wanders down memory lane, recalling events which his story has recalled. Each subplot builds to it's own climax while also building toward the climax of the main story and the reader is swept along like a barrel on the Niagara River. Just as the reader feels as if he can put the book aside for a while, another subplot begins to ascend through the story and the reader is again swept along unable to pause. I got so caught up in one of the subplots that I was late for a very important appointment. I just couldn't stop until I found out what happened.

Stark is obviously supposed to resemble Louisiana Governor Huey Long and he very much does so. If one also reads T. Harry Williams biography of Long they will see just how strong the resemblance is. There are several morals and messages to be drawn from this story including thoughts on good and evil and past and future. In addition to the messages though, one has to admire the incredible amount of research Warren had to have done to write this book. Warren of course was alive and well during Huey Long's reign and that had to help him but in all events described his historical accuracy is uncanny. For example, one of the subplots involves Jefferson Davis in a minor way and even in delving in things well beyond his own memories Warren laces the story with many accurate details. In one passage, Warren relates that Davis missed the steamboat that was to carry him on the first leg of his trip to Montgomery to assume the Presidency of the new Confederacy. Warren points out that the boat left Davis Landing and then was halted out in the river while a smaller boat brought the new President out to get on board. A historical fact that would not be common knowledge but that is entirely accurate.

Many people avoid books that are considered to be top-flight works of literature. These people often assume that such books must be dull and so philosophical that they are beyond the average reader. In some instances this may be the case but not with this book. Warren has turned out a masterpiece that is not only fun to read but is so enjoyable that the reader will hate to come to the end. There are messages to be found here, both obvious and subtle but do not worry about the messages. They will come through on their own as you sit back and enjoy the ride over the falls.

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It was 1994: post–Liz Phair, mid–Courtney Love, just shy of Alanis Morissette. After seven years of slogging it out in the Boston music scene, Jen Trynin took a hard look at herself and gave “making it” one last shot.   It worked. Suddenly Trynin became the spark that set off one of the most heated bidding wars of the year. Major labels vied for her, to the tune of millions of dollars in deals. Lawyers, managers, and booking agents clamored for her attention. Billboard put her on the cover. Everyone knew she was the Next Big Thing. But then she wasn’t.

 In a series of dizzying, hilarious, heartbreaking snap­shots, Trynin captures what it’s like to be catapulted to the edge of rock stardom, only to plummet back down to earth. Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be is the story of a girl who got what she wished for—and lived happily ever after anyway.

• Sales Rank: #1842567 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.99" h x .82" w x 5.24" l, .79 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Trynin takes readers along on her wild ride up and down the cutthroat, fad-driven pop music machine—but her trip is more of a wacky nightmare than a fairy tale. In college, majoring in creative writing, she is thrilled by a band playing "loud and angry and fast." She joins a rock band, playing guitar and singing, and when the cops shut them down, she "never had so much fun." After several years trying to "get out of the Sunday-through-Wednesday-night folk/acoustic-chick-band wasteland and into the rock scene," she decides that if "something really wow isn't happening by the time I'm thirty, I'm done." And something wow does happen. With a self-styled geek-grunge makeover and a new raunchy electric guitar attitude, suddenly Trynin is being courted by entertainment lawyers, managers and major labels. She survives the exhilarating, terrifying, lonely whirlwind by starving herself, smoking, drinking and surreptitiously sleeping with her bass player. Trynin is charming: ingenuous but intelligent, whimsical but savvy. When she's dropped by the heavies as abruptly as she was discovered, it's a relief she has a steady, sensible boyfriend to settle down with, particularly since her passion for rock and roll seems to be more about youthful rebellion than music.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
It's been over a decade since Jen Trynin's first album hit the shelves—and maybe time, as well as getting her story down on paper—has healed some wounds. For all the ups and downs of her flirtation with stardom, she shows neither bitterness nor excessive self-regard. In direct, insightful prose she weaves a tale of manipulation, betrayal, and the power of fame's allure. Critics are as charmed by her debut book as they were with her first album. Let's hope, for Trynin's sake, that acclaim isn't a bad omen.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
What happens when you get what you want? The question haunts this funny, ultimately poignant memoir of a rock-and-roll fairy tale becoming a rock-and-roll nightmare. Briefly in the mid-nineties, Trynin was, much to her surprise, the subject of a major record-company bidding war. Lawyers, managers, and booking agents all wanted a piece of her, and Trynin devotes a lot of prose to her wooing by "industry types" smelling money. At first, she was flattered ("I'm so excited that anyone wants to meet with me at all"); later, overwhelmed. Despite excellent reviews, her debut recording's sales fizzled, and the telephone stopped ringing. She captures the strange sensations the music business affords: seeing one's face on a national magazine's cover; going on talk shows in which there is little, if any, contact with the host; inane interviews with clueless DJs; planned tours that don't materialize. She dutifully played the part of the rock star, always feeling like a fraud. Terrific reading for anyone interested in rock and the music industry. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Most helpful customer reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Jen Trynin is on her way to a literary career a decade after her attempt at rock superstardom
By Jessica Lux
Jen Trynin was an almost-made mid-1990's alternative rock superstar, and her memoir is billed as "what it's like to be catapulted to the edge of stardom, only to plummet back down to earth." As a music fan, I was obsessed with Trynin's contemporaries--Liz Phair, Hole, Nirvana, Aimee Mann, Better than Ezra, Alanis Morisette, the Goo Goo Dolls, and the like--but I don't remember Trynin's radio hit (which is, I suppose, what this book is all about).

Given the premise of a foiled attempt at rock superstardom, I read Trynin's narrative on the edge of my seat. Oh, is hiring this lawyer going to spell her demise? Hmm, is this unfounded loyalty to her backing band going to cause her downfall? Ah-ha--this choice of record label will be her death warrant! Did she not read her contract closely enough? Did she trust the wrong person? Is that rep a back-stabber? Did she screw up her indie cred and lose everything?

The reality behind Trynin's (lack of a) music career is much more subtle, less easy to pin-point, and well-narrated. This is a great story for any child of the 1990's, any musician, or any music fan. Trynin formed her own indie label when that meant having a direct fax line and spending hundreds of dollars on mailing list postage. It's a remarkable contrast to the wired podcast world a decade later, but the issues of dealing with a major label remain the same.

Jen is, above all, accessible. She's skinny in a heroin chic way, but she's terrified that people will discover that she doesn't even know whether heroin is something one snorts or injects. She doesn't know what her image is. She worries about being a "grown woman in a teenager's too tight corduroys." She's clueless about the music scene once she goes on tour, and thinks someone named Alice Morrison (Alanis Morisette) is the one everyone is watching on MTV.

Trynin hits at a lot of the pitfalls of the rock n' roll lifestyle without addressing them head-on. She goes days on nicotine and caffeine so that she can fit into her skin-tight pants, nevermind the foggy light-headedness. She knows that alcohol won't improve her performance, yet she downs it to calm her nerves, to escape, and suffers painful hangover-addled interviews on the days after her shows. She's in love with a long-term boyfriend, yet there are temptations on the road, and it is much cooler to have a free, easy-going image.

This terrific memoir is worth it alone for the time Trynin's music video appeared on Beavis and Butthead, for the backstory behind the Goo Goo Doll's smash hit "Name," and for the insider view on the (lack of a) process for creating music videos. It inspired me to buy Trynin's debut CD, Cockamamie, which is, unfortunately, out of print, but available on Amazon for less than a buck. That's a fitting end to this rock n' roll fairytale.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
I laughed, I cried, it was better than VH1
By Irish Blood English Heart
I don't have my TV hooked up to anything besides a DVD player, but whenever I have an opportunity to watch cable, one of my favourite vices is VH1's Behind the Music. Each episode follows a formula: humble beginnings ... rapid ascent to stardom.... and then a downfall predicated by drug use, sex within the band, a mental breakdown or all of the above. In the final 15 minutes of the program, the artist is either eulogized, or, if still alive, redeemed through AA, therapy, or religious conversion. As if in a replay of Icarus, rock gods propel themselves into an intense spotlight only to plunge from the heavens with melted wings, providing solace to people like me who never got signed to a major label and live very ordinary lives.

"All I'm Cracked Up to Be" appears to follow the VH1 formula initially, but with at least one crucial difference. The book's rock and roll casualty, Jen Trynin, never becomes famous, but we get an excruciatingly intimate glimpse of the mechanics behind her tumble from promise. Trynin, a songwriter turned alt-rock frontwoman in the mid-nineties Boston music scene, is led to believe by industry wags that rock and roll stardom is at hand. Instead her hype-laden career whimpers to a halt despite major label backing.

The book humorously and heartbreakingly demonstrates the ill-effects of music commodification on an artist's sense of self. After Trynin grows tired of the "Sunday-to-Wednesday night folk/acoustic-chick-band-wasteland,"she reinvents herself as a rock star, or at least what she thinks one is. She then self-releases a brilliant CD, and a label war of epic proportions ensues. Her music industry courtship is replete with expensive dinners and first class accommodations, as well as dizzying dialog between Trynin and her lawyer over the financial intricacies of dueling record contracts. Soon a seemingly sweetheart deal from Warner leads to a grueling tour schedule dotted by the monotony of ratty motels, interviews with clueless DJs, and awkward label meet and greets, in stark contrast to the amenities and coddling of the sycophantic bidding period. It is also at odds with her fantasy of life on the road with a surrogate band family.

Trynin becomes disembodied and suffers an identity crisis epitomized by a fight with her bass player over a bowl of nuts and an Alice in Wonderland reaction to too much nyquil while at a hotel where coincidentally, catatonic Beach Boy Brian Wilson is also staying. The label realizes she is "losing it" when she marks a DJ's face with a sharpie. Meanwhile, her hit song begins its descent down the charts before the end of her first tour. Despite releasing a second album to critical acclaim, if not commercial success, she is forced by her label to endure the indignity of performing as an acoustic opener to a insufferable self-righteous lilith fair singer songwriter who just happens to have a hit at the time. Trynin's star doesn't rise according to the record company's timetable and corporate politics shift the engine's attention away from her. Trynin is thus callously cast aside as a "has-been who never was," with strains of Alanis Morisette playing in the background.

Trynin doesn't deny having a hand in her own demise in that she engages in a self-destructive, sexually-charged relationship with her juvenile bass player, reverts to a curt New Jersey demeanor in situations requiring graciousness, and drinks too much on the road. However, her alienation is exacerbated by being a cog in a music industry machine manned by ego-damaging hipsters such as the makeup artist who calls attention to the bags under her eyes and the Warner employee who cautions her not to make faces when she plays guitar. The entities that stand to make money off her don't appear to genuinely care about her or "get" her music. They only see an image of alt-rock heroin chic and hear a cash register. In fact, label honchos stay at the best hotels, on the artist's budget, while their benefactors are shuttled to Motel 6's. Trynin, the talented yet insecure head case, is their perfect pawn until she starts to be "difficult".

Trynin's creative drive is destroyed but she winds up pursuing a life not possible while touring: she goes back to school, marries and has a child. She misses the dream but not the reality of the music business. I didn't sense that she wrote the book to generate pity, but to provide insight into what went wrong with her career and perhaps serve as a caution to those who have their sights on the big time. I knew the book would not end well, but was gripped to the end to learn the how and why. Yet Tryinin does not maliciously point fingers, but instead provides a wryly humorous, yet terrifying view of what can happen when a promising artist surrenders control for career advancement and get sucked in an exploitive whirlwind. I highly recommend this book to any musician kicking themselves because they failed to get signed. You are probably lucky you didn't get what you wished for.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Coulda Been a Contenda
By doomsdayer520
Anyone who knows anything about independent music knows that it's tough on the musicians. I happen to be close friends with several serious hardworking independent musicians who are outstanding talents, and I wish they were all world famous, but we still gotta be realistic. Jen Trynin gives us a pretty enjoyable memoir here, but there's not really too much that's revelatory about it. In a world where there's 10,000 struggling bands for every one superstar, and where trendy untalented saps get rich while serious artists starve, we know that the biz is brutal and everybody gets ripped off by the power players. The biz is known for chewing up and spitting out up-and-comers in the rush for easy profits, and that's kinda like what happened to Jen Trynin, but not quite. The advance descriptions of this book may have you believe that she was badly ripped off, and you might expect an unforgiving report on the slimy underbelly of the music biz. But actually, Trynin was wined and dined by major labels, picked up a lot of hype, was treated reasonably well by the label she signed with, and released two real albums, but the company merely lost interest and dropped her when her career went from hot to cold.

So Trynin's story is less heartbreaking than it is depressingly predictable. It's all surely a good learning experience, and this memoir is usually quite enjoyable as Trynin describes her uphill ride to near-stardom. Her writing isn't too deep but it's frequently funny and sharp-witted. However, when things go downhill and Trynin's career sputters, so does this book. In her increasingly numerous passages about feeling lost and overwhelmed by the biz and its disappointments, Trynin is trying to come across as literary in a dark chick-lit sorta way. But she doesn't really have the writing ability to pull it off, and her attempts at self-examination and deeper insights into the biz just don't go anywhere useful. That goes for her coverage of her mixed-up love life too. This book is still a very fun read for those who love the do-it-yourself rock scene, but it doesn't quite reach as deeply as it thinks it does. [~doomsdayer520~]

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Barbara Halliwell, on a grant at Oxford, receives an unexpected package-a centuries-old memoir by a Korean crown princess. An appropriate gift indeed for her impending trip to Seoul, but Barbara doesn't know who sent it. On the plane, she avidly reads the memoir, a story of great intrigue as well as tragedy. The Crown Princess Hyegyong recounts in extraordinary detail the ways of the Korean court and confesses the family dramas that left her childless and her husband dead by his own hand. When a Korean man Barbara meets at her hotel offers to guide her to some of the haunts of the crown princess, Barbara tours the royal courts and develops a strong affinity for everything related to the princess and her mysterious life. Barbara's time in Korea goes quickly, but captivated by her experience and wanting to know more about the princess, she wonders if her life can ever be the way it was before.

• Sales Rank: #1874222 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-03
• Released on: 2005-10-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.00" h x .87" w x 5.25" l, .70 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 348 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In her 16th novel, Drabble exhibits her characteristic ironic detachment in an elegantly constructed meditation on memory, mortality, risk and reward. Dr. Babs Halliwell, a 40-ish academic on sabbatical at Oxford, receives an anonymous gift on the eve of her departure for a conference in Seoul: a copy of the 18th-century Korean Crown Princess Hyegyong's memoir. In the crown princess's tumultuous time, women of the court could exercise power only through men. But the sly, coquettish and charmingly unreliable princess not only outlived her mad husband but also survived her brothers, her sons and innumerable palace plots. Her story and her spirit all but possess Dr. Halliwell, whose tragic personal losses and highly ritualized professional life cleverly and subtly mirror those of the crown princess. Upon her arrival in Seoul, Dr. Halliwell begins to come a bit unhinged as pieces of her long-submerged past threaten to catch up with her at last. "These things," she observes, "have long, long fuses." She innocently takes up with a generous Korean doctor, who becomes her tour guide in the jarringly foreign city. Soon, she's also flattered into embarking on a brief but intense affair with a famous and charismatic Dutch anthropologist who's busy grappling with ghosts of his own. Nimbly jumping across time and around the globe, Drabble artfully stitches together the disparate strands of both women's lives with "a scarlet thread... of blood and joy." The voices of the dead reach out to the living, where the ancient and the modern "pass through one another, like clouds of bees, like distant galaxies... like the curving spirals of a double helix."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Drabble read JaHyun Kim Haboush's translation of The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea (1995) and became possessed. Enthralled by the tough-minded memoirist and the crucial phase of Korean history she illuminates, Drabble doesn't simply fictionalize the crown princess' dramatic story, she transforms the royal author into a ghostly, insistent presence who has studied the world closely since her death and who has decided to retell her story in light of all that has transpired in the interim. And so the crown princess--proud, frank, intelligent, discursive, and still wounded by the cruelty of her father-in-law, King Yongjo, and the terrible crimes and suffering of her mad and murderous husband, Prince Sado--recounts her harrowing experiences, matching Anchee Min's historically based Empress Orchid [BKL N 15 03] with her vivid depiction of the claustrophobia and dysfunction of an Asian court, and also offering delectably caustic commentary on the modern world. But there's more. Drabble, a master at constructing two-track, two-epoch tales (The Seven Sisters [2002] brings Virgil into our time), abruptly switches to the present, where the intrepid Dr. Barbara Halliwell, a fetching English academic, reads the crown princess' memoirs on the way to a conference in Seoul, thus inadvertently instigating hilarious, sexy, and suspenseful adventures that reveal curious parallels between her life and that of the Korean princess. Drabble is sleight-of-hand adept at slipping profoundly insightful musings on human nature, history, and social mores into scintillating and all-consuming novels. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
PRAISE FOR THE RED QUEEN

"Drabble has written a moving tale of fate, moral responsibility and love."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Drabble's tale is a quiet love song to literature, an illustration as to how reader and subject become intertwined. As Yeats wrote, how can we know the dancer from the dance?"--Chicago Tribune

"An 18th-century Korean princess tells her harrowing life story in the lyrical first half of Drabble's lovely, intelligent 16th novel. A-." - Entertainment Weekly




"Drabble''s tale is a love song to literature, an illustration as to how reader and subject become intertwined." (Chicago Tribune 2004-10-03)

"Editor''s Choice" (Entertainment Weekly 2004-10-08)

"With her usual deftness and clarity, Drabble crosses cultures and centuries...engrossing and provocative" (Kirkus Reviews 2004-08-15)

"A deliciously evocative tale of palace intrigue...one of the most inventive works of fiction in recent memory" (San Francisco Chronicle 2004-11-21)

"Drabble''s plain narrative tenaciousness gives her writing transparency and fire." (Village Voice 2004-11-03)

Most helpful customer reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
"Fear and violence, boredom and elegant inertia."
By Mary Whipple
Intending to write a "transcultural tragicomedy," Margaret Drabble announces that this novel will ask questions "about the nature of survival, and about the possibility of the existence of universal transcultural human characteristics." Using the real memoirs of 18th century Korean Crown Princess Hyegyong as the inspiration for her novel, Drabble creates her own version of these memoirs, placing them within the context of world history by relating them to what was happening in western civilization at the same time.

Chosen to be the bride of the Crown Prince when both are ten years old, the Princess abandons her family and marries the prince that year. We hear her adult voice relating the sad changes her husband undergoes after their marriage, as he becomes increasingly fearful and eventually insane, committing atrocities, including murder. "I failed my husband," she says, unable to stop his rampages. Describing her training to be queen, the birth of her children and their fates, and her experience in the claustrophobic court, she breathes life into her descriptions of her unusual existence. Though her observations are honest and fair, her language, not surprisingly, is elegant and formal. She keeps her distance, not really sharing her innermost thoughts and feelings.

In Part II, Babs Halliwell, a contemporary scholar in Oxford, leaves for Korea to deliver a paper at a conference on globalization. Drabble creates obvious parallels between the life of the Princess and that of Halliwell from the outset of Part II. As Halliwell boards the plane, she brings with her a copy of the Princess's memoirs, "sent to her anonymously, packaged in cardboard, through Amazon.com," which she reads in flight.

No reader will miss the parallels between the life of Halliwell and that of the Princess, who "has entered her, like an alien creature in a science-fiction movie." Halliwell's background, her tragedies, her own difficult marriage to a mentally ill husband, and her uncertainties about the future are clearly created to show parallels to the Princess's life. Drabble draws additional parallels between recent news events from around the world and events in the life of the Princess, in an effort to continue the connections across cultures and time.

Those who have studied other cultures may find Drabble's themes obvious and her deliberate parallels lacking in subtlety. She explains these parallels, rather than allowing the reader to discover them. The construction feels artificial, and Drabble's tone is sometimes coy. The diary of the Princess, however, is especially interesting for the light it casts on a way of life almost unknown to contemporary westerners, and for this the novel is both important and fascinating. (3.5 stars) Mary Whipple

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Two separate, interesting stories - combined needlessly into one book
By erica
"The Red Queen" is a tale of two women struggling for survival in a world dominated by insanity, death, and some degree of oppression. The first part of the book is narrated by the Red Queen herself, a Korean woman married to the Crown Prince as a child and forced to navigate a series of political and familial struggles which ultimately lead to the Prince's insanity and death. The second part turns to Babs, an academic who has also lost her husband to insanity and who seeks to not only escape her past but embrace and exploit her present. Babs reads the Red Queen's memoirs on the flight to a conference in Korea, and the sprit of the Red Queen haunts her throughout the trip.

"The Red Queen" is intelligent and, despite requiring some effort to read, engrossing. Drabble tells a wonderful story and both portions of the novel are imbued with intelligent characters, well-constructed language, and a quiet sense of humor. The first part of the story, narrated by the Red Queen, is particularly unusual and insightful.

The novel's failing is that its central conceit - that Babs and the Red Queen are in some way linked, or more particularly that their stories are linked - falls flat. Although I enjoyed each part of the book, I saw little in the way of parallels beyond the obvious, and the consequences of these were not apparent. The second part of the book thus lacked focus, and resorted to an unnecessarily trite ending.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
An ambitious, unusual, and extremely satisfying ghost story
By Bookreporter
Korean Crown Princess Hyegyong speaks from her 200-year-old grave to reveal the true story of her life. Born in 1735, she was pampered as a child to compensate for her destiny in the palace. Her parents suffered depression; the Crown Princess knew at an early age that play was pretend but sorrow was real. Her childhood ended early when her parents entered her into the selection ceremony as a royal bride. The mother of the Crown Prince, Lady Sonhui, favored her and so she was chosen.

The little girl was horrified on her long visits to the palace, where she was petted and fed strange foods, and painted with cosmetics. At home, palace servants attended to her and her parents deferred to her. She wanted to die. Sick with fear on her wedding day, she was married at age ten to Prince Sado, also ten, who called his wife his "little Red Queen" because of her prized red silk skirt. The married children played together, with dolls, kites, a toy horse, and the toy soldiers Sado loved. The marriage was consummated five years later.

The Princess's first son died. Her father-in-law, King Yongjo, was an odd man with many obsessions and insecurities who treated his son, Sado, harshly. He decreed that the couple's second son, Chongjo, was to be groomed to be king because Sado was becoming mentally unstable. As the young mother worried over her beloved son's fate, her husband became madder and madder. Prince Sado blamed his mania on his father's lack of love toward him; his actions were violent and terrifying. Complex court and family maneuvering and catastrophes shaped the Princess's remaining years.

After the princess narrates the balance of her tragic life, the story switches to modern-day England, focusing on Dr. Barbara Halliwell, who appears on the surface to be the opposite of the powerless princess. Babs is puzzled to receive a book of the Korean Crown Princess's memoirs anonymously. She reads the book during her flight to Seoul to attend a conference. As she reads, Babs is astounded at the number of connections and similarities to her own life. Along with other parallels, her own first husband went mad because of his relationship with his father, and her own first son died in infancy. Babs cannot stop thinking about the memoirs.

In Seoul, Babs escapes her conference to search out the places the Crown Princess experienced. Because of her fascination with the Korean princess's life, Babs experiences a significant chapter in her own life --- one that reverberates past her return to London and changes her future drastically.

The surreal yet extremely satisfactory ending includes a surprise appearance by Margaret Drabble herself. A short afterword reinforces the conclusion's mood of circularity and completion. THE RED QUEEN was a bit of a slow start for me (chalk it up to a few too many beach books over the summer), but I was soon ensnared by the haunting plot of this ambitious and unusual ghost story.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (...)

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Element of Literature (Fifth Course) Literature of the United States. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the teacher who review material in this book, in manuscript or in classroom test.

• Sales Rank: #1052315 in Books
• Published on: 1989-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 10.00" h x 8.25" w x 2.00" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1168 pages

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