Painted Horses
Autor Malcolm Brooksen Limba Engleză Paperback – 9 iun 2015
Observăm în Painted Horses o confruntare viscerală între marșul neînduplecat al progresului și ecourile unei lumi pe cale de dispariție. Tensiunea centrală a romanului se naște la mijlocul anilor '50, când entuziasmul american pentru sistematizare și construcția marilor baraje se lovește de rezistența mută a peisajului din Montana. Catherine Lemay, o arheologă ambițioasă, are la dispoziție o singură vară pentru a scoate la lumină secretele unui canion adânc, înainte ca acesta să fie înghițit de apele unui proiect hidroelectric. Întâlnirea ei cu John H, un veteran al ultimei cavalerii montate a armatei americane, transformă o misiune științifică într-o explorare a spiritului uman și a legăturii ancestrale cu natura. Stilul lui Malcolm Brooks este unul arhitectural; credem că forța acestei cărți rezidă în modul în care autorul construiește scenele, strat cu strat, împletind rigoarea cercetării istorice cu o sensibilitate poetică față de viața aspră a vestului. Atmosfera te trimite cu gândul la The Hearts of Horses, de Molly Gloss, deși perspectiva lui Brooks este mai amplă, integrând elemente de arheologie și o melancolie postbelică ce oferă narațiunii o greutate specifică. Ritmul este așezat, lăsând loc contemplării, iar portretul lui John H — deopotrivă artist la Paris și pustnic în canion — aduce o profunzime rară figurii clasice a cowboy-ului. Este un roman de o factură clasică, unde detaliile cotidiene și destinele excepționale coexistă într-un echilibru fragil, sub amenințarea iminentă a schimbării.
Preț: 71.77 lei
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Specificații
ISBN-10: 0802123813
Pagini: 384
Dimensiuni: 140 x 210 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.41 kg
Editura: Grove Atlantic Inc.
De ce să citești această carte
Recomandăm această carte celor care apreciază proza de atmosferă și romanele istorice care refuză simplificările. Cititorul va câștiga o perspectivă nuanțată asupra mitului frontierei americane, descoperind o poveste despre pasiune și integritate morală. Este o lectură esențială pentru oricine este fascinat de arheologie, de relația profundă dintre om și cal sau de peisajele vaste ale Montanei, totul sub semnătura unui autor care trăiește el însuși în ritmul acestor locuri.
Despre autor
Malcolm Brooks a crescut la poalele munților Sierra din California, fiind înconjurat încă din copilărie de artefacte din epoca goanei după aur și obiecte aparținând culturilor native americane. Tâmplar de profesie, Brooks s-a stabilit în Montana de peste două decenii, experiența sa de viață reflectându-se în precizia cu care descrie peisajele și meșteșugurile în scrierile sale. A contribuit constant la publicații de prestigiu precum „Gray’s Sporting Journal” și „Outside”. Painted Horses reprezintă debutul său remarcabil în beletristică, fiind o operă ce sintetizează pasiunea sa pentru istorie, natură și cultura ecvestră.
Descriere scurtă
In the mid-1950s, America was flush with prosperity and saw an unbroken line of progress clear to the horizon, while the West was still very much wild. In Painted Horses, now in paperback, a dauntless woman travels into that untamed landscape in an adventure that will change her life. Catherine Lemay is a young archaeologist who’s come to Montana with a huge task before her—a canyon “as deep as the devil’s own appetites.” Working ahead of a major dam project, she has one summer to prove nothing of historical value will be lost in the flood. From the moment she arrives, nothing is what she expects. John H is a former mustanger with an intuitive genius for breaking horses. A veteran of the U.S. Army’s last mounted cavalry campaign, he lives a fugitive life, driven by pursuit of one last wild thing. John H inspires Catherine to see beauty in the stark landscape, and her heart opens to more than just the vanished past. Painted Horses sings a love song to the horseman’s vanishing way of life and reminds us that love and ambition, tradition and progress, often make strange bedfellows.
“Extraordinary . . . Surprising and satisfying . . . Brooks has fashioned compelling and sympathetic protagonists. . . . John H—orphan, rail rider, cowboy, World War II veteran, Paris artist, canyon hermit—in particular, has a backstory that is both intimate and sweeping in a way that may remind readers of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. . . . Painted Horses is, after all, one of those big, old-fashioned novels where the mundane and the unlikely coexist.”—Kent Black, Boston Globe
“Malcolm Brooks’ novel has the hard thrill of the West, when it was still a new world, the tenderness of first love and the pain of knowledge. This book is a gripping, compulsively readable page-turner.”—Amy Bloom, author of Away
Recenzii
Praise for Painted Horses:
National Bestseller
One of Amazon’s 100 Best Books of 2014
#1 Indie Next Great Read for August 2014
A Barnes & Noble Discover Selection
Amazon Debut Spotlight for August 2014
“Engrossing . . . The best novels are not just written but built—scene by scene, character by character—until a world emerges for readers to fall into. Painted Horses creates several worlds.” —USA Today (4 out of 4 stars)
“Extraordinary . . . both intimate and sweeping in a way that may remind readers of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient . . . Painted Horses is, after all, one of those big, old-fashioned novels where the mundane and the unlikely coexist.”—Boston Globe
“Malcolm Brooks’ novel has the hard thrill of the West, when it was still a new world, the tenderness of first love and the pain of knowledge. This book is a gripping, compulsively readable page-turner.”—Amy Bloom, author of Away
“Painted Horses reads like a cross between Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, with a pinch of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient for good measure. . . . An earnest, romantic novel.”—The Dallas Morning News
“Lush, breathtaking prose that expertly captures the raw essence of an American West known for its wide-open spaces and unbridled spirit. . . . Masterful.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Reminiscent of the fiery, lyrical and animated spirit of Cormac McCarthy’s Border trilogy, and the wisdom and elegance of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose, Painted Horses is its own work, a big, old-fashioned and important novel.”—Rick Bass, author of All the Land to Hold Us
“Evocative . . . Brooks’ prose rings true.”—The Seattle Times
“Painted Horses is evidence that the many-peopled, colorific, panoramic, fully-wraparound, pull-you-in-by-the-heels, big-questions, literarily deft ‘Great American Novel’ still lives.”—Carolyn Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine and Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves
“Grandly romantic . . . Blood. Sex. War. Equine Expertise. Past versus Progress. Money versus Love and Sacred Places. One can almost hear Hollywood’s horsemen rumbling toward this tale.” —Orion
“Painted Horses is a wonderful novel full of horses, archeology, the new West, and two fascinating women. Malcolm Brooks should be lauded for this amazing debut. Very fine.”—Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall and Brown Dog
“Painted Horses vividly evokes an earlier time, a place and a way of being that is at the cusp of great change. In his gift for the language of horses and the culture of horsemen, Brooks will inevitably recall Cormac McCarthy. And like Ivan Doig in Bucking the Sun, he mines one of the darker veins in the mythology of the American West”—The Washington Post
“A love song to the Western frontier, Painted Horses is a new, truly American, work of art.”—San Antonio Current
“Malcolm Brooks has the same intuitive understanding of women that his character John H has of horses. Painted Horses is a beautiful, sensual, authentic novel. A western novel that is about so much more than the West, it is an exquisite, enthralling debut.”—Lily King, author of Euphoria
“The next great western novel . . . Vivid—and often romantic . . . The past echoes through the canyons of the West in this richly layered first novel.”—The Daily Beast
“Ambitious and affecting . . . A sweeping and dramatic saga.”—Big Sky Journal