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COURAGE AND FEAR

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

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THE LIGHTNESS OF A DUTCH SOUL

Dutch painters and the lightness of their paintings…

“Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.”
Vincent van Gogh

Avenue with Flowering Chestnut Trees
Vincent van Gogh – 1889

Lies, the Artist’s Daughter, Painting
Floris Arntzenius – Date unknown

Landscape with Cattle
Willem Maris – Date unknown

 

“Choose only one master – Nature.”
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)

 

The Abduction of Europa (detail) 1632.  Rembrandt van Rijn

 

For many more works by Dutch Painters please visit our online gallery Passion for Paintings

Marguerite Duras and the advantage of the written word…

“When it’s in a book I don’t think it’ll hurt any more …exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.”
Marguerite Duras, The Lover

LITTLE BIRD OF HEAVEN BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

This intense novel is about a young mother and wife called Zoe Kruller, who is brutally murdered. It uses mixed storylines and takes place in rural twentieth-century America (1983-2001).

There are two suspects; her own husband, Delray Kruller, from whom she is estranged from and her lover Eddy Diehl.

The story is told by two persons: Krista Diehl (daughter of Eddy Diehl) and Aaron Kruller (son of the murdered woman and Delray Kruller).

It is a story about passionate love, sex, abondance, cruelty, violence, and loss seen through the two young teenagers’ eyes.

 

Why did I like this novel so much?

joyce-carol-oates

Writer Joyce Carol Oates with her cat.

I was intrigued, not knowing who the killer was. Why was Zoe murdered? Reading the same story but through entirely different eyes by the two narrators Aaron and Krista. I was struck by their desperations and loneliness, fanatically defending their own fathers and blaming the other.

The final chapter, which I absolutely loved, showing us the incredible strength of a woman and the power she found in herself to take control of her own life.

It is not until the very end of the novel that we find out the truth about what has happened to Zoe.

I couldn’t stop reading and finished this book in just two days. Can’t wait to start another great novel by Joyce Carol Oates.

 

 

BOOKS AND HAPPINESS

Books and Happiness

 

“You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy books and that’s kind of the same thing.”
Anonymous

Girl Reading
Edmund Tarbell – circa 1909