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Christine Le Boeuf

    The Sweet Hereafter
    La Fiancée de Frankenstein
    Le livre des éloges
    Babel - 1732: Les Mirages de la certitude
    What I Loved
    The Invention of Solitude
    • Babel - 1732: Les Mirages de la certitude

      Essai sur la problématique corps/esprit

      • 409 pages
      • 15 hours of reading

      Comment pense le corps ? Qu'est-ce que l'esprit ? En quoi se distingue-t-il du corps ? L'esprit peut-il être réduit à des neurones dans le cerveau ou non ? Dans son essai, Siri Hustvedt aborde le vieux problème non résolu de l'esprit et du corps et souligne à quel point les différentes réponses à cette question ont une signification profonde pour notre compréhension de nous-mêmes. Avec son approche multidisciplinaire, Hustvedt montre à quel point des hypothèses injustifiées sur le corps et l'esprit ont déformé et confondu la pensée des neuroscientifiques, généticiens, psychiatres, psychologues évolutionnistes et chercheurs en intelligence artificielle. Dans cet essai érudit, Hustvedt introduit le lecteur à diverses théories intégratives du corps concernant la conscience, qui modifient le débat actuel sur l'esprit et le corps. Elle souligne également qu'aucune idée n'est intouchable. "Le doute", écrit-elle, "n'est pas seulement une expression de l'intelligence ; c'est une nécessité."

      Babel - 1732: Les Mirages de la certitude2021
      4.3
    • The Summer Without Men

      • 216 pages
      • 8 hours of reading

      Out of the blue, your husband of thirty years asks you for a pause in your marriage to indulge his infatuation with a young Frenchwoman. Do you: a) assume it's a passing affair and play along b) angrily declare the marriage over c) crack up d) retreat to a safe haven and regroup? Mia Fredricksen cracks up first, then decamps for the summer to the prairie town of her childhood, where she rages, fumes, and bemoans her sorry fate as abandoned spouse. But little by little, she is drawn into the lives of those around her: her mother and her circle of feisty widows; her young neighbour, with two small children and a loud, angry husband; and the diabolical pubescent girls in her poetry class. By the end of the summer without men, wiser though definitely not sadder, Mia knows what she wants to fight for and on whose terms.

      The Summer Without Men2011
      3.5
    • The Sorrows of an American

      • 320 pages
      • 12 hours of reading

      "The Sorrows of an American" is a soaring feat of storytelling about the immigrant experience and the ghosts that haunt families from one generation to another.

      The Sorrows of an American2010
      3.6
    • Invisible

      • 308 pages
      • 11 hours of reading

      Poet and student Adam Walker meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent, seductive girlfriend, Margot, sending Adam into a perverse triangle that leads to a shocking act of violence that will alter his life.

      Invisible2010
      3.8
    • La Fiancée de Frankenstein

      • 81 pages
      • 3 hours of reading

      En première lecture, ce livre est un essai sur le film de James Whale (1935), ses origines (le célèbre roman de Mary Shelley), l'écriture de son scénario, le choix de ses acteurs, la relation avec la censure, etc. Mais, plus profondément, c'est un essai sur la création, sur les relations du créateur avec sa création, sur la prédominance de l'acte de création sur tout autres considérations philosophiques, religieuses ou morales. C'est aussi un essai sur le mal, sur la tentation de puissance, sur le vertige des interdits. A sa première apparition, le visage du monstre est présenté par Manguel comme l'une des icônes de notre temps, au même titre que le visage de Greta Garbo... Cela fait partie des nombreuses réussites de ce livre provoquées par ces rapprochements inattendus où nous entraînent l'intelligence et la culture de Manguel. La comparaison, du point de vue de la création pure, entre la Fiancée créée par Frankenstein et la Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires créée par Duchamp est un grand moment d'analyse et de jubilation ! Enfin, et d'une façon assez classique dans la littérature et le cinéma fantastiques, la monstruosité n'est peut-être pas là où on le penserait. Le monstre n'aspire qu'à une harmonie que la société des hommes " normaux " lui refuse. L'instant de bonheur que connaît le monstre en compagnie d'un vieillard aveugle est une scène magnifiquement décrite...

      La Fiancée de Frankenstein2008
      3.0
    • August Brill is recovering from a car accident. Plagued by insomnia, he tries to push back thoughts about his wife's death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. He is joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, and he opens up to her and recounts the story of his marriage and confronts the reality of Titus' death.

      Man in the Dark2008
      3.7
    • Le livre des éloges

      • 80 pages
      • 3 hours of reading

      Série d'éloges qui sont autant de variations sur les sujets les plus variés : la Bible, la librairie, l'horreur, le plaisir, les animaux, le blasphème ou la France.

      Le livre des éloges2007
      4.0
    • Travels in the Scriptorium

      • 160 pages
      • 6 hours of reading

      An old man awakens, disoriented, in an unfamiliar chamber. With no memory of who he is or how he has arrived there, he pores over the relics on the desk, examining the circumstances of his confinement and searching his own hazy mind for clues. Determining that he is locked in, the man--identified only as Mr. Blank--begins reading a manuscript he finds on the desk, the story of another prisoner, set in an unfamiliar, alternate world. As the day passes, various characters call on Mr. Blank in his cell, and each brings frustrating hints of his forgotten identity and his past. Both chilling and poignant, Travels in the Scriptorium is vintage Paul Auster: mysterious texts, fluid identities, a hidden past, and, somewhere, an obscure tormentor. And yet, as we discover during one day in the life of Mr. Blank, his world is not so different from our own.

      Travels in the Scriptorium2007
      3.3
    • Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, novelist Sidney Orr enters a Brooklyn stationery shop and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18th, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, within a world of eerie premonitions.

      Oracle Night2004
      3.8
    • What I Loved

      • 384 pages
      • 14 hours of reading

      This is the story of two men who first become friends in 1970s New York, of the women in their lives, and of their sons, born the same year. Both Leo Hertzberg, an art historian, and Bill Weschler, a painter, are cultured, decent men, but neither is equipped to deal with what happens to their children - Leo's son drowns when he's 12, while Bill's son Mark grows up to be a delinquent, and the acolyte of a sinister, guru-like artist who spawns murder in his wake. Spanning the hedonism of the eighties and the chill-out nineties, this multi-layered novel combines a plot of mounting menace with a deeply moving account of familial relationships and a superbly observed portrait of an artist, set against the backdrop of a society reaching new depths of depravity in its frenetic quest for the next fashion, drug and thrill.

      What I Loved2003
      4.4
    • Mr Bones is the canine sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, a brilliant but troubled poet-saint from Brooklyn. Together they sally forth in search of Willy's beloved high-school teacher, who years ago knew him in his previous incarnation as William Gurevitch, son of Polish war refugees.

      Timbuktu2002
      3.7
    • The Sweet Hereafter

      • 416 pages
      • 15 hours of reading

      A small town's response to the inexplicable loss of its children in a school bus accident.

      The Sweet Hereafter1997
      3.9
    • Iris Vegan, a graduate student living alone and impoverished in New York, encounters four strong characters who fascinate and in different ways subordinate her: an inscrutable urban recluse who employs her to record the possessions of a murdered woman; a photographer whose eerie portrait of Iris takes on a life of its own; an old woman in hospital who tries to claim a remnant of the ailing Iris; and a professor she has an affair with. An exploration of female identity in an age when the old definitions - as some man's daughter/wife/mother - no longer apply, fuelled with eroticism and a sense of menace.

      The Blindfold1996
      3.8
    • La vera storia dell'ultimo re socialista

      • 248 pages
      • 9 hours of reading

      «E se le cose fossero andate in un altro modo?». Domande che chiunque si pone quando riflette sulla Storia. Roy Lewis esplora questa tematica in un romanzo, utilizzando lo stesso approccio vivace e illuminante che ha caratterizzato il suo lavoro sulla preistoria. Immagina un supercomputer che elabora la vittoria del socialismo anziché del capitalismo nella rivoluzione del 1848 in Europa. Il risultato è un racconto in cui la regina Vittoria abdica nel 1849 a causa della rivolta dei cartisti. Si instaura un regime socialista che, pur mantenendo la monarchia, si concentra su lavoro e uguaglianza. Tuttavia, questo socialismo bucolico si rivela un lento disastro, poiché non riesce a gestire l'impatto della tecnologia, che altera continuamente i rapporti sociali. I socialisti, incapaci di adattarsi, preparano così il terreno per una nuova rivoluzione. Ma cosa accade quando l'«ultimo re socialista» diventa complice di questa rivolta? La sua storia, narrata da lui stesso, è indimenticabile: un sovrano gentile e amabile, che avrebbe preferito insegnare matematica, si trova a guidare una controrivoluzione per rovesciare il proprio regime, esautorando se stesso. La vera storia dell'ultimo re socialista è stata pubblicata in Inghilterra nel 1990.

      La vera storia dell'ultimo re socialista1993
      3.6
    • Offers the author's personal meditation on fatherhood. This title reveals his memories and feelings after the death of his father.

      The Invention of Solitude1993
      3.9