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Paul Harding (5) (1967–)

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3 verk 4,522 medlemmar 335 recensioner 2 favoritmärkta

Om författaren

Paul Harding has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and teaches creative writing at Harvard. He lives in Georgetown, Massachusetts.

Verk av Paul Harding

Tiden (2009) 3,644 exemplar
Enon (2013) 474 exemplar
This Other Eden (2023) 404 exemplar

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Allmänna fakta

Födelsedag
1967
Kön
male
Nationalitet
USA
Kort biografi
Paul Harding graduated from the University of Massachusetts and was a drummer for the band Cold Water Flat before earning his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has taught writing at Harvard and the University of Iowa. A 2010 Guggenheim fellow, Harding now lives near Boston with his wife and two sons, and is working on his second novel.

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Recensioner

This beautifully written book is an homage to the people of Apple Island, a fictitious place based on the true story of Malaga Island. This small island, settled in 1792, by a mixed-race couple was in existence until 1912 when its inhabitants were forcibly evacuated. The study of eugenics by those in power in Maine determined that they should be relocated, some to the Maine School for the "Feeble Minded." These were multi-racial people who had lived on the island for generations surviving through sheer tenacity, a love of the island and their community.

I couldn't help thinking about the indigenous people who were deemed better off living as the Caucasian invaders took their land and relocated many. It is a sad fact that our history demonstrates this bigotry and prejudice. I love the history of the people of Apple Island, who neither harmed nor judged each other. Paul Harding's writing is exquisite.
… (mer)
1 rösta
Flaggad
pdebolt | 29 andra recensioner | Mar 5, 2024 |
NR -- DNF (did not finish, just skimmed after awhile). I just couldn't. I felt manipulated and damned. I've read plenty about eugenics shenanigans of this time period -- my own village here in New England suffered the attentions of the local university and terrorized some members of the local population back when. The people on Apple Island are presented as being in dire straits but also, somehow, quaint. Seriously? What happened to the people was cruel, but would any Social Services organization tolerate people living in these conditions nowadays? They would be just as bad, probably, although differently, and let us hope they would not dig up the bones of the dead. That was the last straw. Harding is relentless and so depressing -- he did not structure the book to offer one iota of . . . optimisn? forgiveness? for human beings. I should have guessed, for whenever I see the word 'lyrical' in a description of a novel I know it will be a) tragic and b) I will hate the overflowing puddle of pitifulness and sentiment I'll have to wade through. My book group chose this, so I gave it my best, not that that is saying much. Yes yes yes, the writing is quite beautiful in places, I have no issue with that so you might love it. So NR, no rating.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
sibylline | 29 andra recensioner | Mar 3, 2024 |
Straightforward plot and tone: nothing and nobody will surprise you, all written from just the perspective you’d expect. The predictableness could make it dull, and make a reading of a solid piece of reportage on the actual events that inspired the novel the better choice, but for Harding’s prose style. It’s an ornamental decorative prose, seemingly always looking for an opportunity to burst the banks with more, more, more. At my most sympathetic it conjured up for me something admirably Whitmanesque. Sometimes it was just tiring, which I reckon is also something Whitmanesque!

Here for example is a character realizing he’ll miss his home:
Eha’s life and the lives of everyone on the island and everything they’ve done and enjoyed and suffered and nearly starved from and all the full moons and bright suns and green grass and blue skies and rain and snow and wind and clouds, tin cups, lead sinkers, cod and lobsters and clams and whelks and driftwood all begin to erupt in slow motion from the infinitely dense black point in Eha’s thought that is the meaning of this eviction, which at first his brain could not divulge to his understanding but is splitting open and disgorging as he sits looking at his house remembering so many things.


Here he is earlier having reached a decision about something important:

Eha sits on the stool, silent, eyes directed to the tabletop but seeing what who can tell and he suddenly seems so dense of matter to Matthew Diamond as to be monumental, the stool beneath him about to explode as if a block of marble has just been lowered onto it and it only remains to be seen along which exact grains in the wood it will explode and collapse beneath the monolithic man.


Always reaching for the dramatic, the exuberant, the prose is something like a bougainvillea threatening to overgrow its container, beautiful in a sectional closeup yet possibly too immoderate for its own good. It’s certainly for me the main reason for the thing, its argument, its claim, far more so than the history lesson, its admiration of the artist, or an alleged thought-provoking philosophical quality.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
lelandleslie | 29 andra recensioner | Feb 24, 2024 |
Couldn't even get through chapter one ....never finished.
 
Flaggad
ellink | 226 andra recensioner | Jan 22, 2024 |

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Statistik

Verk
3
Medlemmar
4,522
Popularitet
#5,548
Betyg
½ 3.5
Recensioner
335
ISBN
103
Språk
13
Favoritmärkt
2

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