Peter Christen Asbjørnsen:East of the Sun and West of the Moon
- edizione con copertina flessibile 2010, ISBN: 9781853261640
edizione con copertina rigida
Bantam. Good. 5.15 x 0.75 x 7.95 inches. Paperback. 2010. 352 pages. Cover worn<br>Luanne Rice is that rarest of all noveli sts who indelibly captures the defining moments in our li… Altro …
Bantam. Good. 5.15 x 0.75 x 7.95 inches. Paperback. 2010. 352 pages. Cover worn<br>Luanne Rice is that rarest of all noveli sts who indelibly captures the defining moments in our lives. In this acclaimed bestseller, she takes readers on an unforgettable exploration of the most elusive miracle of all: how a broken fami ly might be made whole again. Painter Honor Sullivan had the per fect love and the perfect life with her husband, a renowned photo grapher and sculptor--until the day John's passions led him to di saster, shattering their family and her heart. Since then, Honor has struggled to make a safe haven for herself and their three da ughters at Star of the Sea Academy on the magical Connecticut sho re. Now, years later, a mysterious letter in a familiar hand hin ts at John's return to the family he's always loved more than any thing on earth. It will take nothing short of a miracle to heal t he rift between father and daughters, husband and wife, the past and the present--but a miracle is exactly what is in the making a t Star of the Sea Academy. The only question is: Do you believe? Editorial Reviews Review Rice delicately handles heartbreak and redemption.-Booklist From the Hardcover edition. About the Aut hor Luanne Rice is the author of twenty-five novels, most recentl y Light of the Moon, What Matters Most, The Edge of Winter, Sandc astles, Summer of Roses, Summer's Child, Silver Bells, and Beach Girls. She lives in New York City and Old Lyme, Connecticut. Fro m the Hardcover edition. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Prologue In Ireland It was the land of their ancestors, and Honor swore she could hear their voices crying in the wind. The storm had been building since morning, silver mist giving way to driving rain, gusts off the sea now blowing the hed ges and trees almost horizontal. The stone walls that had seemed so magical when she'd first arrived now seemed dark and menacing. From the plane yesterday morning, Honor had been awed by the g reen, by the emerald grass and hedgerows and trees. Her three dau ghters had gazed down, excited and hoping they could see their fa ther's sculpture from the sky. He had written them letters about Ireland, and about the West Cork farmhouse he had found for them to stay in, and how he'd built his latest work on the very edge o f a cliff overlooking the sea. They had fought to open the letter s when they came, and be the one to read them out loud, and sleep with them under their pillows. There it is! Regis, fourteen, ha d cried out, pointing at a crumbling castle. No, it's there... t welve-year-old Agnes had said, crowding her sister to point out t he window. Square green fields ran along the coast, each dotted w ith tiny white farm buildings. Stone towers and ruined castles se emed to crown every high hill. They all look like the pictures h e sent, Cecilia, just seven, had said. It doesn't matter which ho use it is, as long as he's in it. Right, Mom? Right, sweetheart, Honor had said, sounding so much calmer than she'd felt. It'll be just like home, Mom, Agnes had said, forehead pressed to the plane's window. A beach, and stone walls...only now we'll be on t he other side of the Atlantic, instead of home in Black Hall. It' s like going across a mirror... Look at all that green, Cecilia had said. Just like our green fields of home, Agnes had said, un consciously echoing the lyrics of a song her aunt used to sing to her. What's the first thing you're going to do when you see Dad dy? Regis had asked, turning to peer at Honor. There was such a c hallenge in her daughter's face-almost as if she knew how trouble d her mother felt. She's going to hug and kiss him, Agnes said. Right, Mom? That's what I'm going to do, too! Cece said. The fi rst thing I'm going to do, Regis said, is ask him to show me his sculpture. It's his biggest one yet, and it's right at the edge o f the highest cliff, and I want to climb up on top and see if I c an see America! You can't see America across the Atlantic Ocean, can you, Mom? Cece asked. I'll be able to see it, I swear I wil l, Regis said. Dad said he could see it, so why wouldn't I be abl e to? Your father was speaking figuratively, Honor said. He mean t he could see it in his mind, or his heart...the dream of Americ a that our ancestors had when they left Ireland. And Daddy's sti ll dreaming, Cece said. Cece had counted the days till this trip . Agnes prayed for his safety. And Regis followed in his footstep s. Although she didn't want to be an artist, she did want to live life on the edge. Over the past year she had been delivered back to the Academy by the police twice-once for diving off the train bridge into Devil's Hole, and once for climbing to the top of th e lighthouse to hang the Irish flag. Instead of being upset, Joh n had gone straight to the lighthouse with his camera to take pic tures before the Coast Guard could climb up to take the flag down . He had been touched by his daughter's Irish pride, and by her w ay of making a statement-regardless of risk. Almost like his sc ulptures; he called them sandcastles, which called to mind gentle beaches, families building fragile towers in the sand at the wat er's edge. But John's installations were sharp, kinetic, made of rock and fallen trees, dangerous to build. Now, on this craggy headland in West Cork, the spiky top of his latest-the bare, unad orned branches of a tree that had fallen somewhere, hauled here b y John-was visible over the next rise, at the edge of a cliff, ni nety-foot granite walls that dropped straight into the churning s ea. Honor stood at the bedroom window of the farmhouse he'd rent ed, looking out. John came out of the shower to stand behind her, putting his arms around her and leaning into her. Their clothes lay in a heap beside the bed. Her sketchpad, abandoned yet again, sat on the desk. She had made a few drawings, but her heart wasn 't in it. What were you drawing before? he asked, his lips agai nst her ear. He sounded tentative, as if he wasn't sure how she'd respond. Nothing, she said. You're the artist in the family. H onor pressed against his body, wishing she could turn off her tho ughts and give in again to the desire that overtook her every tim e she saw her husband. She wished he hadn't asked about her drawi ng. She gazed down at the small pile of moonstones-luminous, worn smooth by the waves at the foot of the cliff, a gift from John t he minute she'd stepped off the plane-on the desk beside her sket chpad. She knew he'd meant them as a peace offering, but her hear t was reluctant to accept it. She felt turned inside out, frayed from the stress of trying to keep up with him. He turned her towa rd him, pulled her body against his, and kissed her. The girls, Honor said. They're sleeping, he whispered, gesturing toward the ir daughters' room as he tried to pull her back to bed. I know, Honor said, They're jet-lagged and exhausted from the excitement of being here, seeing you. But what about you? he asked, stroki ng her hair and kissing the side of her neck. He sounded so hopef ul, as if he thought maybe this trip could stop what they both fe lt happening between them, stop what they had always had from sli pping away forever. You're not tired? Yes, me too, she said, kis sing him. She was beyond tired; of wanting him to come home, of w orrying that he'd get hurt or killed working on his installations alone, of wishing he'd understand how worn out she was by the de mands of his art. At the same time, she was tired of being blocke d. It was as if his intense inspiration had started killing the f ire of her own. Even her drawings, such as they were, were of his soaring sculpture just over the next rise. She peered out the wi ndow, but the structure was now obscured by today's wild storm. He had taken them all to the cliff edge yesterday, when they'd f irst arrived. He'd shown them the ruins of an old castle, a looko ut tower built a thousand years ago. Sheep grazed on the hillside s, impossibly steep, slanting down to the sea. The sheep roamed f ree, their curly white wool splashed with red or blue paint, iden tifying them for their owners. They grazed right at the base of J ohn's sculpture. It affected Honor deeply-to see her husband's w ork here in Ireland. They had dreamed of coming for so long-ever since that day twenty five years ago when she, John, Bernie, and Tom had found the box in the stone wall. Honor knew that John had always felt a primal pull to be here, to try to connect with the timeless spirits of his family, as Bernie and Tom had done years earlier. In this green and ancient land, his own family history meshed powerfully with his artistic instincts, an epiphany in ear th and stone. His sculpture awed her, as his work often did-she found it inspiring, disturbing, stunning, rather than beautiful. She knew the physical effort it took him to drag the tree trunks and branches here to the cliff's edge, to raise them up and balan ce them against the wind, to haul rocks into the pile-cutting his hands and forearms, bruising his knuckles. John had hands like a prize-fighter's: scarred and swollen. Only, it had so often seem ed to Honor, that the person he was most fighting was himself. T he sculpture rose up from the land like a castle; echoing the rui ns just across the gap. It seemed to grow from the ground, as if it had been there forever, a witness to his family who had worked this land, farmed these fields, starved during the famine. He wa s descended from famine orphans, and as he and Honor and their da ughters walked the property, she had to hold back tears to think of what their ancestors had gone through. And what John experien ced now. He was an artist, through and through. He channeled powe rs from far beyond his own experience-became one with the ghosts, and the bones, and the spirits that had suffered and died. That' s why he'd come to Ireland alone-to haunt the Cobh docks from whi ch his family had emigrated, to drink in the pubs, and to build t his monument to his Irish dead. His sister Bernie-Sister Bernade tte Ignatius-was probably the only person who really understood h im. Honor loved him, but she didn't get what drove him, and she w as also a little scared of him. Not that he'd ever hurt her or th e girls, but that he'd die in pursuit of his art. It wore her dow n, it did. She'd felt exhausted yesterday, standing at the base of his huge, ambitious, soaring, reckless installation. How had t he wind and the weight of his materials not carried him over the edge of the cliff? How had the storm-scoured branches, the bark s tripped right off them, not fallen on him and crushed him? Alone on this headland, he would have never gotten help. You did this alone, she'd said to him while the girls explored the headland. T he sculpture rose above them-in silhouette it had what she had fa iled to notice before, a cross set at the top, to mirror not the castle ruins, but Bernie's chapel across the sea. No, he said. I had some help. Who? Did Tom fly over? No, Tom's too busy at th e Academy, John said. This was a local guy, an Irishman I met... Something about the way he trailed off made Honor stop asking. S trange people were sometimes drawn to John because of his work. H e unlocked the souls of all kinds of people-there was something a bout the soaring, spiritual, seeking nature of what he did that s poke to the hurt and troubled. She shivered at the way John looke d now, his lips tight, as if there was a back-story to his assist ant that she was better off not knowing. Have you taken the pic tures yet? Honor asked. He shook his head-was that sorrow, or r egret? He glanced around the headland, as if on guard against a t hreat. What's wrong? she asked, her skin crawling. He hesitated . She saw him peer at the sky, then at the sea, at low black clou ds gathering along the horizon. And he decided to lie; regarding the weather, it was true in its own way, but it obscured his real concern, so Honor wouldn't have to worry too. I haven't gotten any decent shots yet, he said. The days have been too sunny, whic h is great, and makes me so glad that you and the girls got to se e Ireland in the sun. But I need some shadows and rain, to get th e atmosphere the piece needs. His work was a two-part process; h e built sculptures from materials gathered entirely from nature. Then he photographed them, and let nature take the work apart aga in. The wind, or the sea, or a river, or gravity would destroy wh at he had done, but the photographs would last forever. Very few people actually saw his installations-Honor and the girls, Bernie and Tom were among the people who did. But the world-art lovers, environmentalists, and dreamers-knew the photographs of John Sul livan. Looks like you're getting your wish, she said, pointing a t the dark clouds scudding along the horizon. Maybe, he said, hu gging her. Then we can go home. It had struck her, almost bitter ly, how tender he sounded. John was never in a hurry to get home; he made a life of his work, and his family had to fit in around his trips and installations. But she also felt some hope-he wante d to come home this time. She wasn't begging him. She believed he knew how close they were to losing their marriage. He had call ed the girls over yesterday, let them pet some of the sheep, show ed them the stone walls, famine walls built during the 1840's by his ancestors, starving to death and worked to the bone. He point ed at the maps he'd brought from Connecticut, shown them how the walls corresponded with the ones built by his great-grandfather a cross the water, on the grounds of Star of the Sea. He told them that the cross on the top of his sculpture lined up perfectly wit h the one on the top of the Academy's chapel. Agnes had wanted t o walk on the walls, and Regis had wanted to climb the sculpture, all the way to the cross. Cece had clung to her mother, afraid t he wind might blow her off the cliff-even though the sun had been shining, brightening the green, making the blue sea gleam down b elow, as the wind, barely a whisper that morning, began to pick u p. Honor had pulled Cece into a quiet hollow, sheltered from th e stiff wind, and pulled her sketchpad from her jacket pocket. Si tting there, hearing John and the older girls talking and laughin g, she had sketched John's sculpture. An artist herself, she had once been passionately inspired by John's work-and he by hers. Bu t lately she had just fe, Bantam, 2010, 2.5, Wordsworth Classics. Good. 198mm / 126mm. Paperback. 1995. 255 pages. Cover worn<br>The 33 Scandinavian folk tales take the imagination of the reader from rags to riches, from skulduggery t o heroism, via witches' curses, beautiful princesses, giants, que sts, billy goats and the occasional wicked troll, to a happy endi ng. ., Wordsworth Classics, 1995, 2.5<
