Category: Book reviews
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“Our Tragic Universe” & the Fiction of Perfection – The Self-Help Industry Exposed
In Scarlett Thomas’ new novel, Our Tragic Universe, heroine Meg concludes that self-help books succeed by first making us feel bad about ourselves and then giving us the perfect fix. It’s rather like Humpty Dumpty being pushed off a wall and broken so someone can make a fast buck putting him back together again.…
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Lessons to learn from Anthony Trollope
I just finished reading Anthony Trollope’s brilliant novel The Way We Live Now. Although written in 1872, Trollope’s portrayal of the ultra-greedy businessman, Melmotte, has much to show us about the way we really do in fact live right now. As another character comments, Melmotte is ‘a sign of degeneracy’, not the cause. Not unlike bankers and…