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Sto caricando le informazioni... Natives and Exoticsdi Jane Alison
   Nessuno Sto caricando le informazioni...
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A gardener flees the violence of the Clearances in early nineteenth-century Scotland for the Portuguese Azores, unaware that he will have a hand in destroying the earthly paradise he finds there. In 1929 his great-great-granddaughter, helping to settle the wilds of Australia, confronts troubling traces of her country's past. Forty years later her own granddaughter is ravished by the beauty of a South American country her diplomat parents are engaged in despoiling. In the manner of W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants, the novel follows these three characters, linked by blood and legacy, through four stories that span a period from the discovery of the first dinosaur bones to the unsettling revelation that the continents drift. With cameo appearances by Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin, Natives and Exotics is a hypnotic meditation on our passionate, uneasy affair with nature, in which we restlessly search for home. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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 Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni...GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClassificazione LCVotoMedia: (3.25)
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Man’s attempts to subdue nature are at the heart of this novel about one multi-generational family’s experiences with “civilizing” the world. The novel opens with 9-year-old Alice traveling to Ecuador with her mother and stepfather, one of a slew of families who congregate there in the 1970s to help American oil companies reap the benefits of that country’s oil exports. Largely undeveloped until that time, Ecuador is thrown into political and social upheaval as the United States holds out the carrot of progress through industrialization.
The story then flashes back to 1929 Australia, where Alice’s grandmother Violet is attempting to make a life for herself and her family in the rough and uncultivated Adelaide. Alison does a marvelous job with historically accurate details of running a home, from the Coolgardie Safe that keeps their milk and butter cool to the copper kettle and wringer used on laundry day and the hoarding of precious water. Violet, pregnant with the son who will be Alice’s uncle, ponders the meaning of “home” and the question of whether humans can ever consider themselves native to a certain area.
In the third and final flashback, readers are introduced to George Clarence, Violet’s great-great-grandfather, who in 1822 sails from Scotland to the Portuguese Azores to begin a life in the citrus business. A peaceful man, he is troubled by the prevailing European mentality of that period that calls for clearing off “natives” and anything else that stands in the way of progress. However, as he eagerly transplants trees and flowers that are shipped from various parts of the world to the Azores, he finds himself an unwitting participant in the game of reshaping the world to western standards.
Alison covers a lot of ground in her 250 page novel, and her ambitious undertaking makes the flow rather disjointed at times. However, the theme of how much man can truly control the natural world is a thought-provoking one, and the language is spare and beautiful. Her third novel is not for reluctant readers, but those curious about the history of European exploration and colonization will enjoy Alison’s perspective.
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