Eight years ago Anne Elliot bowed to pressure from her family and made the decision not to marry the man she loved, Captain Wentworth. Now circumstances have conspired to bring him back into her social circle and Anne finds her old feelings for him reignited. However, when they meet again Wentworth behaves as if they … Continue reading Mini classic review: Persuasion by Jane Austen
Mini classic review: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of … Continue reading Mini classic review: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Mini classic review: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening … Continue reading Mini classic review: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Mini classic review: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Largely set in a futuristic World State, inhabited by genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist. “But I don't want … Continue reading Mini classic review: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Mini classic review: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Turn of the Screw tells of a nameless young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something malevolent is stalking the children in her care. But is the threat to her … Continue reading Mini classic review: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Mini classic review: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy. … Continue reading Mini classic review: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Mini classic review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” … Continue reading Mini classic review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Mini classic review: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote … Continue reading Mini classic review: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Mini classic review: Animal Farm by George Orwell
Mr. Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organized to … Continue reading Mini classic review: Animal Farm by George Orwell
Mini classic review: Maurice by E.M. Forster
Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics. Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, … Continue reading Mini classic review: Maurice by E.M. Forster