Author: Paul A. Cohen File Type: epub When people experience a traumatic event, such as war or the threat of annihilation, they often turn to history for stories that promise a positive outcome to their suffering. During World War II, the French took comfort in the story of Joan of Arc and her heroic efforts to rid France of foreign occupation. To bring the Joan narrative more into line with current circumstances, popular retellings modified the original story so that what people believed took place in the past was often quite different from what actually occurred.Paul A. Cohen believes this interplay between story and history is a worldwide phenomenon found in countries of radically different cultural, religious, and social character. He focuses on Serbia, Israel, the Soviet Union, China, Great Britain, and France, all of which experienced severe crises in the twentieth century and, in response, appropriated age-old historical narratives that resonated with what was happening in the present to serve a unifying, restorative purpose. A central theme in the book is the distinction between popular memory and history. Although vitally important to historians, this distinction is routinely blurred in peoples minds, and the historians truth often cannot compete with the power of a compelling story from the past, even when it has been seriously distorted by myth or political manipulation. Cohen concludes by suggesting that the patterns of interaction he probes, given their near universality, may well be rooted in certain human propensities that transcend cultural difference.

Author: Karen Russell File Type: epub From Publishers WeeklyA series of upbeat, sentimental fables, the 10 stories of Russells debut are set in an enchanted version of North America and narrated by articulate, emotionally precocious children from dysfunctional households. Each merges the satirical spirit of George Saunders with the sophisticated whimsy of recent animated Hollywood film. In Ava Wrestles the Alligator, a motherless girl, staying in Grandpa Sawtooths old house until our father, Chief Bigtree, gets back from the Mainland, struggles to understand her big sisters blooming sexuality, which seems to grow scaly and incarnate. Timothy Sparrow and Waldo Swallow Heartland, the two brothers of Haunting Olivia, search for their sisters ghost near Gannons Boat Graveyard using a pair of magic swimming goggles. In the title story, the human daughters of werewolves are socialized into polite society. Russell has powers of description and mimicry reminiscent of Jonathan Safron Foer (My father, the Minotaur, is more obdurate than any man, begins Childrens Reminiscences of the Westward Migration), and her macabre fantasies structurally evoke great Southern writers like Flannery OConnor. If, at 24, Russell hasnt quite found a theme beyond growing up is hard to do (especially if youre a wolf girl), her assorted siblings are rendered with winning flair as they gambol, perilously and charmingly, toward adulthood. (Sept.) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From BooklistStarred Review Russells short stories, some of which have been published in the New Yorker and other journals, have already generated widespread attention, as has her youth at 24, shes been included in New York magazines list of 25 under 25 to Watch. This unusual, haunting collection confirms that the hype is well deserved. Like the individuals in Gina Oschners stories (People I Wanted to Be, 2005), Russells characters are caught between overlapping worlds--living and dead, primal and civilized, animal and human--and the adolescent narrators are neither children nor adults. Even the settings, the murky swamps and coasts of the Florida Everglades, reinforce the sense of wild impermanence. In Haunting Olivia, two brothers spend their nights diving in search of their drowned sisters ghost (Then what? Do we Genie-in-the-bottle her? one brother asks). The title story, about the daughters of werewolves who are sent to boarding school to learn human behavior, is unforgettable. Russell writes even the smallest details with audacious, witty precision an acne-plagued kids face is a pituitary horror, a patchwork of runny sores and sebaceous dips. And her scenes deftly balance mythology and the gleeful absurdity of Monty Python with a darker urgency to acknowledge the ancient, the infinite, and the inadequacies of being human Marooned in a clumsy body . . . Im an imposter, an imperfect monster, says a young diver among silvery, streamlined fish. Original and astonishing, joyful and unsettling, these are stories that will stay with readers. Gillian Engberg American Library Association. lt