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Bezig met laden... The Paradise Enginedoor Rebecca Campbell
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While working to restore an historic theatre in a seedy part of the city, a graduate student named Anthea searches to find her best friend, lost to the rhetoric of an itinerant street mystic. Almost a century earlier, Liam, a tenth-rate tenor, visits the same theatre while eking out a career on the dying Vaudeville circuits of the day. In both eras, an apocalyptic strain of mysticism threatens their existence: Anthea contends with a nascent New Age movement in the heart of the city while Liam encounters a radical theosophical commune along the coast of British Columbia, who appear to be building ... something. The Paradise Engine unfolds across a colourful backdrop of labour organizers, immaculately-attired cultists, ambitious socialites, basement offices and coffee shops. Its cast of characters and historical setting recalls Robertson Davies' Fifth Business or Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day, while its approach to memory and community is reminiscent of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Praise for The Paradise Engine "[a] mystifying story that melds the Vaudeville era of Vancouver history with contemporary Vancouver." ~ BC Bookworld "Rebecca Campbell brings intelligence and mystery to this strange indie tale." ~ Thomas Hodd, Telegraph-Journal "What The Paradise Engine invites us to consider is the form, the meaning, and the price of going on. Immortality, the story warns us, always demands a sacrifice." ~ Jennifer Quist, The Rusty Toque Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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![]() GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:![]()
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In her first novel, set in British Columbia, Campbell interweaves the stories of Anthea, a contemporary graduate student working on the restoration of an old opera house, and Liam, a third-rate tenor performing on the Vaudeville circuits of the 1920s and 1930s. Both become peripherally involved with mystical cult figures trying to draw followers into their orbits, and the lives of each seem to dwindle away as the novel progresses and ends.
While there are fascinating glimpses of lives in Western Canada now and, even more so, nearly a hundred years ago, the novel seems to tell tales of dissolution and decay. I was involved in the reading of the novel, but I think Campbell did not entirely resolve the issues that confront many first-time novelists. Promise is there, but not completely fulfilled in this novel. (