The Black Swan: Memory, Midlife, and Migration

ISBN-13: 9781416575092 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 196 str.

Anne Batterson

Opis

Set against a spontaneous cross-country road trip following the migrating birds, this passionate, lyrical memoir is one woman's reflections on midlife, her important personal relationships, her kaleidoscopic past, and her uncertain future.

To fifty-six-year-old Anne Batterson, a woman whose life has been filled with adventure -- as a commercial pilot, an international skydiving champion, a trekking guide in Nepal -- her husband's decision to retire felt like a death sentence. Yearning for some way to reconcile herself to the future that was rapidly unfolding before her, she packed up her VW camper and hit the road with maps, bird guides, and little else except the desire to follow the fall migration and the bone-deep hunch that birds had something important to teach her.

In this beautifully written narrative of that extraordinary trip, Batterson writes movingly not only about her experiences with the birds but also about the people she loves, has lost, and connects with along the way. Events from the present trigger vivid stories from the past. In the chapter "The Journey Within the Journey," a long, lonely night in a deserted campground in Virginia conjures up the ghosts of a desperate solo road trip she made when she was twenty-one. A towering cumulus cloud in Illinois brings back a breathtaking free fall into a similar cloud in "My Time as a Bird." An encounter with a great blue heron summons a compelling account of her mother's last afternoon in the world. "Bears in the Woods" describes a run-in with two Deliverance-type men in West Virginia, which brings back the murder of a dear friend in the woods of Connecticut.

By the end of the journey, the ghosts of the past, like the author herself, have become part of a more fluid, more spiritual reality -- wild and spare and elegant and timeless -- one that is always out there, "quickening on the far side of reality."

A unique mix of memoir and nature writing, The Black Swan is a charming story of a woman's odyssey.

Each an acclaimed author in his own right, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle have collaborated on some of the biggest bestsellers in science fiction history, including the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Footfall, as well as Lucifers Hammer, Inferno, Oath of Fealty, and The Mote in Gods Eye. Now Niven and Pournelle have combined their award-winning talents and imaginations to produce a masterpiece of epic fantasy that rivals the works of Robert Jordan and David Eddings.

Set in the world of Nivens popular The Magic Goes Away, The Burning City transports readers to an enchanted ancient city that often bears a provocative resemblance to our own modem society. Here Yagen-Atep, the volatile and voracious god of fire, holds sway, alternately protecting and destroying the citys denizens. In Teps Town, nothing can burn indoors and no fire can start: by accident -- except when the Burning comes upon the city. Then the people, possessed by Yagen-Atep, set their own town ablaze in a riotous orgy of destruction that often comes without warning.

Whandall Placehold has lived with the Burning all his life. Fighting his way to adulthood in the mean-but-magical streets of the citys most blighted neighborhoods, Whandall alone dreams of escaping the gods wrath to find a new and better life. But his best hope for freedom may lie with Morth of Atlantis, the enigmatic sorcerer who killed his father!

Both gritty and exotic, The Burning City is unique fantasy vision unlike any you have read before.