SCRIBBLE
Miss Hale’s Recommended Reads As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner The death and burial of Addie Bundren is told by members of her family, as they cart the coffin to Jefferson, Mississippi, to bury her among her people. And as the intense desires, fears and rivalries of the family are revealed in the vernacular of the Deep South, Faulkner present a portrait of extraordinary power - as epic as the Old Testament, as American as Huckleberry Finn.
Independent People by Halldór Laxness This huge, bleakly comic and humane revelation of a novel is set in rural Iceland in the early twentieth century, written by the 1955 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, dubbed the ‘Tolstoy of the North’. A magnificent portrait of the eerie Icelandic landscape and a man’s dogged struggle for independence. Bjartur is a sheep farmer determined to eke a living from a blighted patch of land. Nothing, not merciless weather, nor the First World War, nor his family will come between him and his goal of financial independence. Only Asta Solillja, the child he brings up as his daughter, can pierce his stubborn heart. As she grows up, keen to make her own way in the world, Bjartur’s obstinacy threatens to estrange them forever.
Scythe by Neal Shusterman (YA Read) A dark, gripping and witty thriller in which the only thing humanity has control over is death. Set in the far future, where death by natural causes has been virtually eliminated thanks to advances in technology, and an advanced computer system known as the “Thunderhead” controls society. In a world where disease, war and crime have been eliminated, the only way to die is to be randomly killed (“gleaned”) by professional scythes. Citra and Rowan are teenagers who have been selected to be scythes’ apprentices, and despite wanting nothing to do with the vocation, they must learn the art of killing and understand the necessity of what they do. Only one of them will be chosen as a scythe’s apprentice and as Citra and Rowan come up against a terrifyingly corrupt Scythedom, it becomes clear that the winning apprentice’s first task will be to glean the loser.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner’s first extended attempt at the stream-of-consciousness narrative technique that he successfully employed in As I Lay Dying. Both novels also concern familial relationships and include penetrating psychological portraits. Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, The Sound and the Fury explores intense, passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness.
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