HjemGrupperSnakMereZeitgeist
Søg På Websted
På dette site bruger vi cookies til at levere vores ydelser, forbedre performance, til analyseformål, og (hvis brugeren ikke er logget ind) til reklamer. Ved at bruge LibraryThing anerkender du at have læst og forstået vores vilkår og betingelser inklusive vores politik for håndtering af brugeroplysninger. Din brug af dette site og dets ydelser er underlagt disse vilkår og betingelser.

Resultater fra Google Bøger

Klik på en miniature for at gå til Google Books

Indlæser...

School for Love (1951)

af Olivia Manning

Andre forfattere: Se andre forfattere sektionen.

MedlemmerAnmeldelserPopularitetGennemsnitlig vurderingOmtaler
2741596,042 (3.85)68
Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML:

Jerusalem in 1945 is a city in flux: refugees from the war in Europe fill its streets and cafés, the British colonial mandate is coming to an end, and tensions are on the rise between the Arab and Jewish populations. Felix Latimer, a recently orphaned teenager, arrives in Jerusalem from Baghdad, biding time until he can secure passage to England. Adrift and deeply lonely, Felix has no choice but to room in a boardinghouse run by Miss Bohun, a relative he has never met. Miss Bohun is a holy terror, a cheerless miser who proclaims the ideals of a fundamentalist group known as the Ever-Readies--joy, charity, and love--even as she makes life a misery for her boarders. Then Mrs. Ellis, a fascinating young widow, moves into the house and disrupts its dreary routine for good.

Olivia Manning's great subject is the lives of ordinary people caught up in history. Here, as in her panoramic depiction of World War II, The Balkan Trilogy, she offers a rich and psychologically nuanced story of life on the precipice, and she tells it with equal parts compassion, skepticism, and humor.… (mere)

Indlæser...

Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog.

Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog.

» Se også 68 omtaler

Viser 1-5 af 15 (næste | vis alle)
P.79
"The door into the courtyard lay open and Felix went to it, oddly apprehensive. The cage stood on the ground and the rats within it were darting about in terror, their fur on fire. Maria stood watching them with the kerosene can still in her hand. The smoke that arose filled the air with an acrid stench of burning fur.
Felix shouted at Maria: :what are you doing? How could you do it? Stop it. Stop it at once.'
She lifted a bewildered and simple face: 'good to kill them,' she said.
'But not like that. How beastly, how cruel! We must stop it.' He ran to the kitchen to get water, but Maria caught his arm. 'See, already dead. Very quick, this.'
It was true the rats had toppled over, dead or overcome by smoke. They lay motionless, letting the fire consume them."

Felix is a teenage orphan, sent to Jerusalem during WWII, with the death of his mother, from Baghdad. He stays with a penny-pinching, manipulative Foster aunt, who saves one bedroom in her pension for the Second Coming. This ridiculous woman character had me laughing out loud in some parts:
P.114
" 'And then, Miss Bohun gives the sermon.'
'Really! Does she preach a sermon at every meeting?'
'No. There are visiting preachers. There are "Ever - Ready's" in Beirut, in Cyprus, in Cairo... Sometimes they come here for the entertainments.'
'The entertainments?' breathed Mrs. Ellis.
'Oh!' Nikky made a gesture that exceeded all his others in the expression of the inexpressible. 'The entertainments! Last year there was a play which she wrote herself.'
'No!'
'Indeed, yes; and she played the chief part -- a man!'
'I don't believe it.'
'Yes. She fancies herself in male costume, you know. In all her plays there is a chief part, a man in an historical dress, and she is it!'
'Oh! And what was her play about?'
'Ask another person -- not me. It was very symbolical; full of ambiguities. Poetry today must be full of ambiguities.'
'But surely it wasn't written in poetry?'
'There, dear lady, you say it -- but Miss Bohun, she said it was poetry. And this play was about a mysterious stranger who visits the court of the king of Spain. Who is this stranger? Ah, Who knows! But the king of Spain -- our own Miss Bohun -- He knows. And see our Miss Bohun of the Black Velvet suit -- so!' Nikky indicated balloon sleeves, 'pearls -- so! A great cross here,' Nikky swung a hand in front of his chest. 'Magnificent! And the stranger -- that is old Mr. Buffy who has a beard -- has just a white robe and sandals. A small part. He comes -- and then he goes.'
'But where did the costumes come from?'
'The YMCA wardrobe. Pre - war. Very good. Oh, yes, very good! And every time the king of Spain spoke he marched to the footlight, threw out his chest, so! Threw out his hand, so! And shouted to the back...' Nikky raised his voice and again the cafe was startled. Felix pushed aside his lemonade so that he could prop his head up to laugh; tears ran down his cheeks. He had never dreamt Nikky could be so funny, but Nikky was going to be much funnier. Suddenly he rolled his eyes from Felix to Mrs. Ellis, and whispered:
'Then someone laughed. Hey!' He threw out a hand like a policeman stopping the traffic and imitated Miss Bohun's voice calling " 'Stop the play! Stop! Stop, at once! Now, who laughed?' No one replies. So! She shouts:
'Put the lights on!' and someone in the dark puts out the footlights. 'No, no, put on the lights! In the hall!' off goes all the lights on the stage -- on go the hall lights, off go the hall lights, on go the stage lights -- ' No, no, no. Put off the lights -- put on the lights -- put off the lights..."
Felix was convulsed: he leant weakly on his hands, sobbing and near hysteria. Mrs. Ellis had tears in her eyes, her cigarette burnt forgotten in her hand."

Despite being hilariously funny in places, this book is also extremely sad. It's a coming-of-age story, where Felix starts out as an innocent child, and ends up too wise to the wicked ways of the adults around him. ( )
  burritapal | Oct 23, 2022 |
Idiosyncratic, but one of the great educations on love. Not the prose of Shirley Hazzard, but the narrative skill. Will stick with you for quite a while. ( )
  Andrei109 | Feb 19, 2022 |
Felix lost his father in the war, and his mother dies shortly afterwards of typhoid. He is sent from Iraq where they had been living to Jerusalem to stay with a distant elderly relative until he can be sent back to England. The relative, Miss Bohun, is involved with a religious fundamentalist group. She is extremely stingy, feeding Felix barely enough to keep him alive, while congratulating herself on not participating in the black market.
In fact the book could be read as a character study of Miss Bohun. She is constantly congratulating herself on how good and generous she is, the perfection of her character. We, the readers see through her, but Felix does not, and despite her mistreatment of him, thinks she is an admirable character. "He was always reflecting how honest she was, how good to people, how right in her judgement. It did not seem to him possible that she could be anything but right...."
Then, Miss Bohun takes in another boarder, a war widow, Mrs. Ellis. Felix soon transfers his loyalties to Mrs. Ellis, and through his experiences with her comes to see reality.
I mostly enjoyed this coming of age novel, set in an exotic location and somewhat distant past.

3 stars ( )
  arubabookwoman | Dec 30, 2021 |
Manning put me back in school.
  wbell539 | Dec 22, 2021 |
Published in 1951 this novel tells the story of Felix an orphan from England who is sent out to a distant relative who has a house in Jerusalem. Felix a young adolescent arrives full of insecurities to live in a boarding house near the old town run by Miss Bohun. It is 1944 and Jerusalem was still under British mandate, but as the world war was coming to an end both Arab and Jewish communities were becoming apprehensive of what would happen next. Felix is largely unaware of the bigger picture as he grows up in the seclusion of Miss Bohun's establishment amongst other poor refugees.

Olivia Manning arrived in Jerusalem in 1943 and spent three years their with her husband, she worked as a press assistant with the Jerusalem Post and then with the British Council and so was well placed to write a novel about the experiences of refugees or itinerant workers. It was a period when house owners or managers expected to be able to employ servants and Miss Bohun's Misboon house had the Lezno family (jews escaped from Poland) living in and paying for their keep by working. Felix arrives in winter to a cold house and an unfriendly household. He worshipped his mother who had recently died and disruptions to his schooling had made him naive and lonely and the first part of the book describes his difficulties in adapting to this new and foreign household. His only friend is Faro: Miss Bohun's siamese cat. The cold winter gives way to spring and Felix's boredom is alleviated by the arrival of Mrs Ellis a young woman whose husband has been killed in the war. Felix's year of growing up sees him move from being a child who blushes at the mere presence of Miss Ellis to wanting to become her friend and even her protector.

Towards the end of the book when Felix has learned more about how adult people behave towards each other Miss Ellis tells him about a poem she remembers and when Felix asks her what it means she says:

"I suppose it means that life is a sort of school for love"

She might have added that it was also a school of hard knocks where experience is hard won. Felix is the pupil; he must come to terms with Miss Bohuns hostility towards her boarders which is a result of her penny-pinching and her manipulating of the rooms to let. Miss Bohun is also a religious leader of a sect known as the Ever Readies (they are ever ready for the second coming) and she prides herself on her good works and is occasionally kind towards others. Felix asks one of the other boarders if Miss Bohun is wicked and he replies:

"Don't use that silly word Felix, Of course I don't. She's absurd and tactless and a busybody, probably no worse. She belongs to a generation that seems to combine thinking the worst of everybody with trying to do the best for them. I expect she's awfully innocent."

Felix must also come to terms with Miss Ellis whose battles with Miss Bohun make Felix a sort of piggy-in-the-middle. He does not know who to trust or who to love, their mood changes leave him confused and he also has much to learn about the Lezno family.

The year in Jerusalem is a bildungsroman for Felix and Misboon house is a world within a world. Mannings description of the household is full of atmosphere and when the occupants venture outside she portrays their excursions into a more exotic world with a feel for its different environment. I found it a gentle story, but readers today may find it a little too optimistic. It is well written with excellent characters and observations, well worth reading and so 3.5 stars ( )
1 stem baswood | Oct 16, 2020 |
Viser 1-5 af 15 (næste | vis alle)
ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse

» Tilføj andre forfattere

Forfatter navnRolleHvilken slags forfatterVærk?Status
Manning, Oliviaprimær forfatteralle udgaverbekræftet
Smiley, JaneIntroduktionmedforfatternogle udgaverbekræftet

Tilhører Forlagsserien

Du bliver nødt til at logge ind for at redigere data i Almen Viden.
For mere hjælp se Almen Viden hjælpesiden.
Kanonisk titel
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen Viden Redigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
Originaltitel
Alternative titler
Oprindelig udgivelsesdato
Personer/Figurer
Vigtige steder
Vigtige begivenheder
Beslægtede film
Indskrift
Tilegnelse
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen Viden Redigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
To Robert Liddell
Første ord
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen Viden Redigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
When they reached the top of the hill from which the road snaked down in Seven Sisters' bend, the driver nodded to the opposite hill and said: 'El-telq.'
Citater
Sidste ord
Oplysning om flertydighed
Forlagets redaktører
Bagsidecitater
Originalsprog
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen Viden Redigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

Henvisninger til dette værk andre steder.

Wikipedia på engelsk

Ingen

Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML:

Jerusalem in 1945 is a city in flux: refugees from the war in Europe fill its streets and cafés, the British colonial mandate is coming to an end, and tensions are on the rise between the Arab and Jewish populations. Felix Latimer, a recently orphaned teenager, arrives in Jerusalem from Baghdad, biding time until he can secure passage to England. Adrift and deeply lonely, Felix has no choice but to room in a boardinghouse run by Miss Bohun, a relative he has never met. Miss Bohun is a holy terror, a cheerless miser who proclaims the ideals of a fundamentalist group known as the Ever-Readies--joy, charity, and love--even as she makes life a misery for her boarders. Then Mrs. Ellis, a fascinating young widow, moves into the house and disrupts its dreary routine for good.

Olivia Manning's great subject is the lives of ordinary people caught up in history. Here, as in her panoramic depiction of World War II, The Balkan Trilogy, she offers a rich and psychologically nuanced story of life on the precipice, and she tells it with equal parts compassion, skepticism, and humor.

No library descriptions found.

Beskrivelse af bogen
Haiku-resume

Current Discussions

Ingen

Populære omslag

Quick Links

Vurdering

Gennemsnit: (3.85)
0.5
1
1.5
2 3
2.5 2
3 7
3.5 5
4 25
4.5 3
5 9

Er det dig?

Bliv LibraryThing-forfatter.

NYRB Classics

Een udgave af denne bog er udgivet af NYRB Classics.

» Information om udgiveren

 

Om | Kontakt | LibraryThing.com | Brugerbetingelser/Håndtering af brugeroplysninger | Hjælp/FAQs | Blog | Butik | APIs | TinyCat | Efterladte biblioteker | Tidlige Anmeldere | Almen Viden | 203,226,085 bøger! | Topbjælke: Altid synlig