The Hollow Land

The Hollow Land
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مشارکت: عنوان و توضیح کوتاه هر کتاب را ترجمه کنید این ترجمه بعد از تایید با نام شما در سایت نمایش داده خواهد شد.
iran گزارش تخلف

فرمت کتاب

ebook

تاریخ انتشار

2015

نویسنده

Jane Gardam

ناشر

Europa

شابک

9781609452568
  • اطلاعات
  • نقد و بررسی
  • دیدگاه کاربران
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نقد و بررسی

Publisher's Weekly

November 24, 2014
Fans of Gardam’s Old Filth trilogy will be pleased to discover this book of linked stories, first published in 1981. The collection follows the friendship of Harry Bateman and Bell Teasdale and their mischievous adventures in the Cumbrian countryside—or what Bell’s grandfather calls “the hollow land.” Harry, the son of a writer, is a Londoner who spends summers in a farmhouse that belongs to Bell’s family. The duo gets trapped in an abandoned silver mine, nearly freeze to death chasing icicles in a blinding snowstorm, and encounter characters such as Granny Crank, aka the Egg Witch and, later, a long-absent uncle who returns to claim the house Harry rents. Gardam has created an engaging rural landscape with its own dialect, ghosts, and legends. “The evening,” she writes, “gentle with warmth of the long day, smelled of gorse and wild thyme and a hundred miles of clean turf.” Yet it is not so much the sense of place but rather the shared experiences of one country boy and one city chap that connect the stories. Like Mark Twain’s depictions of youth, Gardam demonstrates that the enduring lessons of boyhood and lifelong friendship can delight readers of any age.



Kirkus

November 15, 2014
Two boys from different social classes become friends for life; their families follow suit.These linked stories from 1981 join last year's reissue of A Long Way From Verona; both predate by many years the English author's acclaimed Old Filth trilogy. Up in Westmorland, in England's far north, farmers have worked the land for hundreds of years. By the 1970s they have started summer rentals for "incomers." So the Batemans from London rent from the Teesdales. Things start badly. Mr. Bateman is a journalist who needs peace and quiet; the racket of harvest time almost drives him back to London. The mothers save the day, with behind-the-scenes help from their sons: Bell Teesdale, who's 8, and Harry Bateman, a good bit younger. The kids hit it off from the get-go. Harry becomes so fluent in the local dialect that Bell teasingly reproves him, "Speak right, can't yer. You'll finish up a savage." He mentors little Harry, showing him a secret opening to an abandoned silver mine, where a rock fall traps them. The lads get trapped again in a huge snowstorm, and when Harry begs Bell to save them, the older boy, in an echo of A.A. Milne, "felt very young indeed." Familiar childhood escapades, yes, but Gardam makes them glow by seeing them through a child's eyes, as she did in Verona. She gives weight to the tall tales and ghost stories of the region but is not above tweaking them mischievously. Only in the last story ("Tomorrow's Arrangements") does she fumble. A distant relative, a smooth operator, arrives from Brazil to lay claim to the farmhouse the Batemans still rent in 1999; it's an improbable, large-scale development in a work whose success is tied to the small-scale. Winner of the Whitbread Award when it was first published, this is a buoyant collection that's not just for Gardam completists.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.



Library Journal

January 1, 2015

Originally published in 1981 in the UK and winner of the Whitbread Children's Book Award, this is a charming story for all ages about a community in Cumbria in England where the oil crisis has forced the people to practice premechanical farming methods. A London family named the Batemans rents a farm for the summer holidays and returns year after year. Son Harry becomes fast friends with Bell Teasdale, a local farmer's son, and together they get into mischief on a regular basis. As the years pass, the Batemans become an accepted part of the community. Only when an outsider threatens to ruin their way of life do the families truly understand how close they have become. VERDICT The only author to have won two Whitbread prizes (her second was 1991's The Queen of the Tambourine), Gardam brings the Cumbrian countryside and its people alive, weaving in superstition, magic, ghosts and cosmic events while telling her story. Highly recommended for all readers of fiction.--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.




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