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The easy life / by Duras, Marguerite,author.; Baes, Olivia,translator.; Ramadan, Emma,translator.; translation of:Duras, Marguerite.Vie tranquille.English.;
"For the first time in English, from the literary icon and author of the classic novel The Lover, Marguerite Duras's foundational masterpiece about a young woman's existential breakdown in the deceptively peaceful French countryside. The Easy Life is the story of Francine Veyrenattes, a twenty-five-year-old woman who already feels like life is passing her by. Existence on her family farm is routine, mundane. But when she learns her uncle is having an affair with her brother's wife, she decides to bring the secret out into the open and shatter the seeming tranquility of their lives. Tragedy ensues, as Francine expected, but even amidst her grief, she continues to experience a curious detachment, an inability to navigate the world as others do. Hoping to be cleansed of what ails her, she travels to the coast to visit the sea, where she finds herself fully unraveling. Lying in the sun with her toes in the sand by day and psychologically dissolving in her hotel room by night, soon her inner crisis reaches its peak and she must grapple with whether to take hold of her own existence, or instead to surrender to the easy life. An extraordinary examination of a young woman's estrangement from the world that only Marguerite Duras could have written, The Easy Life is a work of unsettling beauty and insight, and a bold, spellbinding journey into the depths of the human heart"--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Existentialism; Families; Neurasthenia; Young women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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American breakdown : our ailing nation, my body's revolt, and the nineteenth-century woman who brought me back to life / by Lunden, Jennifer(Jennifer L.),1967-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author's quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James--ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America. When Jennifer Lunden became chronically ill after moving from Canada to Maine, her case was a medical mystery. Just 21, unable to hold a book or stand for a shower, she lost her job and consigned herself to her bed. The doctor she went to for help told her she was "just depressed." After suffering from this enigmatic illness for five years, she discovered an unlikely source of hope and healing: a biography of Alice James, the bright, witty, and often bedridden sibling of brothers Henry James, the novelist, and William James, the father of psychology. Alice suffered from a life-shattering illness known as neurasthenia, now often dismissed as a "fashionable illness." In this meticulously researched and illuminating debut, Lunden interweaves her own experience with Alice's, exploring the history of medicine and the effects of the industrial revolution and late-stage capitalism to tell a riveting story of how we are a nation struggling--and failing--to be healthy. Although science--and the politics behind its funding--has in many ways let Lunden and millions like her down, in the end science offers a revelation that will change how readers think about the ecosystems of their bodies, their communities, the country, and the planet."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Lunden, Jennifer (Jennifer L.), 1967-; James, Alice, 1848-1892; Chronic fatigue syndrome; Diagnosis; Discrimination in medical care; Women authors, American; Women; Women's health services;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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