Literaire roman, novelle
Virago Modern Classics Heartburn
A BESTSELLING NOVEL AND MAJOR FILM STARRING MERYL STREEP AND JACK NICHOLSON
'I have bought more copies of this book to give to people, in a frenzy of enthusiasm, than any other . . . Heartburn is the perfect, bittersweet, sobbingly funny, all-too-true confessional novel' NIGELLA LAWSON
'Never fails to make me laugh . . . I cannot get through more than five lines without cracking up' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS, author of QUEENIE, RED
'A perfect example of Ephron's gift for turning tragedy into comedy' PAULA HAWKINS, author of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
'She is wit without cynicism, the ultimate romantic' GAIL COLLINS, NEW YORK TIMES
Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel discovers that her husband is in love with another woman. The fact that this woman has a 'neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb' is no consolation. Food sometimes is, though, since Rachel is a cookery writer, and between trying to win Mark back and wishing him dead, she offers us some of her favourite recipes. Heartburn is a roller coaster of love, betrayal, loss and most satisfyingly revenge.
This is Nora Ephron's (screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle) roman à clef: 'I always thought during the pain of the marriage that one day it would make a funny book,' she once said - And it is!
Books included in the VMC fortieth anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
Lees meer
Virago Modern Classics Rebecca
FALL IN LOVE WITH THE ICONIC GOTHIC CLASSIC
'An unforgettable masterpiece . . . filled with razor-sharp tension, escalating dread, and a twist that chills to the bone' FREIDA MCFADDEN
'It's the book every writer wishes they'd written' CLARE MACKINTOSH
He did not belong to me at all, he belonged to Rebecca. . .
Everyone knows that Maxim de Winter was obsessed with his glamorous wife - and devastated by her tragic death. So when he proposes to a shy, anxious young woman after a whirlwind meeting in the South of France, no one is more surprised than the new bride herself. But when they reach Manderley, his beautiful, isolated Cornish mansion, the second Mrs de Winter begins to realise that every inch of her new home - and everyone in it - still belongs to Rebecca.
'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY
'Rebecca has woven its way into the fabric of our culture with all the troubling power of myth or dream. A stunning book' SARAH PERRY
'The perfect story by the perfect storyteller' JOANNA CANNON
'One of my all-time favourites' ERIN MORGENSTERN
'Will chill you as much as any thriller' ALICE SLATER
'Daphne du Maurier created a scale by which modern women can measure their feelings' STEPHEN KING
'She's so deviant. So fascinating' EMERALD FENNELL
Virago Modern Classics The Fate of Mary Rose
THE PITCH-BLACK REDISCOVERED CLASSIC
From the Booker-shortlisted author of Great Granny Webster, this twisted modern classic is perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson and Celia Dale.
'One of the greatest, darkest writers who ever lived' Virginia Feito
'This chillingly profound story drips with classy darkness. . . a one-way descent into the abyss' Janice Hallett
'A dark masterpiece' Camilla Grudova
'I absolutely loved this . . . Creepy, atmospheric and dark as a village green at midnight' Alice Slater
'A devastating investigation of neurosis, hysteria and cruelty' Observer
'I read it with wide eyes and unsavoury glee' Sunday Times
'Caroline Blackwood sits firmly alongside the greats like Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith' Araminta Hall
'Compulsive, cruel and brilliant' Daily Mail
'Gimlet-eyed and masterful' Irish Independent
***
She was dead even before I became aware of her existence . . .
A child has been abducted from a sleepy Kent village, her face plastered across the media.
As the crime unleashes a wave of hysteria, the claustrophobic world of Rowan Anderson and his inscrutable wife begins to disintegrate. Consumed by her macabre fixation, Cressida is determined to save their sickly daughter, Mary Rose, from the same fate - and perhaps even from Rowan himself.
With caustic wit and pitch-black brilliance, Caroline Blackwood creates a skin-crawling - and utterly compulsive - story of repressed violence, female rage, and maternal obsession.
INTRODUCED BY CAMILLA GRUDOVA
Lees meer
Virago Modern Classics The Group
'Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant' COSMOPOLITAN
'A brilliant novel: honest, engaging and sharp as a tack' SARAH WATERS
'Lively, vivid and exceedingly entertaining' SUNDAY TIMES
Not one of them, if she could help it, was going to marry a broker or a banker or a cold-fish corporation lawyer. . .
New York, 1930. Eight Vassar graduates meet in New York to attend the wedding of one of their friends - and reconvene seven years later at her funeral. Young and fearless, they vow not to become stuffy and frightened like their parents, but to lead fulfilling, emancipated lives. But which of them will achieve that dream - and at what cost?
Ground-breaking in its fearless portrayal of female friendship, sex and the struggle to have it all, The Group was a revelation, a scandal, and an instant bestseller.
'McCarthy's characters confront many of the same issues as their modern counterparts: sex and contraception, career and marriage, love and lust, fidelity to one's husband versus loyalty to one's friends and the attempt to carve out a place for oneself unconstrained by the gender limitations of previous generations. Its continuing relevance is one of the book's most extraordinary attributes' ELIZABETH DAY, GUARDIAN
Virago Modern Classics The Stepdaughter
Discover Caroline Blackwood's darkly brilliant debut - a perfect rediscovered classic for fans of Shirley Jackson and Ottessa Moshfegh
'A bracingly nasty book . . . Splendid, dark, often very funny' MEGAN NOLAN, Telegraph
A lavish Upper West Side apartment is the site of a familial cold war about to enter a phase of dangerous escalation.
J is a lonely woman without the luxury of being alone. Her husband has fled to Paris with his latest flame, leaving J with not only their own four-year-old daughter, Sally Ann, but the sulky, cake-mix addicted, thirteen-year-old Renata, a leftover from his previous marriage.
Writing letters in her head to imaginary friends, J delights in dwelling on the hapless Renata, who 'invites a kind of cruelty'. This is an invitation J fully intends to take up - and like so many stepmothers before her, she will find that wickedness, once indulged, is a difficult habit to kick. A mordant black splinter of a book, Caroline Blackwood's first novel is a testament to her razor-sharp mastery - and mockery - of the darkest depths of human feeling.
'Contained and ferocious' TLS
'Punchy . . . a clever and perfectly formed novel' The Times
'One of the greatest, darkest writers who ever lived' VIRGINIA FEITO
'Witty, observant, clever' Guardian
'The perfect book for people who find Joan Didion too even-keeled, Renata Adler too fair-minded . . . In its own way, it's a perfect novel . . . It deserves to be a cheeky summer hit' LA REVIEW OF BOOKS
'Blackwood was in fact a writer of rare distinction, the author of wit-drenched books about the wages of class, women's inhumanity to women, bitchiness, greed, abjection, family, monsters' NEW YORKER
'Caroline Blackwood sits firmly alongside the greats like Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith. Her writing is smart, economical and as dark as night' ARAMINTA HALL
Virago Modern Classics Their Eyes Were Watching God
Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth.
When, at sixteen, Janie is caught kissing shiftless Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to an old man with sixty acres. Janie endures two stifling marriages before meeting the man of her dreams - who offers not diamonds, but a packet of flowering seeds. Rediscovered and championed by Alice Walker in the 1970s, Hurston's lyrical novel of self-discovery is now acclaimed as one of the greatest American classics of the twentieth century.
INTRODUCED BY ZADIE SMITH
'There is no novel I love more' ZADIE SMITH
'This novel is a packet of surprises' GUARDIAN
'One of the greatest writers of our time' TONI MORRISON
'Zora Neale Hurston was a knockout' MAYA ANGELOU
'There is no book more important to me than this one. It speaks to me as no novel, past or present, has ever done.' ALICE WALKER
Lees meer
Virago V S. Tipping The Velvet
From the oyster huts of Whitstable to the music halls of Victorian London, Tipping the Velvet is the glorious first novel from this much-loved author
'Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.'
A saucy, sensuous and multi-layered historical romance, Tipping the Velvet follows the glittering career of Nan King - oyster girl turned music-hall star turned rent boy turned East End 'tom'.
'Erotic and absorbing... Written with startling power' New York Times Book Review
'An unstoppable read, a sexy and picaresque romp through the lesbian and queer demi-monde of the roaries Nineties' Independent on Sunday
'Waters is an extremely confident writer, combining precise, sensuous descriptions with irony and wit' Observer
Lees meer
Viridian Deep Child of Light
“Enticing . . . Brooks’s fans will be thrilled to have a new series to savor.”—Publishers Weekly
At nineteen, Auris Afton Grieg has led an . . . unusual life. Since the age of fourteen, she has been trapped in a Goblin prison. Why? She does not know. She has no memories of her past beyond the vaguest of impressions. All she knows is that she is about to age out of the children’s prison, and rumors say that the adult version is far, far worse. So she and some friends stage a desperate escape into the surrounding wastelands. And it is here that Auris’s journey of discovery begins, for she is rescued by a handsome yet alien stranger.
Harrow claims to be Fae—a member of a magical race that Auris had thought to be no more than legend. Odder still, he seems to think that she is Fae as well, although the two look nothing alike. But strangest of all, when he brings her to his wondrous homeland, she begins to suspect that he is right. Yet how could a woman who looks entirely Human be a magical being herself?
Told with a fresh, energetic voice, this fantasy puzzle box is Terry Brooks as you have never seen him before, as one young woman slowly unlocks truths about herself and her world—and, in doing so, begins to heal both. Lees meer
Virtual Society
“This important book offers a highly persuasive argument that the metaverse, a new kind of virtual world, marks a profound next stage in this long human quest for fulfillment through creation.”—Chris Anderson, head of TED
The concept of “the metaverse” has exploded in the public consciousness, but its contours remain elusive. Is it merely an immersive virtual reality playground, one that Facebook and other platforms will angle to control? Is it simply the next generation of massive multiplayer online games? Or is it something more revolutionary?
As pioneering technologist Herman Narula shows, the metaverse is the latest manifestation of an ancient human tendency: the act of worldbuilding. From the Egyptians, whose conception of death inspired them to build the pyramids, to modern-day sports fans, whose passion for a game inspires extreme behavior, humans have long sought to supplement their day-to-day lives with a rich diversity of alternative experiences.
Rooting his vision in history and psychology, Narula argues that humans’ intrinsic need for autonomy, accomplishment, and connection can best be met in virtual “worlds of ideas,” where users have the chance to create and exchange meaning and value. The metaverse is both the growing set of fulfilling digital experiences—ranging from advanced gaming to concerts and other entertainment events and even to virtual employment—and the empowering framework that allows these spaces to become “networks of useful meaning.”
Bloomberg Intelligence recently predicted that the metaverse will become an $800 billon industry by 2024. But its implications, argues Narula, will lead to far more awe-inspiring possibilities than a spigot of cash. The arrival of the metaverse marks the beginning of a new age of exploration—not outward, but inward—with the potential to reshape society and open the door to a new understanding of the human species and its capabilities.
Rigorously researched and passionately argued, Virtual Society is a provocative and essential guide for anyone who wants to go beyond superficial headlines to understand the true contours and potential of our virtual future. Lees meer
