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Aerogrammes: And Other Stories (2012)

by Tania James(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0307268918 (ISBN13: 9780307268914)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Knopf

review 1: I'd heard of this title for years. Many versions/translations-from-the-Middle-English are out there, and I can't comment on how one compares to another, or which translation is closest to the original. I'm not sure I care much; I just want to understand the flow of the poem. This is a ballad, but since it's translated, you don't get a true feel for the original metre. The gist of the tale is that a mysterious green knight appears to King Arthur and his Round Table around the turn of the year, at the Christmas season, and issues a challenge; whoever is brave enough to use his own gigantic battleaxe and cut off his head will then need to show up a year later at the court of the green knight and bare his own neck to the axe. Brave Sir Gawain offers, and indeed--he does c... moreleave off the green knight's head. In true form to the grotesque humor that sometimes appears in the classics, the knight merely stands again, grabs his severed head, and trots away on his steed, reminding Gawain that he will need to find his way within a year to the mysterious land of the green knight. From here, much mystery and intrigue ensue. I will try not to spoil it all, but let me just say--there is plenty of sexism (yes, sex-ISM, not sex!) that finds its way into the moral of the story. I had to roll my eyes at that, but again, what can you expect of literature from the middle ages. An entertaining yarn. I finished it, appropriately enough, on Christmas Eve (the subtitle is "a Christmas Comedy.")
review 2: The best thing about Aerogrammes; a small collection of Tania James short stories, is the large variety of main characters. For the most part they all revolve around Indian families and the ways in which they attempt to hold onto their Eastern ways while still embracing the foreign American culture. We hear about the struggle from all sorts of different voices. Male,female, the old, the young. Even a chimpanzee and a ghost ! Now how do you top that ? less

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