Recollections may vary in the best Retros out now: SO LONG, SEE YOU TOMORROW, THE BATTLE OF THE VILLA FIORITA by Rumer Godden, DUEL DUET by Graham Greene
Based on real events of his 1920s childhood in rural Illinois, including his mother's early death, Maxwell voices an elderly narrator looking back on the tragic story of his friend Cletus Smith.
Cletus's mother, Fern, had an affair with neighbouring farmer Lloyd Wilson, her husband Clarence's best friend, and they divorce. Driven to despair, Clarence shoots Lloyd dead before killing himself and Fern moves to Chicago with her son.
Later, in Chicago, the boys meet in a school corridor and say nothing – causing a lifetime of regret for the narrator. But in retelling, he finds truth may be different from memory, and his search for forgiveness is fruitless. Extraordinary.
THE BATTLE OF THE VILLA FIORITA by Rumer Godden (Virago £9.99, 304pp)
When charismatic film director Rob arrives in their village, Fanny realises how suffocated she is by her marriage to Army colonel Darrell and raising their three children. So begins a passionate affair that ends in divorce and she and Rob flee to the beautiful Villa Fiorita, near Lake Garda.
But devastated youngest child, Caddie, 11, travels with brother Hugh, 14, to the villa to bring their mother home – a mission complicated by the arrival of Rob's spoilt daughter and a boat accident.
Descriptions of the Italian setting are gorgeous but the real strength is in the childlike perspective that cannot see Fanny's rekindled joy or the conflicting loyalties that dictate the ending.
DUEL DUET by Graham Greene (Vintage Classics £18.99, 400pp)
This ingenious volume of paired stories is a wonderful introduction to the short fiction of Graham Greene.
Selected by novelist Yiyun Li, she creates either contrast (duel) or connection (duet) which sheds a new perspective on themes of conscience, crime, loneliness and fear.
The twin children of The End Of The Party, holding hands in the dark to calm one's fear, sit alongside The Case For The Defence where an identical brother can save his sibling in a court case.
The past and the future link The Innocent and The Destructors, and Cheap In August and The Moment of Truth both convey the power of human compassion in the face of impending death. A master at work.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
4 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Nanny who had 'biohazard diarrhea' that canceled United flight reveals why she's HAPPY it happened
A nanny whose 'biohazard diarrhea' on board a United Airlines plane triggered flight cancelations has revealed why she is happy she went through the painful ordeal. Meghan Reinertsen, a 29-year-old actor from Atlanta, Georgia, spent 90 minutes locked inside the lavatory during a July 2024 flight from Newark to Indianapolis. Following her unfortunate ordeal, where 'more diarrhea than any human should ever have' came out of her, she took to TikTok to tell her then-53 followers all about it. Now, she has told the Daily Mail she is glad the incident happened because her experience has helped others deal with their own embarrassing, mid-air health matters. 'I'm happy that I have been able to make people feel better about their own situations,' she said in an exclusive interview. 'That's all I have ever wanted to do with my writing and entertainment. It's been really uplifting and encouraging for me. 'I have had an egregious amount of people reach out to me with their own plane horror stories, which I love to hear,' Reinertsen said. As well as prompting others to open up about their own embarrassing stories inside cramped airplane bathrooms, her story boosted her TikTok audience to a staggering 93,000 followers. Reinertsen revealed that the horrifying explosion was triggered by a few bites of a bloody hamburger patty, which gave her violent food poisoning. 'I had eaten part of an undercooked burger hours before I left to get back to Indiana,' she said. 'I only took a couple of bites because I was like: "Oof, that's really undercooked."' Reinertsen said she bought the burger at the resort where she had been staying as a nanny for a family who were on vacation at the time. 'I don't want to out the resort,' she said. 'It was a really nice hotel.' Reinertsen said the first signs something wasn't right came while she was strolling through the airport before her final connection, a two-hour flight. 'My stomach was rumbling,' she told the Daily Mail. 'I was like: "This is... different." 'But it really wasn't until I got on the second flight that the pain kicked in. I was like: "This is not good."' In her TikTok video about the nightmare experience, she detailed how within 30 minutes into her flight, she was drenched in sweat, crying and doubled over in pain. Fearing she'd end up like the infamous Delta passenger who soiled herself mid-flight, Reinertsen made it to the bathroom just in time. 'For the next 20 minutes I had more diarrhea than any human should ever have in their life,' she said, adding that she soon started vomiting as well. Reinertsen recalled panicking in the tiny, claustrophobic area before she had the presence of mind to scream for help from the flight attendants, who gave her bags. The flight crew allowed her to stay in the bathroom for the entire flight. They even got special clearance from the pilot to allow her to remain where she was for landing. Reinertsen said she couldn't make it back to her seat in her condition, which prompted the flight attendant to tell her through the door to 'brace for impact'. Once they were on the ground, she was told that the next flight with that plane had been canceled. 'A flight attendant comes over and says: "Everybody's off the plane now, go ahead and take your time and come out when you can, the next flight has been cancelled,"' Reinertsen said. 'In the moment, I'm not thinking it is because of me.' The flight attendant then told her that a hazmat team would be coming to clean up her mess. 'Got it, so you canceled that flight because of you don't know if I brought something back from Portugal. And I am a biohazard. I am patient zero,' she said. She even had to be put in a wheelchair when she was ready to disembark because she couldn't walk. Reflecting on the ordeal one year later, she told the Daily Mail she can 'absolutely' see the humorous side. 'Is this a funny story in hindsight? One hundred percent. This is so something that would happen to me,' Reinertsen said. 'Even in the midst of the pain, I was like: "Of course this would happen to me." I didn't really have time to be embarrassed. I was just like: "Oh this sucks." 'People [on the plane] aren't monsters and they knew what was going on.' 'We choose what we decide to be embarrassed by and this simply wasn't something I was embarrassed about,' she added. Despite the 'overwhelmingly positive response' to her story, Reinertsen said she was also heavily criticized by trolls. 'There are obviously people who are nitpicking my every move and decision,' she said. 'I only had two hours to get to my flight, I didn't have time to really think about it. 'I didn't have a moment to stop and make a decision about it because I was just trying to make my flight.' Reinertsen also dispelled rumors that she 'destroyed' the plane bathroom.
Daily Mail
4 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
And Just Like That showrunner couldn't 'keep going' with new episodes after controversial finale
On Thursday night, the infamous Sex and the City spinoff, And Just Like That, ended its run with the series finale - and now showrunner Michael Patrick King has revealed why they couldn't 'keep going.' The spinoff, which stars Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, Kristin Davis as Charlotte York, and Cynthia Nixon as Miranda Hobbes, is about the beloved characters navigating New York City in their fifties. The original Sex and the City ran from June 6, 1998 to February 22, 2004. The HBO Max spinoff has had a three-season run - but last night marked the final episode. Now, King has revealed that they didn't start filming the season knowing that it would be their last, and shared why they ultimately came to that decision. 'The reality is, the decision was not made at the beginning of the season. The third season was going gangbusters in the writing room,' King told Variety in a new interview. 'And as the stories go, and the stories go, and the stories go, there's a reason I started saying, 'Don't repeat." You start to realize - and it's part muse, part smarts - 'This is where it's going,"' he explained. 'When Susan Fales-Hill and I were writing the last episode, which is in the middle [of the season's production], all of a sudden we came up with that moment for the end of the series and the season. 'The woman realized she was not alone - she was on her own,"' King said, referencing the executive producer. King explained that he believed the ending felt 'profound,' and after a conversation with Parker, they both agreed that it was where they should stop the series. The final episode showed Carrie finally feeling comfortable with being single, as she finished her historical novel that took a few cues from her own story. She realized that the novel's protagonist 'was not alone, she was on her own.' King told Variety that he is so proud of what they've accomplished, especially when it comes to Carrie's character. 'She's made her mark, and, as a writer, I feel we've made our mark. I never thought once about continuing,' King told the outlet. 'Telling it like it is: It's an instinct. Anyone else could keep going. I can't.' However, it doesn't seem like all AJLT fans were happy with the final episode of the series. Many took to X to share their thoughts - as the final scene involved a clogged toilet, and fans slammed it as 'disgusting' on social media. 'Why am I saying farewell to some of my favorite TV characters of all time and seeing a toilet overflow on my screen?' one person wrote. Another agreed, 'It's a choice to make the series finale have 3 scenes involving s*** and piss… the writers def hate us.' 'You had and just like that finale and not one scene shared with all 3 girls is crazy,' someone else pointed out. Another seconded, 'After six seasons, two movies, and three reboot seasons. THIS is how you end it? The fans and these characters deserved so much more. I refuse to accept this mess.' Others praised the series finale and enjoyed how the show ended. 'I hope this is a safe place to say that I didn't find this episode of And Just Like That *that* bad (but obviously it wasn't what I expected for the finale),' one X user admitted. Someone else wrote, 'Didn't think I would get emotional about 'and just like that' ending. No more sex and the city.'
Daily Mail
4 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Anger after Howard Stern's crude 'ugliest girl' competition resurfaces
Shock jock radio host Howard Stern has been criticized after clips showing his 'Buttaface Competitions' to find 'ugliest' woman with the best body resurfaced online. Stern, 71, hosted the infamous 'Buttaface Contest' in Las Vegas for many years in the early 2000s, with viewers now criticizing the host for being 'derogatory' and 'heartless'. The competition involved women parading around in bikinis to show off their bodies to a stadium of people while wearing a paper bag on their heads to hide their faces. During the competition, contestants would eventually take the bags off their heads to reveal their faces to a jeering crowd, while the panel of judges made comments about their appearance and gave them a score out of 10. The judges and crowd would act shocked and disgusted as the women took off the bags after parading around in skimpy bikinis and heels. As Stern said himself in a clip circulating online, the competition was to find the woman with 'the best body and the worst face,' with the winner of the competition winning $25,000. The slang term 'butterface' is used to describe a person with an attractive body but what it considered to be a less attractive face, with the phrase a play on 'but her face'. Clips from 2004 in particular have been heavily circulated on social media, showing Stern and the judges and co-hosts making cruel jokes about the women's faces while objectifying and sexualizing their bodies. In one clip, the panel made crude comments about a contestant named Stacey, saying: 'I noticed she shaves her private region and I like her a** tattoo, gives you something to look at,' before Stern tells her to take the paper bag off her head. Once she does, the crowd erupts in shock, with some making faces like they were about to vomit, laughing hysterically, or even putting their hands over their face in disgust. In most of the clips available online, the contestants look visibly upset as they're booed and shouted at by the rowdy crowd. Horrified users commented on the clips, in disbelief over the callousness of the competition. 'This is terrible, meanwhile the girl is gorgeous and you can see how bothered she is by it all,' someone wrote. 'She should've never been wearing a bikini and in this situation with Howard Stern the degenerate. Best part is, the panel is all uglier inside and out.' 'Artie Lange and Howard Stern are judging people for having 'ugly' faces?! The absolute irony,' someone else weighed in. 'I feel sorry for every single girl who had ever been to this show and got called hideous/ugly. This show is a blatant evidence of women getting objectified and shamed altogether,' wrote another. While many were disgusted over the competition, others didn't see the issue with it. 'Seriously getting offended by a bit from 30 years ago? As if they rounded up women and forced them to be in this competition. The world was different, Stern would have told you that you look like someone Yassified one of the Costco guys,' one objected. The Daily Mail has reached out to representatives for Stern for comment. Stern first launched The Howard Stern Show in 1986 on the radio. His popularity peaked in the '90s when he became a media sensation for his shock jock stunts and outrageous no-holds-barred interviews. In 1997, he starred in his own feature film about his life and career called Private Parts and released a handful of best-selling books. Stern has hosted the second incarnation of The Howard Stern Show since 2006, but as the end of his $500million five-year contract looms, speculation is swirling that the show is 'doomed' after the star became 'woke' and listener numbers fell. However, a defiant Stern is reportedly planning to hit back and resurrect his career, even as the future of his long-running SiriusXM radio show hangs in the balance.
