2006, ISBN: 9780688177584

Hardcover

Vintage Books. Very Good. 5.08 x 1.62 x 7.79 inches. Paperback. 2006. 618 pages. <br>What is it to be human? This question, as in Birds ong, is at the heart of Human Traces. The st… More...

Vintage Books. Very Good. 5.08 x 1.62 x 7.79 inches. Paperback. 2006. 618 pages. <br>What is it to be human? This question, as in Birds ong, is at the heart of Human Traces. The story begins in Britta ny where a young, poor boy somehow passes his medical exams and g oes to Paris, where he attends the lectures of Charcot, the Paris ian neurologist who set the world on its head in the 1870s. With a friend, he sets up a clinic in the mysterious mountain district of Carinthia in south-east Austria. If The Girl at the Lion d'O r was a simple three-movement symphony, Birdsong an opera, Charlo tte Gray a complex four-movement symphony and On Green Dolphin St reet a concerto, then Human Traces is a Wagnerian grand opera. F rom the Hardcover edition. Editorial Reviews Review Faulks is b eyond doubt a master. -Financial Times One of the most impressiv e novelists of his generation. -Sunday Telegraph From the Hardco ver edition. About the Author Sebastian Faulks is best known for his French trilogy, The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Char lotte Gray. He has also worked extensively as a journalist. From the Hardcover edition. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I An evening mist, salted by the western sea, w as gathering on the low hills - reed-spattered rises running up f rom the rocks then back into the gorse- and bracken-covered count ry - and on to the roads that joined the villages, where lamps an d candles flickered behind the shutters of the grey stone houses. It was poor country - so poor, remarked the Curé, who had recent ly arrived from Angers, that the stones of the shore called out f or God's mercy. With the mist came sputtering rain, made invisibl e by the extinguished light, as it exploded like flung gravel at the windows, while stronger gusts made the shivering pine trees s hed their needles on the dark, sanded earth. Jacques Rebière lis tened to the sounds from outside as he looked through the window of his bedroom; for a moment, a dim moon allowed him to see cloud s foaming in the darkness. The weather reminded him, often, that it was not just he, at sixteen years old, who was young, but all mankind: a species that took infant steps on the drifts and fault s of the earth. Between the ends of his dirtied fingers, Jacques held a small blade which, over the course of several days, he ha d whetted to surgical sharpness. He pulled a candle closer. From downstairs he could hear the sound of his father's voice in reluc tant negotiation. The house was at the top of a narrow street th at ran off the main square of Sainte Agnès. Behind it, the villag e ended and there were thick woods - Monsieur Rebière's own prope rty - where Jacques was meant to trap birds and rabbits and preve nt other villagers doing likewise. The garden had an orchard of p ear and apple trees whose fruits were collected and set to keep i n one of the outbuildings. Rebière's was a house of many stores: of sheds with beaten earth underfoot and slatted wooden shelves; of brick-floored cellars with stone bins on which the cobwebs clo sed the access to the bottles; of barred pantry and latched larde r with shelves of nuts and preserved fruits. The keys were on a r ing in the pocket of Rebière's waistcoat. Although born no more t han sixty years earlier, he was known as 'old Rebière', perhaps f or the arthritic movement of his knees, when he heaved himself up from his chair and straightened the joints beneath his breeches. He preferred to do business standing up; it gave the transaction a temporary air, helping to convince the other party that bargai ning time was short. Old Rebière was a forester who worked as th e agent for a landowner from Lorient. Over the years he had done some business on his own account, acquiring some parcels of land, three cottages that the heirs did not want to keep, some fields and woodland. Most of his work was no more than that of bailiff o r rent collector, but he liked to try to negotiate private deals with a view to becoming a businessman in his own right. Born in t he year after Waterloo, he had lived under a republic, three king s and an emperor; twice mayor of the local town, he had found it made little difference which government was in Paris, since so fe w edicts devolved from the distant centre to his own Breton world . The parlour of the house had smoke-stained wooden panelling an d a white stone chimneypiece decorated with the carved head of a wild boar. A small fire was smouldering in the grate as Rebière a ttempted to conclude his meeting with the notary who had come to see him. He never invited guests into his study but preferred to speak to them in this public room, as though he might later need witnesses to what had passed between them. His second wife sat in her accustomed chair by the door, sewing and listening. Rebière' s tactic was to say as little as possible; he had found that sile nce, accompanied by pained inhalation, often induced nervousness in the other side. His contributions, when they were unavoidable, were delivered in a reluctant murmur, melancholy, full of a wear iness at a world that had obliged him to agree terms so self-woun ding. 'I am not a peasant,' he told his son. 'I am not one of th ose men you see portrayed at the theatre in Paris, who buries his gold in a sock and never buys a bonnet for his wife. I am a busi nessman who understands the modern world.' From upstairs, Jacque s could still hear his father's business murmur. It was true that he was not a peasant, though his parents had been; true too, tha t he was not the miser of the popular imagination, though partly because the amount of gold he had to hoard was not great enough: forty years of dealing had brought him a modest return, and perha ps, thought Jacques, this was why his father had forbidden him to study any further. From the age of thirteen, he had been set to work, looking after the properties, mending roofs and fences, cle aring trees while his father travelled to Quimper and Vannes to c ultivate new acquaintances. Jacques looked back to his table, no t wanting to waste the light of the wax candle he had begged from Tante Mathilde in place of the dingy ox-tallow which was all his father would allow him. He took the blade and began, very carefu lly, to make a shallow incision in the neck of a frog he had pinn ed, through its splayed feet, to the untreated wood. He had never attempted the operation before and was anxious not to damage wha t lay beneath the green skin, moist from the saline in which he h ad kept it. The frog was on its front, and Jacques's blade travel led smoothly up over the top of its head and stopped between the bulging eyes. He then cut two semicircular flaps to join at the n ape of the neck and pushed back the pouches of peeled skin, with their pearls of eyes. Beneath his delicate touch he could see now that there was little in the way of protection for the exposed b rain. He took out a magnifying glass. What is a frog's fury? he thought, as he gazed at the tiny thinking organ his knife had exp osed. It was beautiful. What does it feel for its spawn or its ma te or the flash of water over its skin? The brain of an amphibian is a poor thing, the Curé had warned him; he promised that soon he would acquire the head of a cow from the slaughterhouse, and t hen they would have a more instructive time. Yet Jacques was happ y with his frog's brain. From the side of the table he took two c opper wires attached at the other end to a brass rod that ran thr ough a cork which was in turn used to seal a glass bottle coated inside and out with foil. 'Jacques! Jacques! It's time for dinne r. Come to the table!' It was Tante Mathilde's voice; clearly Ja cques had not heard the notary depart. He set down the electrodes and blew out the candle, then crossed the landing to the top of the almost-vertical wooden staircase and groped his way down by t he familiar indentations of the plaster wall. His grandmother cam e into the parlour carrying a tureen of soup, which she placed on the table. Rebière and his wife, known to Jacques as Tante Mathi lde, were already sitting down. Rebière drummed his knife impatie ntly on the wood while Grandmère ladled the soup out with her sha king hand. 'Take a bowl out to . . .' Rebière jerked his head in the direction of the door. 'Wait,' said Grand-mère. 'There's so me rabbit, too.' Rebière rolled his eyes with impatience as the old woman went out to the scullery again and returned with a seco nd bowl that she handed to Jacques. He carried both dishes carefu lly to the door and took a lantern to light his way out into the darkness, watching his feet on the shiny cobbles of the yard. At the stable, he set down the food and pulled back the top half of the door; he peered in by the light of the flame and felt his nos trils fill with a familiar sensation. 'Olivier? Are you there? I 've brought dinner. There's no bread again, but there's soup and some rabbit. Olivier?' There was a sudden noise from the horse, like the rumbling clatter of a laden table being overturned, as s he shifted in the stall. 'Olivier? Please. It's raining. Where a re you?' Wary of the horse, who lashed out with her hind legs if frightened, Jacques freed the bolt of the door himself and made his way into the ripe darkness of the stable. Sitting with his b ack to the wall, his legs spread wide apart on the dung-strewn gr ound, was his brother. 'I've brought your dinner. How are you?' Jacques squatted down next to him. Olivier stared straight ahea d, as though unaware that anyone was there. Jacques took his brot her's hand and wrapped the fingers round the edge of the soup bow l, noticing what could be smears of excrement on the nails. Olivi er moved his head from side to side, thrusting it back hard again st the stable wall. He muttered something Jacques could not make out and began to scrape at his inner forearm as if trying to rid himself of a bothersome insect. Jacques took a spoonful of the s oup and held it up to Olivier's face. Gently, he prised open his lips and pushed the metal inwards. It was too dark to see how muc h went into his mouth and how much trickled down his tangled bear d. 'They want me to come, they keep telling me. But why should I go, when they know everything already?' 'Who, Olivier? Who does ?' Their eyes met. Jacques felt himself summed up and dismissed from Olivier's mental presence. 'Are you cold? Do you want more blankets?' Olivier became earnest.'Yes, yes, that's it, you've g ot to keep warm, you've to wrap up now the winter's coming. Look. Look at this.' He held up the frayed horse blanket beneath which he slept and examined it closely, as though he had not seen it b efore or had suddenly been struck by its workmanship. Then his v igour was quenched again and his gaze became still. Jacques took his hand. 'Listen, Olivier. It's nearly a year now that you've b een in here. Do you think you could try again? Why don't you come out for a few minutes? I could help.' 'They don't want me.' 'Y ou always say that. But perhaps they'd be happy to have you back in the house.' 'They won't let me go.' Jacques nodded. Olivier was clearly talking of a different 'they', and he was too frighte ned to contradict or to press him. He had been a child when Olivi er, four years the older, started to drift away from his family; it began when, previously a lively and sociable youth, he took to passing the evenings alone in his room studying the Bible and dr awing up a chart of 'astral influences'. Jacques was fascinated b y the diagrams, which Olivier had done in his clever draughtsman' s hand, using pens he had taken from the hôtel de ville, where he worked as a clerk. Jacques's experiences had usually come to hi m first through the descriptions of Olivier, who naturally antici pated all of them. Mathematics at school were a jumble of pointle ss signs, he said, that made you want to cry out; being beaten by the master's ruler on the knuckles hurt more than being kicked o n the shin by the broody mare. Olivier had never been to Paris, b ut Vannes, he told Jacques, was so huge that you got lost the mom ent you let your concentration go; and it was full of women who l ooked at you in a strange way. When changes came to your body, Ol ivier said, you noticed nothing, no hairs bursting the skin, no w rench in your voice; the only difference was that you felt urgent , tense, all the time, as though about to leap a stream or jump f rom a high rock. Olivier's chart of astral influences therefore looked to Jacques like another early glimpse of a universal human experience granted to him by his elder brother. Olivier had been right about everything else: in Vannes, Jacques kept himself ori entated at all times, like a dog sniffing the wind; he liked math ematics, though he saw what Oliver had meant. He avoided the mast er's beatings. 'Where is God in this plan?' he had said, pointin g with his finger. 'I see the planets and their influence and thi s character, here, whatever his name is. But in the Bible, it say s that-' 'God is here, in your head.And here.' Olivier pointed t o the chart. 'But it's a secret.' 'I don't understand,' said Jac ques. 'If this is Earth here, this is Saturn, and here are the ri ngs of Jupiter and this is the body you've discovered, the one th at regulates the movements of people, then what are these lines h ere? Are these the souls of the dead going up to Heaven?' 'Those are the rays of influence. They emanate from space, far beyond a nything we can see. These are what control you.' 'Rays?' 'Of co urse. Like rays of light, or invisible waves of sound. The univer se is bombarded with them.You can't hear them.You can't see them. ' 'Does everyone know about them? All grown-ups?' 'No.' 'How d o you know about them? Who told you?' 'I have been told.' Jacqu es looked away. Over the weeks, he discovered that Olivier's syst em of cosmic laws and influences was invulnerably cogent; there w as in fact something of the weary sage in his manner when he answ ered yet another of Jacques's immature questions about it, while its ability to adapt made it imperme, Vintage Books, 2006, 3, New York, NY: William Morrow, 2000 William Morrow, New York. 2000. Hardcover. Stated First Edition/First Printing by line number. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: Fine. DJ: Fine. Yellow boards with green overlay on spine with bright gold lettering on spine. 398 pp 8vo. In this book, stellar figures of country music recount the good, bad, and great times of country music during the past five decades. Emery begins by delving deep in the roots of country music in the 1950s and 1960s. He describes the stars and the changes they made to country music in the 70s and 80's and finally looks back on the stars of the past 10 years who helped sell more records than the country music industry ever dreamed possible. A clean pristine copy., William Morrow, 2000, 5<

2000, ISBN: 0688177581

Hardcover

[EAN: 9780688177584], Gebraucht, guter Zustand, [PU: William Morrow, New York, NY], COUNTRY MUSIC, PERFORMING STARS, MALE MUSIC SINGERS, FEMALE NASHVILLE, RALPH EMERY, EMERY SHOW, GRAND O… More...

[EAN: 9780688177584], Gebraucht, guter Zustand, [PU: William Morrow, New York, NY], COUNTRY MUSIC, PERFORMING STARS, MALE MUSIC SINGERS, FEMALE NASHVILLE, RALPH EMERY, EMERY SHOW, GRAND OLD OPRY, CITY USA,, Biography & Autobiography|Personal Memoirs, Technology|Television & Video, Technology|Radio, Biography & Autobiography|Musicians & Composers, Music|Bluegrass, Music|Country, Jacket, William Morrow, New York. 2000. Hardcover. Stated First Edition/First Printing by line number. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: Fine. DJ: Fine. Yellow boards with green overlay on spine with bright gold lettering on spine. 398 pp 8vo. In this book, stellar figures of country music recount the good, bad, and great times of country music during the past five decades. Emery begins by delving deep in the roots of country music in the 1950s and 1960s. He describes the stars and the changes they made to country music in the 70s and 80's and finally looks back on the stars of the past 10 years who helped sell more records than the country music industry ever dreamed possible. A clean pristine copy., Books<

ISBN: 9780688177584

William Morrow. Hardcover. GOOD. Spine creases, wear to binding and pages from reading. May contain limited notes, underlining or highlighting that does affect the text. Possible ex lib… More...

William Morrow. Hardcover. GOOD. Spine creases, wear to binding and pages from reading. May contain limited notes, underlining or highlighting that does affect the text. Possible ex library copy, will have the markings and stickers associated from the library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included., William Morrow, 2.5<

2000, ISBN: 0688177581

[EAN: 9780688177584], usado, muito bom estado, [SC: 18.93], [PU: William Morrow], Jacket, Very Good condition. Good dust jacket. With remainder mark., Books