McGrath, Melanie
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The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic
Melanie McGrath
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1400040477
Release Date: 2007-04-03 |
Book Description
In 1922 an Irish-American adventurer named Robert Flaherty made a film about Inuit life in the Arctic. Nanook of the North featured a mythical Eskimo hunter who lived in an igloo with his family in a frozen Eden. Nanook’s story captured the world’s imagination.
Thirty years later, the Canadian government forcibly relocated three dozen Inuit from the east coast of Hudson Bay to a region of the high artic that was 1,200 miles farther north. Hailing from a land rich in caribou and arctic foxes, whales and seals, pink saxifrage and heather, the Inuit’s destination was Ellesmere Island, an arid and desolate landscape of shale and ice virtually devoid of life. The most northerly landmass on the planet, Ellesmere is blanketed in darkness for four months of the year. There the exiles were left to live on their own with little government support and few provisions.
Among this group was Josephie Flaherty, the unrecognized, half-Inuit son of Robert Flaherty, who never met his father. In a narrative rich with human drama and heartbreak, Melanie McGrath uses the story of three generations of the Flaherty family—the filmmaker; his illegitimate son, Josephie; and Josephie’s daughters, Mary and Martha—to bring this extraordinary tale of mistreatment and deprivation to life.</p>
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- An inspiring-enlightening witty journey through the living d
- A British woman's journey through the Southwest
- new agers debunked
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Motel Nirvana: Dreaming of the New Age in the American Desert
Melanie McGrath
Manufacturer: Pica Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0312155905 |
Amazon.com
A 30-year-old British woman travels around the southwestern United States, the focal point of the New Age movement and a desert landscape where "someone you can rely upon to have an opinion about soap opera or McDonald's turns out to have seen angels in her backyard and the man who sells you a cup of coffee thinks himself a reincarnation of Nefertiti." McGrath struggles to maintain a sense of ironic amusement as she encounters an assortment of eccentric folks, from a pudgy, sexually confused "angel" to a "convergence" of people who have achieved immortality--or claim to, at any rate--by deciding that they don't feel like dying. American readers may find some difficulty warming up to McGrath's British prose style, but the humor and insight in Motel Nirvana are well worth the effort. --Ron Hogan
Customer Reviews:
An inspiring-enlightening witty journey through the living d.......1999-05-31
The book seems to capture the wild aspects of the american fronteer through the eyes and imaginatively ingenious mind of melanie. Not only does she seem to find the life on the desert intent with desire and thwartinng with perspiring energy(which for me, I found myself traveling with her and even tasting her rootbeer). Her journey brought me back to my own spiritual journey through the southwest some time ago, which is why for me, I fell in deep amor with this complex and somewhat transparent realm, the realm of the desert that I do so desire with obsession. If anyone is truely in need of a spiritual awakening, the desert of the southwest is where you need to be, but dont forget this book! It's essential.
A British woman's journey through the Southwest.......1998-06-23
I found McGrath's memoir to be a trenchant and often hilarious memoir not only of her wonderfully scruffy journey through the Southwest, but a gentle, well-written metaphor for her own quest for the chimaera we call inner peace. The first few chapters had me guffawing at the incredibly crazy cast of characters she meets in Sedona, Santa Fe, and other new age hot spots. Believe me, writing this from the Bay Area, she's not so far off. Despite these peoples' desperate and very funny quests for nirvana, McGrath treats them as signs of the fin de siecle, signs of America's greater social malaise viewed through her own kind lens. Her book is one of the 'nicest' I've read in a while (not to mention funniest). If you're looking for fuzzy, new age enlightenment in this book, look elsewhere. If you're looking for sardonic clarity, it's here. Remarkably well-written. Why is it American's don't write this well?
new agers debunked.......1998-03-13
Once Melanie McGrath finishes her lengthy tome (i.e., the first two chapters) on the New Agers, this book takes off. Her insights into things like the Biosphere, Navajo culture, Route 66, and other things "southwestern" are first-rate. The best part is she manages to pull it all together in the second-last chapter (the last one is more like an epilogue on what she learned from her time in the "enlightened desert") by showing how the Indians have such contempt for New Agers who appropriate Indian culture to justify their looniness. One angry Indian sums it up best: "Our political agenda and the New Age agenda have totally different paths. We don't want their help." All in all a worthy look at an area of the States that is quirkily unique.
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Motel Nirvana: Dreaming of the New Age in the American Desert
Melanie McGrath
Manufacturer: Picador USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 000654715X |
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- the realisation of tomorrow
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Hard, Soft and Wet
Melanie McGrath
Manufacturer: Flamingo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0006548490 |
Customer Reviews:
the realisation of tomorrow.......2005-03-19
Melanie is lucky enough to travel to Iceland, London, Prague and Sillicon Valley, meeting bedroom musicians, label runners, hackers and programmers to uncover the internet world as it stood in 1998, and fortunately she brings us along, recreating the wonder of each culture the amazing people and oddities of their lives, and showing us how their real-world landscape ties into their online world, and even picking up a few of the bumps and scrapes of internet-love along the way.
During all this Melanie is on a personal mission to get herself online and internet-savvy. I thought this would be awful and self indulgent but in fact it's quite endearing and reminiscent of most of our own experiences as we figured out how to make the net fit into our lives.
The net, and net relationships are slowly becoming commonplace in real life and fiction, it is becoming more and more acceptable to talk about net-friends as "real" ones, Melanies book is a forerunner in this area, where William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" is one of the more recent examples of this.
If you're into cyberpunk, or hacking or just delving into the social history of computing this book is for you. Not a heavy read, it takes a journalistic and personal approach that is full of amazing revelations about our world and the internet, even the most net-savvy like me will find alot of interest here.
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Hopping
Melanie McGrath
Manufacturer: Fourth Estate
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0007223668 |
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Motel Nirvana
Melanie McGrath
Manufacturer: Harper Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Travel
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General
| Religion & Spirituality
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New Age
| Religion & Spirituality
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| Astrology
| Chakras
| Channeling
| Divination
| Dreams
| General
| Goddesses
| Meditation
| Mental & Spiritual Healing
| Mysticism
| New Thought
| Reference
| Reincarnation
| Self-Help
| Theosophy
| Urantia
| Visionary Fiction
ASIN: 0002553538 |
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- Beautiful and touching
- Touching Memoir
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Silvertown
Melanie McGrath
Manufacturer: Fourth Estate
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1841151424
Release Date: 2002-05-07 |
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful and touching.......2005-08-24
Melanie has done a wonderful job of describing life in the old East End of London. Her characters and descriptions are rich and completely believable. I wanted more. My family is from the same area and lived through the same kinds of experiences so I speak from a rich history and from personal knowledge. I felt as though I knew those people. A lovely book.
Touching Memoir.......2005-07-01
Beautifully written account of life in the East End during the first half of the 20th century. If you have an interest in this part of the world - or an interest in seeing how the working poor somehow managed to carve out a life for themselves in the face of immense hardship and suffering - I would recommend this book. Depressing and uplifting at the same time.
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- McHugh, Heather
- McHugh, Maureen F.
- McIntyre, Vonda N.
- McKay, Claude
- McKenzie, Nancy
- McKillip, Patricia
- McKinley, Robin
- McLean, Duncan
- McLean, Stuart
- McLuhan, Marshall
Authors
Authors