Average customer rating:
- Very disappointing...
- Jane Stanton Hitchcock fan!!
- A Page Turning Mystery...
- Don't believe all you see
- A Literary "Trick of the Eye"
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Trick of the Eye
Jane Hitchcock
Manufacturer: Miramax
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Binding: Paperback
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Social Crimes
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ONE DANGEROUS LADY
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ONE DANGEROUS LADY
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The Debutante Divorcee: A Novel
ASIN: 0786888474 |
Book Description
Faith Crowell, a trompe l'oeil artist, reluctantly puts her well-ordered, uneventful life aside to accept a prestigious commission painting a grand old ballroom on the estate of a legendary and reclusive society hostess. She expects only money and perhaps a little glamour, but what she discovers is terrifying. The ballroom was built for her employer's daughter who was brutally murdered years ago in a crime that was never solved. Faith gradually realizes that her own uncanny resemblance to the dead girl has more to do with her job than she ever could have imagined. This sophisticated, hugely entertaining nail-biter was nominated for both an Edgar Allan Poe Award and the Hammett Prize for Best First Novel of the Year when it was published in 1992. Now in print again, Trick of the Eye will fascinate suspense readers as well as Ms. Hitchcock's many fans.
Customer Reviews:
Very disappointing..........2007-03-21
Because I loved Social Crimes, I purchased this book and was looking forward to an excellent tale. Oh my! How disappointing. I figured out it was a "first book" right away, but even allowing for that, the dialogue was stilted, the characters were poorly developed, and the ending was awful. The unfortunate result was a terrible waste of paper which should have remained in the hard drive and spared all of us Jane Stanton Hitchcock fans! Thankfully, she improved immensely as a writer and I whole-heartedly recommend her subsequent books. Save your money and purchase one of those!
Jane Stanton Hitchcock fan!!.......2007-02-10
I bought this book because I loved Social Crimes so much. In fact that is my ultimate favorite book, and I've been reading since I was literally 4 years old. I also recommend One Dangerous Lady by the way. :) Anyway Trick of the Eye is a great book because nothing is predictable. I think Jane Stanton Hitchcock does a great job putting the reader in the shoes of the character. Some quality about her writing makes you feel that you are going through and feeling everything her character is. This book is not as good as Social Crimes or One Dangerous Lady, but I still highly recommend it. Worthwhile book!!
A Page Turning Mystery..........2007-01-08
I have to preface this 4-star review by saying two things. First, I would really give this book about 3.5 stars, were that an option. Second, if I hadn't read Hitchcock's Social Crimes before reading this book, I probably would have given it an even higher rating. Social Crimes was just such an amazing book that it made Trick of the Eye pale in comparison.
Trick of the Eye follows trompe l'oeil artist Faith Crowell as she embarks on the biggest assignment of her life: painting the interior of the ballroom that was built for the cotillion of a wealthy socialite's daughter Cassandra twenty years prior. Cassandra was murdered shortly after, and the murder remains unsolved.
Without giving away the plot, what was great about this novel was that the ever-changing personality of Frances, the wealthy socialite, and Faith's constant attempts to figure out what she was really supposed to do, kept the plot moving. It was definitely a page turner, with a lot of twists and surprises (especially the end) along the way.
However, Faith's character left a bit to be desired. She seemed almost passive-aggressive to me. At times she just longed to please, at others she was distant and remote. Sometimes her actions didn't make a lot of sense to me.
Overall, a great, page-turning read. If you haven't read any Jane Stanton Hitchcock before, I'd recommend starting with this one -- her first novel -- because it only gets better after this.
Don't believe all you see.......2006-10-23
This thriller held my attention, because there are so many twists and turns in it that occasionally, if your mind strays, you lose complete track of what's happening. There's a mystery of sorts to solve, and a plucky heroine who sets out to do just that. The characters are fully realized, but the reader doesn't know which ones are actually who or what they appear to be. I found the book quite satisfying, and the twist at the end came as somewhat of a shock. I recommend this book for good relaxing reading, but stay alert!
A Literary "Trick of the Eye".......2006-08-18
'Trick of the Eye' is a truly compelling book. It kept me up until 2am on a week night (I overslept and was late for work the next day!) so I could finish it and find out what would happen to its protagonist, Faith Crowell, and what secrets she would discover about her patron Frances Holt Griffin.
I happened to read 'Trick of the Eye' because I recently saw again the movie that was made out of it some years ago. Meg Tilly played the role of Faith and Ellen Burstyn played that of Frances. I've always found Meg Tilly fascinating (a combination of beauty, sexiness, sweetness, and mystery that is all-too-rare in Hollywood these days; the fact that she only made one more film after this before retiring is a great pity).
Anyway, I noticed that the movie was based on a novel, and I decided to read it. I thought that as a guy, I might find it to be too much an example of "chick lit." But it wasn't. It was an engrossing tale of psychological suspense, obsession, and art. It kept me guessing about the outcome to the very end. It is also a much better book than the movie, which benefited greatly from Tilly and Burstyn's performances but suffered from the plot being severely abridged).
'Trick of the Eye' is beautifully written in simple, clear, and evocative prose that sets mood and tone perfectly. Unlike some of the other reviewers, I think Faith is a sympathetic character. I also think that the charges of it not being realistic are specious. Is it unlikely that something like the story might unfold in real life? Yes, but sometimes fact is stranger than fiction (and one can only wonder if the author drew on experiences of her own or those of close friends to create the plot). And the story certainly does not suffer from the clich6s and stale chestnuts that mar most suspense fiction produced these days.
The narrative follows a "twisty" path where the reader is led to believe a succession of different answers to the riddle that Faith tries to unravel: who killed Cassandra Griffin, Frances' daughter, so long ago. Some readers might not like the final twist to the story that comes at the very end of the book, labeling it a cheat. But I did like it, and I think that was because I remembered the title 'Trick of the Eye' (which is the English translation of "trompe 'oeil," a style of painting that deceives the viewer into viewing something as real that is not). So I would say read the book, and remember as you approach the end that 'Trick of the Eye' is a literary version of a trompe l'oeil. Besides, as a reader, you're free to make your own conclusions about what the ending really meant, and I've decided that the final "trick" did not mean that all that preceded it was illusion.
Average customer rating:
- Interesting slice of London life, but Lambs' hagiography undeserved
- "Lunacy replaced moral defect as an explanation for violence in extraordinary circumstances."
- Mary Had A Little Lamb, and A Knife.
- Fascinating Story but Unfocused and Colorless Presentation
- Murder, Madness, and Devotion
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Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London
Susan Tyler Hitchcock
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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A Passionate Sisterhood: Women of the Wordsworth Circle
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Court Lady and Country Wife: Two Noble Sisters in Seventeenth-Century England
ASIN: 0393057410 |
Book Description
After the style of The Professor and the Madman, a dramatic story set against a backdrop of literary history.
Mary Lamba dutiful daughter, well liked by just about everyonekilled her own mother with a knife. She spent the rest of her life in and out of madhouses, yet the crime and its aftermath opened up a life that no woman of her time or class could have expected. Free to read extensively, Lamb discovered her talent for writing. She and her brother, the essayist Charles Lamb, embarked on a literary collaboration that resulted in the famous Tales from Shakespeare. Confidante to many of Britain's Romantics including Coleridge, Godwin, and Wordsworth, Mary Lamb stood at the vibrant center of a colorful literary circle. Through a deep reading of history, letters, and literature, Susan Tyler Hitchcock brings to life an intriguing portrait of Lamb and her world. This narrative of a nearly forgotten woman becomes a tapestry of insights into creativity and madness, the changing lives of women, and the redemptive power of the written word. 32 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting slice of London life, but Lambs' hagiography undeserved.......2007-02-18
Mad Mary Lamb provides an interesting look at various aspects of British society in late-Georgian London, as well as providing the story of Mary and Charles Lamb, two writers, brother and sister, who were as devoted to each other throughout their adult lives as any two married people. The book is really about both brother and sister, discussing their lives, their relationship and their friends. Both struggled with mental illness. Charles though was much less profoundly affected by it than Mary, whose life eventually became overwhelmed by increasingly frequent psychotic episodes. Mary was 10 years older, and in the grip of her first spasm of mental illness murdered her abusive mother with a kitchen knife. Her work is discussed in brief. In truth it can't be said to be memorable, even though their "Tales from Shakespeare" for children has been in print in many languages for almost 200 years. By avoiding a more substantial discussion of their work the author does manage to avoid interfering with her attempt at hagiography. In their version of "The Merchant of Venice", devoid of its poetic context and careful parsing the play becomes simply a crude anti-semitic story (easily accessible full text online) -- with an audience of children. In perhaps Charles' most well-known work, Essays of Elia, the essay "Imperfect Sympathies" (also available online) displays his smarmy and shameless dislike of Scots, Jews and Blacks hiding behind a veneer of discriminating taste and judiciousness.
"Lunacy replaced moral defect as an explanation for violence in extraordinary circumstances.".......2006-02-13
In 1796 Mary Lamb thrust a knife into her mother's chest, in that instant breaking free of the drudgery that consumed her days, but at what cost? Sent to Fisher House, a private, quasi-affordable madhouse in Islington, Mary underwent the usual brutal and humiliating treatments dictated by science at the time, similar to those King George III was subjected to ten years before. Whether the madhouse experience damaged her creatively is still a source of discussion, but certainly she fell into line, causing no further disturbance, eventually moving into rooms of her own with the help of her younger brother, Charles Lamb. Eventually Charles and Mary Lamb devised a manner of living, what he called "double-singleness", Mary accepted into her brother's literary circle and appreciated for her sharp intelligence and intellectual curiosity. Together they co-authored three books, Tales from Shakespear (1807), Mrs. Leicester's School (1809) and Poetry for Children (1809).
Mad Mary Lamb is an extensively researched, impressive reconstruction of Mary's life on the fringes of literary society, freed by the act that sundered her from family obligations beyond the society of her brother. London was teeming with literary genius, the country infused with political uncertainty and a rapidly changing world where ideas were exchanged in lively debate in salons all over the city. Most women were hidden behind society's restraints, great literary achievements solely the purview of the male gender. While Charles moved in and out of his own creative forays, Mary nurtured seeds of her own writing. Her contribution to Tales of Shakespear was certainly equal to her brother's, a challenging task in any case. Mary's ability to empathize enabled her to step inside the identities of others: "It was her deep and sympathetic feeling, coupled with her intellect, that brought her admiration from men of such high standards as Coleridge."
What Mad Mary Lamb points out most succinctly is the blossoming of her writing life after the tragic event of the murder. Her creativity stifled by a spinster's role in society that relegated her to little more than a domestic servant, albeit to family, the murder offered Mary a unique opportunity she might otherwise not have known. Never audacious or brave enough to tackle the more dangerous boundaries, Mary Lamb transgressed just enough to participate in a lively literary life, at the side of her prolific brother, Charles Lamb, who was also an accomplished essayist. Yet her life after the death of her mother and interment in the mental hospital was far more than the dreary spinsterhood that would have been her fare had she not committed the crime. Hitchcock's attention to detail is extraordinary and extensive, with copious notes, bibliography and index, Mary Lamb brought to life on these pages, her crime, tentative reach toward life and the fulfilling world of writing afforded by a violent transgression against society's most basic tenant. Luan Gaines/ 2006.
Mary Had A Little Lamb, and A Knife........2005-07-25
This is an example of the Nineteenth Century literary imagination coupled with the new style of writing 'history' which doesn't have to stick with the facts but can create a few for entertainment effects. Mrs. Hitchcock used letters to show the human Mary Lamb. She suffered a madness similar to Mary Lincoln. Only through the intervention on the part of her brother who helped her to write TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE, she was not confined to a mental institution for the long years of her life. It was the literary redemption and the 'power of the written word' which save her sanity and her life.
It is the compelling story of the English Lizzie Borden. If her brother had not been the famous Charles Lamb, we would never have known about this tragic life and death and the circumstances which compelled her to kill her own mother with a big knife in 1796. Lizzie, on the other hand, used an ax to chop her father to death because of a supposed indiscretion (his or hers?) and a nasty step-mother. Perhaps he had it coming, to sequester an old-maid daughter to watch him faun over and fondle that woman in her mother's house.
You don't have to be in the throes of a mental illness to kill someone. There is a popular song called 'Killing Me Softly With His Song.' There are numerous incidences in ballads and folk tales about murders due to unrequited love and perceived slights. Even extensive and unwarranted criticism can induce the killing instinct of self-preservation.
I'm not saying that any of these caused her to kill her mother. She alone knew the deep reason for such drastic actions. Sometimes, people are just driven too far and their minds 'snap.' It is a type of temporary madness due to circumstances; it is a compulsion beyond their control. When the young boys in Chicago killed a neighbor boy as explained in the book COMPULSION and a more recent killing of a partly-autistic boy by two neighbor boys happened, no one really knows what makes children kill children. Kids are mean until they are taught by the adults in their families that you cannot always act on your wants and desires of the moment.
Mary would have surely lost her mind except for the loving care of her brother and his literary friends. Charles died in 1835 at the age of sixty, and she lived to be past eighty. They'd lived a sheltered life prior to a few years before the murder. The move may have brought on Mary's inclinations to hit back.
Photographs of the luminaries of that time and some drawings enhance the narrative. It is interesting, but not unusual.
Fascinating Story but Unfocused and Colorless Presentation .......2005-04-26
1. The subject of this book is great!
2. The writing style is a bit wobbly at times.
3. The author jumps around and discusses way too many famous literary figures who have little or nothing to do with Mary Lamb's personal triumphs and failures.
4. Very little is actually told about Mary Lamb, who is supposed to be the featured character of this story!
5. The author inserts a lot of modernistic idealogy that would have been unknown to English men and women in 1795.
6. Gives a quick summary of a very complex woman.
7. Gives an even quicker summary of a very changing, difficult, and dramatic period of English history.
Murder, Madness, and Devotion.......2005-04-14
This is the story of the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb, a brother and sister who heretofore I knew primarily as the authors of a series of children's stories adapted from Shakespeare.
The full history of the Lamb siblings is much more complicated. Mary was a repressed and overworked daughter who suffered from some unidentified mental illness which, one day without warning, caused her to murder her mother. After spending several months in a madhouse, she was placed under the guardianship of her younger brother Charles, who looked after her the rest of his life through numerous committals to various institutions and several moves to different homes in London and its environs. Together and separately the Lamb siblings were responsible for many essays, stories, and other publications which established them as leading literary lights.
Besides this tale of fraternal devotion, this book also provides a good depiction of life in London in the late 18th and early 19th centuries among the Lambs' literary milieu.
Average customer rating:
- Very good, in some respects
- very good, but too many digressions
- Conrad does a great job analyzing Hitchcocks themes
- Enlightening and engrossing
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The Hitchcock Murders
Peter Conrad
Manufacturer: Faber & Faber
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Hitchcock At Work
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Hitchcock's Notebooks: An Authorized And Illustrated Look Inside The Creative Mind Of Alfred Hitchcock
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Hitchcock's Films Revisited
ASIN: 0571200230 |
Book Description
Alfred Hitchcock relished his power to frighten us and believed the shocks he administered improved our psychological health. But he could never satisfactorily explain our curiosity to see forbidden things or the perverse desire to experience anxiety and dread that made his work so popular.
In The Hitchcock Murders, Peter Conrad, one of Hitchcock's eager victims, undertakes the task on the master's behalf. At the age of thirteen, Conrad snuck into his first screening of Psycho, and he's been wary of showers and fruit cellars ever since. Thanks to Hitchcock, he's also suspicious of staircases, seagulls, and crop-dusting planes. Now he sets out to analyze the nature of Hitchcock's appeal to both himself and the millions of moviegoers for whom Hitchcock is cinema's foremost auteur. Examining Hitchcock's use of religion, morality, conscience, culpability, and literary symbols, Conrad unveils a chilling Nietzschean universe-one in which there is no God and no moral standard, where humans are petty and disposable and the neutral hand of fate can take a life in the blink of an eye. A timid, respectable man with the imagination of a psychopath, a chubby jester whose practical jokes took merciless advantage of human insecurities, Hitchcock is revealed here as the man who knew too much-about all of us.
Customer Reviews:
Very good, in some respects.......2005-02-18
This book is an enjoyable enough read, especially for one who can understand Peter Conrad's intense interest in Hitchcock's films. But make no mistake: Conrad is not a film critic. This is not to denigrate him in the least. On the contrary, he is a knowledgeable, capable writer whose knowledge of literature certainly adds to the book's interest.
Still, too much of the book is devoted to pointing out what is plainly there on the screen.
As a much more fascinating and critical resource, I highly recommend reading Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Film Revisited. That book, even more than Hitchcock/Truffaut, is the book I will return to the most often for insightful discussion of these great films.
very good, but too many digressions.......2004-11-15
If you're a big Hitchcock fan -- and if you've bothered to even reach this review, then you MUST be -- then go on and buy this book. It is far from perfect, but it's still one of the better books on the Master that I've read. Most of the criticism is insightful, and Conrad finds plenty of things in the movies that no other critic (at least none I've read) has written about. Perhaps most useful of all, Conrad has read all of the source material (novels, plays, short stories, etc.) that Hitchcock adapted for his films, and goes into detail about them at various points. This is interesting info, and again, not really something other Hitchcock critics have done.
Here's the problem: Conrad goes on frequent digressions away from discussing the actual movies, or even their source material, and toward discussing other peoples' movies, or artists, or novelists, or philosophers, so on and so forth. The idea, I think, is to place Hitchcock in a frame of reference so as to come to some sort of a conclusion on how to judge him as an artist. And that is a noble goal. However, the digressions are too frequent, too long, and too convenient; many of the examples reek of having been dug up to support a point Conrad wanted to make, rather than being actually appropriate to a discussion of Hitchcock.
Still, this is a valuable addition to the ever-growing canon of works investigating cinema's most profoundly excellent director. Go ahead and buy it; just don't expect it to be perfect.
Conrad does a great job analyzing Hitchcocks themes.......2004-07-06
Peter Conrad has long loved the films of Sir Alfred Hitchcock. Ever since he was a boy who skipped school to peer in wonder at the master filmmakers Psycho he has studied the works of Hitch.
Conrad's book is fascinating as he delineates the major themes and preoccupations (and yes-hangups!) of the Cockney genius. The author explores such subjects as Hitch's thoughts on music, food, religion, authority figures, sex and art.
I will use this book more than the Truffaut interviews as I view again and again the great films of the Master of Suspense.
Well recommended.
Enlightening and engrossing.......2002-07-09
I'm a huge fan of Hitchcock and I've read quite a bit about him. I picked up this book in London and enjoyed it immensely. I like how Conrad uses works from the entire Hitchcock canon (not just critical favorites) to illustrate the central themes of his films. The fine line between sex and death, Hitch's mistrust of authority figures and organized religion, his love/hate relationship with the idealized "Hitchcock blond", the often even more perverse nature of his favorite source material ... it's all here. There are a number of other interesting topics as well: food, music, Hitchcock's dark sense of humor and penchant for practical jokes ... well worth the read for any Hitchcock fan.
Book Description
The master of suspense presents 47 spine-tingling tales of murder most foul, taken from the annals of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Profit, revenge, or assassination: whatever the motive, these stories feature all the twists, turns, and terror mystery lovers long for. Meet the acrostic puzzle maker who foretells the fate of her enemies, the chess player who makes some unusual moves against his opponents, and the lifeguard who wants to save only the "worthy." See what happens to the mother-daughter team on the prowl for rich husbands, and the gangland mediator who makes sure his decisions are final...very final. So, prepare yourself for a harrowing lesson in the deadliest of crimes...and blood-curdling chills in the grand Hitchcock tradition.
Average customer rating:
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Murder Intercontinental: Stories from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf Pub
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ASIN: 0786703555 |
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A country-and-western singer slips out of the spotlight in Charlotte Hinger's "The Family Rose"...A temperamental diva takes center stage in Agatha Christie's "Swan Song"...A Wagner fan becomes a murder suspect in Michael Underwood's "Death at the Opera"... A collection of delightful tales make up the magnum opus known as Murder to Music...a collection that will strike a chord for fans of music and mystery.
15 musical mysteries by Agatha Christie, Edward D. Hoch, John Lutz and other masters
Mystery anthologies have a loyal and popular following
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Dark : Stories of Madness, Murder and the Supernatural (Adrenaline)
Manufacturer: Adrenaline Audiobooks
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Binding: Audio Cassette
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ASIN: 1885408544 |
Book Description
Dark contains the best writing from fiction masters about the things that scare us the most: murder, ghosts, insanity and our own vulnerability. It examines its subject through the eyes of some of the world's most gifted writers-Edgar Allen Poe, W.W. Jacobs, Robert Frost, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Marjorie Bowen and A.M. Burrage-who bring us face-to-face with evil in all of its forms, from serial murder to hauntings to alien abduction. The stories will scare you: You will feel the malice of murderers, the cold evil of the undead, and the unreasoning hatred of the insane, as well as the suffering of their victims. But these stories offer enlightenment, as well. Ultimately, Dark is about literature's greatest themes: good and evil.
Customer Reviews:
Scary Sampler Pack.......2003-11-26
Note: I heard the audiobook version.
"Horror" covers a lot of ground and so does this anthology. Some of it is psychological horror, some is supernatural and some is just gross. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and W.W. Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are scary classics. They are well performed, even though I've heard other performances I've liked better.
Graeme Malcolm does an outstanding job as a guest playing party games in a haunted house in A.M. Burrage's "Smee". Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Cafeteria" mixes ghosts and Yiddish coffeeklatch to good effect. "The Crown Derby Plate" by Marjorie Bowen is an old-fashioned ghost story, just good enough to be creepy. Iain Banks's "From the Wasp Factory" is more in the Silence of the Lambs, psycho-killer vein, albeit with a twist. I couldn't listen to the Will Self story, just disliked it that much (a rambling acid trip full of bathroom references). Blue Balliet reports a real woman's account of strange happenings in a New England house on Nantucket Island; this one is about a poltergeist.
They aren't all scary (or even good), but I got a good spine-tingle from a couple of them. If you are a fan of horror stories and looking for something new, this would be a good sampler.
Product Description
Mystery
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