![]() ![]() Also included is Clowes' hilariously Freudian deconstruction of professional athletes, "On Sports," which caused a stir in San Antonio when reprinted in the city's most popular weekly paper, prompting an advertising boycott and demands for the paper to be destroyed by local sports fans. ![]() Included within are such seminal strips as "I Hate You Deeply," "Sexual Frustration," "Ugly Girls," "Why I Hate Christians," "Message to the People of the Future," "Paranoid," "My Suicide," "Chicago," and over three dozen more. TWENTIETH CENTURY EIGHTBALL collects the very best humor strips from Eightball, written and drawn between 19. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Too many promising themes go undeveloped here still, enjoyable light fiction. Is Sukie really ill, or just a habitual malingerer, and if so, why? More important, what causes Violetta's mother's turnaround? (The hints given are too vague for their crucial role in the conclusion.) Most effective are the girls' growing mutual understanding and Amy's gradual turn from irrational anger to acknowledgment of Doff's need to go to her own family. An excess of detail, realistic but not especially telling, slows Amy's narrative and though the characters are essentially believable, they aren't realized in any depth and, disconcertingly, the author poses some puzzles that she never resolves. In the weeks before Doff leaves, other transitions also trouble the sixth grader: Best friend Roger is preoccupied with boys' soccer off-and-on friend Sukie is too quirky to be dependable and bright, pretty new classmate Violetta is becoming Amy's first close female friend, despite oddities that at first set her apart-especially, an anxious, dependent mother who's on a hopeless quest for Violetta's long-departed dad. When Grandpa's housekeeper, Doff, must return to England to care for her aged mother, the change is almost impossible for Amy to accept her parents died when she was a baby, and affectionate, sensible Doff has always cared for her. ![]() ![]() ![]() He married his cousin, the plump and reticent Spanish Infanta Marie-Thérèse. Duty (and Cardinal Mazarin) demanded that Louis relinquish his first love, Maria Mancini, in favor of a princess of suitable rank. Tall and handsome, with long curling hair, the king of France cut a glamorous figure. When Louis reached 19, royal mothers all over Europe discreetly mentioned their daughters as marriage prospects. She prayed for his salvation from the sin of devotion to sex. Devoted and pious (and addicted to gambling), Queen Anne was her son's regent and confidante. Anne of Austria, a Spanish Hapsburg who never saw Austria, gave birth to Louis, her first child, after 22 years of marriage. The first, and most important, woman in Louis' life was his mother. Her psychological instincts enable her to interpret nuances of character and their relation to European history. A meticulous researcher, she maintains both accuracy and style. Few writers could weave marriages, mistresses and military campaigns into a cohesive history, but Fraser succeeds. ![]() |