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• Stephen Daldry’s The Reader in Chekhov’s Mirror

  Angelika Reichmann

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  101

  This essay is devoted to a discussion of Stephen Daldry and David Hare’s film adaptation of Bernhard Schlink’s critically acclaimed but controversial Holocaust novel, The Reader (1995; 2008), through one of the film’s many intertexts—Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog” (1899). The scenes related to this short story are crucial to the understanding of Daldry and Hare’s filmic reinterpretation of Schlink’s novel, since they form the mise en abyme of Hanna and Michael’s ambiguous story and stalled self-reflection. The parallels and contrasts of Chekhov’s and the filmmakers’ narratives call viewers’ attention to the ambivalences inherent in the main characters’ representation. Inspired by a passing reference to Chekhov in Schlink’s novel, the scenes alluding to “The Lady with the Little Dog” provide a metanarrative in The Reader, and, as such, reflect the adaptors’ heightened sensitivity to the ambivalences and complexities of reflecting the trauma of the Holocaust—not only for “the second generation” of Germans after World War II.  (AR)

• Mapping the Potentials of Monster Studies

  Ildikó Limpár

  Views:

  140

  Book review:

  Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew, ed. The Monster Theory Reader. University of Minnesota Press, 2020. ix + 560 pages + 33 b&w photos. ISBN 978-1-5179-0525-5. $35.00. Pbk.

• “Life Is a Terminal Illness”: The War against Time and Aging in David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks

  Noémi Albert

  Views:

  147

  David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks (2014) centers on Holly Sykes, the main character whom the novel follows from her youth into old age, thus witnessing the major events of a lifetime through her. This recounting serves as the traditional plotline that is intertwined with a fantastic story of two warring organizations of quasiimmortals and a narrative of climate change that ultimately leads to “Endarkenment,” the environmental catastrophe that hits the globe in Holly’s lifetime. These three distinct stories converge on the novel’s protagonist, through whom the reader encounters questions about aging, time, and mortality. The war between two atemporal factions, the Horologists and the Anchorites in particular, sheds light on humankind’s aspirations for immortality and focuses on present society’s conceptualization of old age. The paper analyzes these three distinct but tightly connected issues for a complex view both on the aging process itself and on society’s reaction and relation to it, that is, ageism. Mitchell’s novel—fantastic and realistic at the same time—becomes an intricate statement about aging, one of the most pressing issues facing humankind. (NA)

• Shifting Perspectives in Adaptations

  Emma Bálint

  Views:

  55

  Book review:

  Grossman, Julie. Literature, Film, and Their Hideous Progeny: Adaptation and ElasTEXTity. Adaptation and Visual Culture 1. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 228 pages. ISBN 978-1-137-54205-4. Hb. $99.00.

• The Truth of Beauty and the Goodness of Chaos: Jim Clarke’s Nietzschean Burgess

  Ákos Farkas

  Views:

  35

  Book review:

  Clarke, Jim. The Aesthetics of Anthony Burgess: Fire of Words. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. xviii + 303 pages. ISBN 978-3-319-66410-1. Hb. £49.29.