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Books about family

These books put families under pressure and watch what holds and what gives: in «Τα τρία φώτα», a girl spends a summer in someone else's careful keeping, and in King Lear a father's test of his daughters pulls his world apart. You come to them for the plain, exact attention to ordinary rooms and ordinary loyalties, and for how much of a life turns out to rest on who stays.

A page that shows it

Two people decide that a locked room is enough, if they are in it together.

No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison:We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage:When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laughAt gilded butterflies, and hear poor roguesTalk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too,Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;And take upon’s the mystery of things,As if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out,In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones,That ebb and flow by the moon.
— King Lear, William Shakespeare (1608)

  2. Metamorphosis

    Franz Kafka, 1915

    A salesman wakes as a vermin and his family slowly reorganises around the problem of keeping him. Read it for the flat, exact prose and the horror of ordinary rooms.

  9. The Outsiders

    S. E. Hinton, 1967

    A fourteen-year-old greaser narrates a Tulsa summer of class war, brotherhood, and the books and movies that make him feel like an outsider everywhere.

  10. The Road

    Cormac McCarthy, 2006

    A father and son walk south through a burned America with a shopping cart, a pistol and the rule to keep going.

  22. Coraline

    Neil Gaiman, 2002

    A girl discovers a door to a parallel home with a button-eyed mother who wants to keep her. A dark fairy tale about courage and wanting.

A taste of the feed

  1. What still proves a person is human when the body says otherwise.

    Was he an animal if music could captivate him so? It seemed to him that he was being shown the way to the unknown nourishment he had been yearning for. He was determined to make his way forward to his sister and tug at her skirt to show her she might come into his room with her violin, as no-one appreciated her playing here as much as he would.

    Metamorphosis · Franz Kafka

  2. A life can look enviable until its final page is written.

    Αλλοί σας γενεές θνητών, πως η ζωή σας τίποτε, τίποτε δεν αξίζει! Ποιος τάχα, ποιος θε να ’ν’ αυτός ο ζηλεμένος ο θνητός,που πιότερη ευτυχία φέρει παρ’ όσηνε χρειάζεται ευτυχισμένος να φανή, κι έπειτα στην κακομοιριά να πέση; Τη δική σου πέρνοντας εγώ παράδειγμα την τύχην, δυστυχισμένε Οιδίπου, κανέναν δεν καλοτυχίζω.

    Οιδίπους Τύραννος · Σοφοκλής

  3. Children know which details make a story worth telling.

    Μεμιάς κόπηκαν γέλια και φασαρίες. Τα τέσσερα αδέλφια ξαναγύρισαν στην πραγματικότητα, φρόνιμα και σωπασμένα, ο Αντώνης με το γδαρμένο χέρι στην τσέπη, η Πουλουδιά καμπουριασμένη, σηκώνοντας όσο μπορούσε τους ώμους, μη φανεί η τσουγκρανιά της γάτας. Στο τραπέζι διηγήθηκε ο θείος την εκδρομή τους στην Κηφισιά, μαζί και το τσίμπημα της μέλισσας. Μα οι μεγάλοι δεν ξέρουν ποτέ να διηγηθούν καλά, γιατί λένε πάντα μόνο τα βαρετά, την ώρα, τον ανήφορο, την κούραση, τη σκόνη, την ωραία θέα, το κρύο νερό, πόσα χρόνια είναι χτισμένο το μοναστήρι, πόσοι καλόγεροι είναι μέσα, και ξεχνούν όλα τα λαχταριστά, σαν την τούμπα του καλόγερου, το πανταλόνι κάτω από το ράσο, τους σπάγκους στα παπούτσια.

    Τρελαντώνης · Πηνελόπη Δέλτα

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