| Ilsa | |
|---|---|
| 250px First and only U.S. edition of Ilsa |
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| Author(s) | Madeleine L'Engle |
| Cover artist | Leslie |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Vanguard Press |
| Publication date | 1946 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 416 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | The Small Rain |
| Followed by | And Both Were Young |
Ilsa is a 1946 novel by Madeleine L'Engle. Its significance lies largely in its rarity, the book having been out of print for nearly sixty years. It was the author's second novel, published a year after The Small Rain.
Contents |
Bibliographical data [link]
Ilsa (New York: The Vanguard Press, 1946, 416 pp.) was published simultaneously in Canada by Copp Clark, Ltd. No catalog number of any sort is given. The dust jacket portrait of Ilsa is signed by "leslie." The original cover price was $2.75.
Plot summary [link]
The title character, Ilsa Brandes, initially lives with her naturalist father, Dr. John Brandes, in a house on a beach, outside a fictional town in the American Deep South. 13-year-old Ilsa is a vibrant, outgoing, seemingly carefree person. She immediately captivates the book's narrator, Henry Randolph Porcher, who is ten years old as the book opens. Henry's mother hates Ilsa and Dr. Brandes, even to the point of refusing their help when her home is on fire. After the fire, Henry and his family go to stay with relatives in Charleston, where Henry gets his first hints about the family scandals that explain his mother's attitude. The circumstances of Ilsa's birth are the subject of controversy, both locally and in Charleston.
After the death of her father, Ilsa goes to live with Henry's cousin, Anna Silverton. Henry's mother dies soon after this. Henry finally sees Ilsa again, and renews his friendship with her. Unfortunately for Henry, Ilsa later marries Monty Woolf, another cousin of Henry's. Despite his continuing love for Ilsa, Henry does little to further a romance with her, even after Monty's death. Nevertheless, he keeps returning to her side over the years. Ilsa and Henry experience numerous personal setbacks - including Ilsa's blindness and Henry's failure as a musician - and few if any triumphs.
Crossover characters [link]
The character Virginia Bowen Porcher in L'Engle's 1984 novel A House Like a Lotus is said to be married to Henri Porcher, a French, mentally ill person whose American grandfather "late in life married a distant cousin in Paris." The Renier family, prominent in The Other Side of the Sun (1971), Dragons in the Waters (1976, ISBN 0-374-31868-9), and A House Like a Lotus (1984, ISBN 0-374-33385-8), also appears in Ilsa.
History and collectibility [link]
Unlike virtually all of L'Engle's other novels, Ilsa has never been republished or reprinted. Although no official explanation has ever been given, the book's continued unavailability appears to stem from the author's own reported dissatisfaction with the book. As an early work, Ilsa lacks the positive themes of family, love, faith, and overcoming adversity that are so prevalent in L'Engle's later novels. The plot may also be considered somewhat unsatisfactory, with more happening to the characters than being done by them. Although this was probably a deliberate choice by the author at the time, the result is an unconventional, somewhat disturbing book.
Nevertheless, this is one of the most sought-after titles for serious collectors of Madeleine L'Engle's work. An April, 2006 survey of copies offered online shows asking prices ranging from $249.50 to $900.00, the latter for a signed copy.[1]
References [link]
- Flying Dreams L'Engle page, with a synopsis of the book
- Chase, Carole F. Suncatcher: A Study of Madeleine L'Engle and Her Writing, ISBN 1-880913-31-3
External links [link]
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*** (novel)
*** is Michael Brodsky's fifth novel. The title consists of precisely three asterisks, as mentioned on the book's copyright page as part of its Library of Congress cataloguing information.
The book centers on Stu Potts, working for Dov Grey, captain of industry, creating ***s out of raws. No underlying meanings for "***", nor for "raw", both of which occur frequently in the text, are directly suggested. Readers are left to struggle on their own. One reviewer suggested "*** seem to be (depending on the passage and on the mood of the reader) archetypal widgets, phenotypes or, occasionally, art."
*** is also metafictional. The novel begins with a "PROLOGUE" title page. No other title page appears in the novel, as if the entire novel is prologue. Early on, a short chapter consisting of instructions on the assembly of the book's "thought packets" is provided, offering contradictory advice. Towards the end, alternative plot lines are suggested and discarded, left for "the next time the story is told."
Novel
A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story.
The genre has also been described as possessing "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years". This view sees the novel's origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, and the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Ian Watt, however, in The Rise of the Novel (1957) suggests that the novel first came into being in the early 18th century,
Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era; the first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605.
The romance is a closely related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", whereas in the novel "the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society". However, many romances, including the historical romances of Scott,Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, are also frequently called novels, and Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo."
Moon of Israel (novel)
Moon of Israel is a novel by Rider Haggard, first published in 1918 by John Murray. The novel narrates the events of the Biblical Exodus from Egypt told from the perspective of a scribe named Ana.
Haggard dedicated his novel to Sir Gaston Maspero, a distinguished Egyptologist and director of Cairo Museum.
Adaptation
His novel was the basis of a script by Ladislaus Vajda, for film-director Michael Curtiz in his 1924 Austrian epic known as Die Sklavenkönigin, or "Queen of the Slaves".
