This lovely coming-of-age story set in the 1920's is beautifully written. I must confess it did take me a bit to get into it (it was somewhat boring until about halfway through), but I'm glad I stuck it out as the story seemed to grab me and stick with me night and day. Mary and Juanito's love story reminded me a great deal of The Bridges of Madison County - hopeless, unrealistic and doomed from the start. A great romance in all respects. Now I must add Spain to my travel wish list!

This is a beautiful story. 1936 was a bit before its age. For a female Irish writer to write a book that even hints at a lesbianism was probably beyond the ability of the Irish Catholic establishment to deal with in that era. However, that is such a minor part of the novel, that it is really mistitled with this new title "Talk of Angels." Discussion about the sexual orientation of a minor character greatly distorts the stark beauty of the characters, Spain, and the inner story which O'Brien tells so well. I understand that the new title replaces the originally published title of "Mary Lavelle." But the angel passage and the lesbian angle are so minor, that I would probably opt for something associated with the climax like "Spanish Love Dance." The strength of this work is the exploration of the inner characters. The main character of Mary Lavelle, her beauty, her vulnerability, and the options between uncertain romance and unromantic certainty. We root for Mary to make love a romantic choice rather than simply an ecomonic security issue as so many women over the last centuries have been forced to make. The characters of the father and her lover are also well drawn and filled with their own special quests. As important as any of the characters is Spain itself. How lovingly is it described, more alluring than a travel trailer or vacation brochure. The society of the other nannies with their squabbling creates a strong reality in which we can see these women operate. The ending left me wanting more in the story. I wanted to know what happened after her return to Ireland. Perhaps that is what a great novel does, leaves you so connected to the characters that they last with you long after the book ends. I believe this book will connect with romantics of both genders, simply because the writing is so fine.

The lesbian character of Agatha Conlan, although a small role, is better drawn and more visible than in most modern novels. The heroine, Mary Lavelle falls in love with a married man. Even though, she is an innocent in affairs of the heart, she controls the relationship.

The first essay, "Grandmother's house", made me shut the book and just gaze for minutes at a time. In reading about her childhood, she forced me to revisit my own "places" before I could come back to hers. Rereading her prose is so pleasurable; it 's like glancing twice at an attractive stranger on a street. The first and last essays seemed the most personal, the best "placement" for them. Everyone should reflect upon her life's places after savoring this book.

If you've ever longed to return to a place from your past, Mary Gordon gently explores why. With memories that are sometimes sad, she connects how place figures into who we love and how we make decisions later on in life. Her chapters are houses that serve as an eclectic garden tour, and which, in the end, make her whole. This is reason enough to read the book, but I love what she says place does for her as a writer. While on vacation last year, I sat in a carribean resort bar before it opened and began to write. The place was red-walled, with black and white accents, and no one would expect that suddenly, this place would be where the words I'd been struggling to put down poured out. And so, as I writer, I shared Gordon's thoughts about falling in love with a place that was not hers to own, but one she would remain connected to forever because it was a place "in which you have written happily and well."

Seeing through places is enchanting. Full of the sharp insight and beautiful description I've come to expect from Mary Gordon. A pleasure to read.

I love discovering an author new to me who writes so well that you just know you've been there; you've seen those people; you've heard them talking. And through Mary Gordon's incisive prose, you perceive everything even more clearly than if you'd merely been there.

It's just too bad that so many of the characters are appalling. Although I admired the author's sense of irony, I wish she had been more generous with a sense of humour that occasionally percolated but never fully penetrated.

Talk about dysfunctional. Isabel Moore is finally in a position to set herself free after eleven years of nursing a badly crippled father. First he was crippled emotionally and then he became physically incapacitated by a stroke soon after his daughter did something that disappointed him mightily. The guilt that arises in Isabel will outlast even her widowed father's surprisingly long life. Isabel is 30 when he dies, and considers herself ancient. Today a 30-year-old woman would probably not consider herself passée. Yet perhaps at the same time a young woman today would not devote herself so completely to the care of a disabled parent. Still, Isabel's actions and reactions seem anachronistic even for 25 years ago, when this novel was written.

Isabel's thought processes are incredibly convoluted, but if you can get past her wobbly self perception (why does she attach herself to so many unlikeable people?) this book is worth reading. You may question much of the character motivation, but you will love the words and how the author has strung them together.

Now 39, I first read Final Payments at 18. After college, marriage, and two children, I still get it off the bookshelf from time to time to read for its power, pleasure and insight. Raised mostly motherless, main character Isabel has taken care of her invalid father in their home for eleven years, mostly out of guilt from past events, her intense love for him, and, because this deed is expected by her devoutly Catholic father. All the while, however, Isabel knows it is looked upon as out of the ordinary in the latter 20th century, and mainly, secretly, she wishes it would be over so she could begin to live her own life. Upon her fathers' death, however, Isabel is surprised to find she finds not the relief she expected, but confusion and difficulty understanding how to handle life in the real world. Still a young woman of thirty, she becomes involved with the worst possible men a woman as naive as she could. Her new job finds her only constantly reminded of her former situation with her father, a memory which haunts her until she is forced to make her 'final payments' to her past. The vividity and emotion with which author Mary Gordon has written this book with has made it a stunner. The reader vascillates between sympathy and empathy, humor, outrage, love, resentfulness, embarrassment, and wonder ... and these emotions are written in such firm but elegant prose, she feels herself in Isabel's current situation and is amazed by the logical reality and turns of events of Isabel's life. You will think-- and wish -- you are there.

I am presently reading "Spending" by Mary Gordon and find it interesting but not remarkable. Ms. Gordon's first novel "Final Payments" is one of the best novels I have ever read. It seems not many have read this book and that's unfortunate as I strongly believe that most would agree with me. It helps if you're an ex or present Catholic, but all should find it funny and profound. I've never bothered to write a review, but this book prompts me to take my non-existant time to rave about it. The reader will identify and love Isabel and her struggle to find a place for herself in a world that she unprepared to inhabit. In its own way it is also one of the funniest novels I've ever read. Only Breakfast at Tiffanys and To Kill a Mockingbird have moved me this much-high praise.

This is a very complete book on horses. My daughter has spent much time pouring over it.

Although no one area is covered in any great depth, it provides enough general knowledge to point the reader in the right direction for further research. General areas include basic physio information, care, tack ,feeding, health issues and diseases, an overview of various equestrian disciplines, and probably the most comprehensive (and well photographed) listing of known breeds with brief descriptions of each.
My 11 yr.-old daughter (new horse owner) was given a copy for her birthday last year and it is almost in tatters from constant use!

Indeed, this book ("Lonely Planet West Africa") did a good job in outlining many of the popular tourist attractions that are located in this Sub-Saharan region of Africa. I also appreciated its details on several tourists' trails, accomodations, means of transportation, and so on. However, I was very disappointed to note that (just like the "Lonely Planet Africa on a Shoestring") this book is full of discouraging comments. Some of the phrases Lonely Planet used in this book are quite offensive.
For sure, most foreigners who travel to (West) African countries are not expecting to see a paradise, but that does not mean that there is no better way of presenting real and imaginary negative thoughts. This book is smeared by terms and phrases, which I consider derogatory to both (West) Africa and (West) Africans. As a result of this, I will never recommend it to anyone until there is a change of heart by Lonely Planet in subsequent editions.

I once said I would never buy a Lonely Planet guide again, so disappointed I was with their Iceland and Greenland book which was poorly researched, inaccurate and full of rabid anti-American rhetoric.

For my trip to Ghana, it was, however, a choice of only three books available: a semiprofessional Bradt's Ghana (not a guidebook really, more an amateurish newsletter), supremely boring Rough Guide or Lonely Planet. I bought them all in the name of research.

I would say Lonely Planet is best of them all, although certain chapters preaching about evil ways of Western capitalism still reek of Lonely Planet's self-appointed role of bettering the world. Quite annoying, really, and in many cases hypocritical, coming from a lean-and-mean profit-making publishing house.

Most facts about travel, eating, accommodation, etc are accurate and well-researched, although as usual information to someone with a bit bigger budget is very fragmented.

They could give more information about useful websites for both ticket booking and accommodation.

Overall, if you are only buying one book for West Africa, this is the one. If you can get two - buy the Rough Guide as well: it may be boring and cultural information reads as if it was written by your local tax office, but you will get many additional addresses and phone numbers.

I really enjoyed this book. I feel it is the best written LP I've ever read (and I've read and traveled with many LP titles). I used the Sénégal section and found the hotel listings current and the maps very accurate. I really liked the special boxes with additional information on dangers, scams, and personal safety. I personally witnessed many things that I had read about in this book, making me ready for would be scam artists. One guy approached me and said "Remember me from the hotel lobby?" I had to keep myself from laughing. I replied back "I think so, which hotel?" and he didn't know what to say. With LP West Africa you will be well prepared to travel in one of the hardest places to travel in the world.

NOTE: The book is 4 years old and the region is even more unsafe now then it was 4 years ago. Be careful when traveling there.

In 1928, Virginia Woolf was asked to speak on the topic of "women and fiction". The result, based upon two papers she delivered to literary societies at Newnham and Girton in October of that year, was "A Room of One's Own", an extended essay on women as both writers of fiction and as characters in fiction. And, while Woolf suggests that, "when a subject is highly controversial-and any question about sex is that-one cannot hope to tell the truth," her essay is, in fact, an extraordinarily even-handed, thoughtful and perceptive reflection on the topic.

Woolf begins with a simple and enigmatic opinion: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unresolved." From this spare beginning, Woolf deftly explores the difference between how women had been portrayed in fiction, and how they actually lived in the world, during the preceding centuries. "A very queer, composite being emerges. Imaginatively, she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was a slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger."

The source of dissonance between how women were portrayed in fiction, and how they actually lived, was the fact that most fiction prior to the nineteenth century was written by men. As Woolf astutely points out, "[i]t was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex." Woolf's observation is no feminist polemic; it is, rather, an incisive comment on how fiction was impoverished when it was written only by men.

Even when fiction was written by women, it was powerfully influenced by patriarchal notions of virtue and the proper role of women. Thus, Woolf suggests there could be no female Shakespeare in sixteenth century England because no women would be tolerated who lived in the real world like the Bard. "No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational-for chastity may be a fetish invented by societies for unknown reasons-but were none the less inevitable." Indeed, this "relic of the sense of chastity" dictated that more daring female authors-George Eliot, George Sand, Currer Bell-maintain anonymity as late as the nineteenth century.

When female writers did find a "room of their own," they were still limited by social and cultural imperatives. Thus, the first of the great women novelists-Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot-wrote largely from the drawing room, not from the experiences of the larger world-the very conditions of their writing life being as cramped as the their restricted lives. As Woolf notes, in commenting on Charlotte Bronte, "[s]he knew, no one better, how enormously her genius would have profited if it had not spent itself in solitary visions over distant fields; if experience and intercourse and travel had been granted her. But they were not granted, they were withheld."

Ultimately, Woolf suggests that the "true" nature of women will only be approached in fiction when women are sufficiently independent-not only in a financial sense, but in the sense of being freed from societal and cultural restraints-to explore the quotidian, the everyday lives of people in the world. This is the aspect of the fictional world that, in Woolf's view, was absent from the male-dominated novel prior to the nineteenth century.

Woolf further suggests that the "true" nature of fiction is expressed only through those writers who can transcend their narrow sexual roles-become "man-womanly" or "woman-manly"-so as to convey the fullness of the real world. As Woolf notes, "Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all of its faculties." Based on this criterion, Woolf promulgates her own canon of English male writers, a canon which includes Shakespeare, Keats, Sterne, Cowper, Lamb, Coleridge, and Proust (who "was perhaps wholly androgynous, if not perhaps a little too much of a woman").

"A Room of One's Own" is, in sum, a fascinating, thoughtful and perceptive essay on women and fiction written by one of the Twentieth century's most formidable writers and thinkers, a woman who truly succeeded in creating a room of her own in the canon of modern English literature.

In 1928, Virginia Woolf was asked to speak on the topic of "women and fiction". The result, based upon two papers she delivered to literary societies at Newnham and Girton in October of that year, was "A Room of One's Own", an extended essay on women as both writers of fiction and as characters in fiction. And, while Woolf suggests that, "when a subject is highly controversial-and any question about sex is that-one cannot hope to tell the truth," her essay is, in fact, an extraordinarily even-handed, thoughtful and perceptive reflection on the topic.

Woolf begins with a simple and enigmatic opinion: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unresolved." From this spare beginning, Woolf deftly explores the difference between how women had been portrayed in fiction, and how they actually lived in the world, during the preceding centuries. "A very queer, composite being emerges. Imaginatively, she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was a slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger."

The source of dissonance between how women were portrayed in fiction, and how they actually lived, was the fact that most fiction prior to the nineteenth century was written by men. As Woolf astutely points out, "[i]t was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex." Woolf's observation is no feminist polemic; it is, rather, an incisive comment on how fiction was impoverished when it was written only by men.

Even when fiction was written by women, it was powerfully influenced by patriarchal notions of virtue and the proper role of women. Thus, Woolf suggests there could be no female Shakespeare in sixteenth century England because no women would be tolerated who lived in the real world like the Bard. "No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational-for chastity may be a fetish invented by societies for unknown reasons-but were none the less inevitable." Indeed, this "relic of the sense of chastity" dictated that more daring female authors-George Eliot, George Sand, Currer Bell-maintain anonymity as late as the nineteenth century.

When female writers did find a "room of their own," they were still limited by social and cultural imperatives. Thus, the first of the great women novelists-Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot-wrote largely from the drawing room, not from the experiences of the larger world-the very conditions of their writing life being as cramped as the their restricted lives. As Woolf notes, in commenting on Charlotte Bronte, "[s]he knew, no one better, how enormously her genius would have profited if it had not spent itself in solitary visions over distant fields; if experience and intercourse and travel had been granted her. But they were not granted, they were withheld."

Ultimately, Woolf suggests that the "true" nature of women will only be approached in fiction when women are sufficiently independent-not only in a financial sense, but in the sense of being freed from societal and cultural restraints-to explore the quotidian, the everyday lives of people in the world. This is the aspect of the fictional world that, in Woolf's view, was absent from the male-dominated novel prior to the nineteenth century.

Woolf further suggests that the "true" nature of fiction is expressed only through those writers who can transcend their narrow sexual roles-become "man-womanly" or "woman-manly"-so as to convey the fullness of the real world. As Woolf notes, "Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all of its faculties." Based on this criterion, Woolf promulgates her own canon of English male writers, a canon which includes Shakespeare, Keats, Sterne, Cowper, Lamb, Coleridge, and Proust (who "was perhaps wholly androgynous, if not perhaps a little too much of a woman").

"A Room of One's Own" is, in sum, a fascinating, thoughtful and perceptive essay on women and fiction written by one of the Twentieth century's most formidable writers and thinkers, a woman who truly succeeded in creating a room of her own in the canon of modern English literature.

Virginia Woolf is a writer of intelligence and grace. A Room of One's Own is a skinny little treasure of a book with words and wisdom that will stay with the reader long after it is read. The essay contained in the book is the result of two papers that Ms. Woolf read to the Arts Society at newnham and Odtaa at Girton (England) in October of 1928. She was asked to speak about the topic of "Women and Fiction", and after doing so, she expanded her papers and later published them as this book.

Woolf begins the essay by writing, "I soon saw that [the subject of women and fiction] had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer- to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point- a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction... At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial- and any question about sex is that- one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opionion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conslusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker."

It is in this straightforward and honest manner that Woolf writes about women and fiction. Although the speech was given and the book was published in 1929, all of its points are still important for women- and especially women writers and artists- today. In A Room of One's Own Woolf examines classic literary works of the past and wonders why most, until the 19th Century, were written by men, and why most of the works published by women in the 19th Century were fiction. She comes to the logical conclusion that women in the past had little to no time to write because of their childbearing and raising responsibilities. There is also the fact that they were not educated and were forbidden or discouraged from writing. When they did begin to write, they only had the common sitting rooms of Elizabethan homes to do so in, which did not provide much solitude or peace of mind, as it was open to any interruption and distraction that came along.

Woolf argues passionately that true independence comes with economic well-being. This is true for countries, governments, individuals, and writers, especially female writers. Without financial security it is impossible for any writer to have the luxury of writing for writing's sake. It is also a very inspiring book for any aspiring write to read. I end this review with Virginia Woolf's own hopes for women in the future:

"... I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream."

(If you liked this review, please read my other book reviews under my Amazon profile...)

I read this is a day -- never forgetting that it's a UTOPIAN tale. SPENDING is a wonderful ode to the middle age fulfillment of appetites -- sexual, gustatory,sensual. Moreover, finally, we find a book that forthrightly accepts the notion that fifty year old, premenopausal women can have great sex. Gordon has written a creampuff of a novel for thinking women. And fortunately, unlike the case of more tepid paeons to midddle age romance like BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, the reader doesn't have to feel ashamed of herself the morning after.

ps. Mary. Why didn't you include some of the recipes!

Mary Gordon has created an entertaining and alluring read. She has also succeeded in doing what men have done for centuries in their art--creating an attractive but unrealistic love interest. The male muse in the novel, "B.," hardly seems human. Can any person in a sexual relationship be so completely undemanding, so unselfish as to never have any wants of their own? Also, by the end of the novel, 3 years have passed and only then does the question of love cross the mind of the protagonist, Monica. I'm just over 30 myself, but I hope that in middle age it does not take me 3 years of sex before the "L-word" is raised in my mind! Gordon's pat answer to the question of where artistic inspiration comes from is simply this: passionate sex. OK, but methinks real life is a bit more complicated. Still, I must admit this was an enjoyable, sensual story.

This is a fabulous read, a sexy, smart novel about a woman artist's favorite fantasy - that someone will be so moved by her art that he offers to support her financially and in every other way so that she can create. The man who wants to be her "muse" turns out to be the closest thing to Mr. Right I've seen in fiction (or in real life, for that matter)in a long time...of course, it's a fairy tale, but in Mary Gordon's talented hands, it's also a witty, provocative, erotic and deftly told one. The author has taken some heat from PC fundamentalist feminists who have no sense of humor, but ignore them and enjoy this delicious novel, which would make a great selection for a women's book club.

I picked up this book at a resellers shop with no cover on it or any idea what it was about.(It is hardback,not stolen).Norton is great and she doesn't let you down here.Smooth writing and great characters who you feel you know by the end of the book.My only complaint is that the book is fairly short and therefore not a terribly engrossing novel.Try it,you might be surprised as pleasantly as I was.

This is a fun book. One in a series that you just know she had fun writing! If you haven't read any of this series, this is an excellent place to start. I read my copy often.

This is a companion book to "The Alarming History of Medicine" by the physician, writer and humorist Richard Gordon, who also authored the "Doctor in the House" series. It contains medical commentaries on 31 more or less famous people, picked (more likely than not) for the availability of their disease records than for other communalities they may have had.

Medical gossip can be a lot of fun, and Gordon exploits this subject very well, adding obscure and recondite facts to what might be common knowledge. Yes, most people know about G. Washington's dentures, but it is surprising to hear about the English fad for dental implants that resulted in "barrels full of teeth" taken from US Civil War cadavers by macabre entrepreneurs and shipped to Britain, there to be sold by mail-order. Most know vaguely about "Typhoid Mary," but the story of Mary Mallon, an Irish cook, is seldom told as the medical detective account in which Dr. Geoge Soper was able to track her down by sheer obsession, luck, and statistical skills. Many know about the divine Sarah Bernhardt's leg amputation, but here the anesthetist's notes are transcribed, and the history of her injury and treatments, before and after the removal of her right leg is recounted.

Napoleon's hemorrhoids at Waterloo? Hitler's missing left testicle? Queen Victoria's abscessed armpit? Probably more than one cares to contemplate; but for the inveterate gossips and trivia collectors amongst us it is a treasure of scuttlebutt, rumor and history that will be cherished. There is no index, and for a book of this type that should cost at least one star. The fair bibliography is good enough, but it doesn't make up for the absent index.

This book saved my life! It had the most information on Laws pertaining specifically to business.