This Side of Paradise
Library of Alexandria
5,0star
1 avisreport
Ebook
156
Pages
family_home
Admissible
info
reportLes notes et les avis ne sont pas vérifiés En savoir plus
À propos de cet ebook
Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an ineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of drowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty through the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice OÕHara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many years he hovered in the background of his familyÕs life, an unassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually occupied in Òtaking careÓ of his wife, continually harassed by the idea that he didnÕt and couldnÕt understand her. But Beatrice Blaine! There was a woman! Early pictures taken on her fatherÕs estate at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, or in Rome at the Sacred Heart ConventÑan educational extravagance that in her youth was only for the daughters of the exceptionally wealthyÑshowed the exquisite delicacy of her features, the consummate art and simplicity of her clothes. A brilliant education she hadÑher youth passed in renaissance glory, she was versed in the latest gossip of the Older Roman Families; known by name as a fabulously wealthy American girl to Cardinal Vitori and Queen Margherita and more subtle celebrities that one must have had some culture even to have heard of. She learned in England to prefer whiskey and soda to wine, and her small talk was broadened in two senses during a winter in Vienna. All in all Beatrice OÕHara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren of all ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud. In her less important moments she returned to America, met Stephen Blaine and married himÑthis almost entirely because she was a little bit weary, a little bit sad. Her only child was carried through a tiresome season and brought into the world on a spring day in ninety-six. When Amory was five he was already a delightful companion for her. He was an auburn-haired boy, with great, handsome eyes which he would grow up to in time, a facile imaginative mind and a taste for fancy dress. From his fourth to his tenth year he did the country with his mother in her fatherÕs private car, from Coronado, where his mother became so bored that she had a nervous breakdown in a fashionable hotel, down to Mexico City, where she took a mild, almost epidemic consumption. This trouble pleased her, and later she made use of it as an intrinsic part of her atmosphereÑespecially after several astounding bracers.
Notes et avis
5,0
1 avis
Attribuez une note à ce ebook
Faites-nous part de votre avis.
Informations sur la lecture
Téléphones intelligents et tablettes
Installez l'appli Google Play Livres pour Android et iPad ou iPhone. Elle se synchronise automatiquement avec votre compte et vous permet de lire des livres en ligne ou hors connexion, où que vous soyez.
Ordinateurs portables et de bureau
Vous pouvez écouter les livres audio achetés sur Google Play en utilisant le navigateur Web de votre ordinateur.
Liseuses et autres appareils
Pour pouvoir lire des ouvrages sur des appareils utilisant la technologie e-Ink, comme les liseuses électroniques Kobo, vous devez télécharger un fichier et le transférer sur l'appareil en question. Suivez les instructions détaillées du centre d'aide pour transférer les fichiers sur les liseuses électroniques compatibles.
