Bøger af Gene Farrington

This is the story of Emma, of the Ducal House of Normandy, the wife of two kings, the mother of two kings, who spent her life struggling to exert power and control over the English throne, much of it battling her son, King and Saint, Edward the Confessor. Farrington deals with the realities of the Norman, Saxon, Danish medieval world: violent, crude, difficult, mystical, filthy, corrupt, imbued with sex, but dominated by religion. This is the time just before the Conquest with Athelred, the unready, Canute the Great and the powerful Saxon Godwins. Adhering to the historical accuracy of events, Farrington brings to life with graphic details, this tumultuous period of English history, the last reigns of the Saxons and Danes over England. It's a book you can stick your teeth in and stay with for a good read. The work was originally published by Doubleday in the mid eights, now out of print, it is being rereleased here.

Dear Reader, You are about to embark on a journey that will take you to Jamestown, Virginia; the Chesapeake Bay; Washington, D.C.; London; Munich; Avignon and various other spots in between-in the here and now. You will also observe Jacobin London and the founding of the Jamestown colony in the 17th Century. You will get insights about what was happening from a David and a Molly from both the past and the present-contemporary David is writing a novel about that other David, the one from the 17th Century; and Molly is transcribing the diary of that other Molly, the one who is her ancestor and a member of the Jamestown colony. There is also the narrative of a Native American, Opechancanough, who was taken to Spain as a young man and educated in the ways of the white man. How is it possible that he inserts himself in the here and now to become very important to Molly and David's narratives? Gene Farrington mashes the past and the present as only a postmodern novelist can, always conscious of the impact of words, even as he fractures time and melds characters in such intricate ways that you will be amazed at how time means nothing... how the traits and qualities of ancestors get passed along-through time, through blood. By breathing life into historical figures as well as the fictional ones, Farrington forces us to reconsider: what is history... what is fate?

Aperture, a slightly askew, slightly perverted bildungsroman, is the story of Garnie, who at ten speaks with an affected English accent and lives in a dilapidated house in a small town in Iowa. It is the 1940s and the war arrives, and even in rural Iowa lives are altered. Garnie's Auntie Rye is a tall person who shaves as she reads gothic fiction to him, and she has a penis. Auntie Rye is extremely rich (old Chicago money) and Garnie wants for nothing. Nothing except better living conditions, indoor plumbing, and to find out what happened to, and where in the world his Mommy and Daddy are. Their life together progresses through the explosion of their home, prejudice against Auntie Rye's Communist leanings, their travels to Chicago and New York, along with their weekly sojourns in a 1934 Dodge sedan across the Mississippi on the suspension span into Wisconsin, somewhat curtailed by gas rationing. They encounter the famous and the interesting in their travels, along with more than slightly unusual common folk. Through it all, Garnie, the gifted progeny of someone (Garnie has trouble determining whom) pursues his love of photographic art. The pair's lives and choices are shaped by the Second World War. And while Garnie's interest centers on the war, photographically, he also has an intense interest in the penis, his own and others. As Garnie passes through puberty and arrives into his teenage years filled with baseball, visions of war and death, music, Catholicism, and distinctive town folk, he also discovers who he is and what he's about. This is his adventure, his story as told by him. But the war must end and so must his story, not with a whimper, but a bang.