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Bird Cloud
http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Books/Bird-Cloud-Annie-Proulx/9780007231980
By
Annie Proulx
$9.98
Price includes NZ wide delivery! Ships from UK supplier | Rating: | | | Format: | Hardback, 288 pages | | Other Information: | Illustrations | | Published In: | United Kingdom, 08 May 2007 |
Annie Proulx, one of America's finest writers, invites us to share her experience in the building of her new home on a rich plot of untouched, unspoilt prairie and her pleasure in uncovering of the layers of American history locked beneath the topsoil. 'Bird Cloud' is the name Annie Proulx gave to 640 acres of Wyoming wetlands and prairie and 400 foot cliffs plunging down to the North Platte River. On the day she first visited, a cloud in the shape of a bird hung in the evening sky. Proulx also saw pelicans, bald eagles, golden eagles, great blue herons, ravens, scores of bluebirds, harriers, kestrels, elk, deer and a dozen antelope. She knew she had to purchase the land, then owned by the Nature Conservancy, and she knew what she would build on it -- a house in harmony with her work, her appetites and her character -- a library surrounded by bedrooms and a kitchen. Proulx's first non-fiction in more than twenty years, Bird Cloud is the story of building that house -- solar panels, a Japanese soak tub, a concrete floor, elk horn handles on kitchen cabinets -- and an enthralling natural history and archeology of the region, inhabited for millennia by Ute, Arapaho and Shoshone Indians. It is also a family history, going back to nineteenth century Mississippi river boat captains and Canadian settlers, and an illuminating autobiography. Proulx, a writer with extraordinary powers of observation and compassion, turns her lens on herself. We understand how she came to be living in a house surrounded by wilderness, with shelves for thousands of books and long worktables on which to heap manuscripts, research materials and maps, and how she came to be one of the great American writers of her time. |
About the AuthorE. Annie Proulx is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Shipping News" and the acclaimed 'Accordion Crimes'. She was born in 1935 in Connecticut USA, where her family have lived since 1635, but has spent most of her life in Vermont. She has been a newspaper editor, medical writer, historian and author. Her first book was a collection of short stories, 'Heart Songs and Other Stories'. Her first novel, 'Postcards', was published when she was in her 50s. ReviewsPraise for Annie Proulx 'Proulx's enchanting description, unparalleled sentence structure, and unwavering insight combine to reveal both the coldest and most resilient recesses of the human heart' O, the Oprah Magazine 'Ms. Proulx writes with all the brutal beauty of one of her Wyoming snowstorms' Wall Street Journal 'No one writes better about tough people in tough places' USA Today 'Annie Proulx is a genuine character-a true original. She has a shrewd understanding of people, a strong feeling for landscape!and a wry sense of humor rather like Mark Twain's' Los Angeles Times 'No ones writes about the West with the skeptical verve of Annie Proulx' Outside In her first work of nonfiction in over 20 years, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Proulx shares her experiences designing and building a house in rural Wyoming. Tony Award-winning actress Joan Allen's exemplary narration conveys not only Proulx's occasional frustration and aggravation at the endeavor but also her quiet wonder at the surrounding natural world and its calming effects on her. The production is professionally produced, with consistent volume and no background noise, and disc-change announcements occur at natural breaks, making thought repetition unnecessary. This charming memoir, with its vignettes of home-building and ownership woes, is a most appealing nonfiction listen, especially for Proulx fans and anyone interested in natural history. [See Major Audio Releases, LJ 12/10; the Scribner hc was recommended "for all builders of the Western dream," LJ 11/15/10.-Ed.]-Laurie Selwyn, formerly with Grayson Cty. Law Lib., Sherman, TX (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
| Publisher: | Fourth Estate Ltd | | ISBN: | 0007231989 |
| EAN: | 9780007231980 | | Dimensions: | 22.0 x 14.0 x 2.0 centimeters (0.39 kg) |
| Age Range: |
15+ years |
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