≡ [PDF] Gratis The Hamilton Case edition by Michelle de Kretser Literature Fiction eBooks

The Hamilton Case edition by Michelle de Kretser Literature Fiction eBooks

Download As PDF : The Hamilton Case edition by Michelle de Kretser Literature Fiction eBooks

The Hamilton Case edition by Michelle de Kretser Literature Fiction eBooks

The Hamilton Case is divided into three distinct sections. The story begins in Ceylon in the early 1900's, a British colony with a complicated social structure. The social structure is a cascading one, with the British at the top, then the Sinhalese and under them the Tamil, and so on.

Part one of the narrative is in first person - Sam is telling the story of his childhood. It is one of loneliness, attempts to get the attention of his parents and struggles to fit in socially. He says, perhaps foreshadowing his experience with his own son, <i> For myself, I believe that sons are born to disappoint their fathers. In that respect, every man fulfills his destiny.</i> In contrast to what I perceived as the reader, Sam maintains that his school days were some of the happiest of his life.
Section two is a third person account of Sam's life, beginning at the point where he leaves school and starts work. Any affection or sympathy I may have developed for Sam in part one is completely obliterated by the narrative of part two. As the narrative progresses and the characters lives unfold, two mysteries emerge. The first is the Hamilton Case with its impact on Sam's career. The second is more subtle, and concerns an event from Sam's childhood and how it has shaped his life and the lives of his mother and sister.
The third section returns to the first person narrative, but from the point of view of an outside observer. I will call this narrator The Closer. He attempts to clarify The Hamilton Case and at the same time, clarify the costs to Ceylon of British colonialism and the costs of the rebellion against it.

The characters in the story are all unhappy. Either by nature, or because someone close to them makes them unhappy. Is the point that British colonialism made people unhappy? Maybe, but so do military coups and civil war. Is the point that ignoring or brushing off unpleasant things in life makes people unhappy? That a lifetime of such behavior can cost a person their grip on reality? Perhaps.
<i>Life is bearable only if it can be understood as a set of narrative strategies. In the endless struggle to explain our destinies we search for cause and effect, for recurrent patterns of climax and denouement; we need beginnings, villains, we seek the hidden correlation between a rainy afternoon remembered from childhood and a letter that doesn't arrive forty years later. </i>


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The Hamilton Case edition by Michelle de Kretser Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews

This novel is so layered, deeply ambiguous, drenched in a virtuosic love of the English language, in short, full of the poetic mystery all around us and deep in our hearts, that one well nigh shrinks from reviewing it. The first thing to say, although many other astute reviewers have already made the point, is that the work is not, au fond, a whodunit, or murder mystery. The Hamilton case merely serves as a common denominator amongst the many, much more enigmatic and breathtaking mysteries swirling around it. Further - and this point too has been made by the best reviewers - don't fool yourself into thinking that Jaya's story "wraps things up" in the end. His viewpoint and narration- as conveyed by a third party with HIS own questionable motives - is just as tainted, if not more so, as Sam's first person narration at the beginning of the novel is by his own amour-propre and self-serving ends.

The heart of the novel, for me, was the wondrously descriptive, vibrant yet sad, passages of Sam's formerly glamourous mother - Maud's - hallucinatory and spellbinding wanderings through the jungle surrounding the estate where,"She glided on six inches of air, she crept on all fours, she walked abroad on moonless nights, or at that hour when the last star still glimmers palely above the horizon." You can literally feel the jungle as a presence, so rich and evocative is the language.

The mystery is your own mystery as you sit down to read this book. It is the mystery of each of our narratives, filled with omissions, questionable conclusions, and how we each explain the world to others and, more importantly, to ourselves

"Life is bearable only if it can be understood as a set of narrative strategies. In the endless struggle to explain our destinies we search for cause and effect, for recurrent patterns of climax and dénouement; we need beginnings, villains, we seek the hidden correlation between a rainy afternoon remembered from childhood and a letter that doesn't arrive forty years later."

It's a rainy evening as I pen this review, contemplating letters I never sent and replies that will never come.
The Hamilton Case is divided into three distinct sections. The story begins in Ceylon in the early 1900's, a British colony with a complicated social structure. The social structure is a cascading one, with the British at the top, then the Sinhalese and under them the Tamil, and so on.

Part one of the narrative is in first person - Sam is telling the story of his childhood. It is one of loneliness, attempts to get the attention of his parents and struggles to fit in socially. He says, perhaps foreshadowing his experience with his own son, <i> For myself, I believe that sons are born to disappoint their fathers. In that respect, every man fulfills his destiny.</i> In contrast to what I perceived as the reader, Sam maintains that his school days were some of the happiest of his life.
Section two is a third person account of Sam's life, beginning at the point where he leaves school and starts work. Any affection or sympathy I may have developed for Sam in part one is completely obliterated by the narrative of part two. As the narrative progresses and the characters lives unfold, two mysteries emerge. The first is the Hamilton Case with its impact on Sam's career. The second is more subtle, and concerns an event from Sam's childhood and how it has shaped his life and the lives of his mother and sister.
The third section returns to the first person narrative, but from the point of view of an outside observer. I will call this narrator The Closer. He attempts to clarify The Hamilton Case and at the same time, clarify the costs to Ceylon of British colonialism and the costs of the rebellion against it.

The characters in the story are all unhappy. Either by nature, or because someone close to them makes them unhappy. Is the point that British colonialism made people unhappy? Maybe, but so do military coups and civil war. Is the point that ignoring or brushing off unpleasant things in life makes people unhappy? That a lifetime of such behavior can cost a person their grip on reality? Perhaps.
<i>Life is bearable only if it can be understood as a set of narrative strategies. In the endless struggle to explain our destinies we search for cause and effect, for recurrent patterns of climax and denouement; we need beginnings, villains, we seek the hidden correlation between a rainy afternoon remembered from childhood and a letter that doesn't arrive forty years later. </i>