"Marta Randall - Islands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Randall Marta)

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Islands
by Marta Randall
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Copyright (c)1975, 7980, 2001 by Marta Randall


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Fantasy


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Other works by Marta Randall also available in e-reads editions
Journey
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one Nell
and
a Margaret
with love
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Introduction
If you've ever dealt with material scanned into a computer, you know
that it can come across with all sorts of interesting glitches. In preparation
for the electronic publication of this, my first novel, eReads.com sent me the
file of the book to proof-read. I had not read _Islands_ since its 1980
reissue. As I did so this time I felt as though I was holding a dialog with
myself across the decades. The book is full of energy and inventiveness and
tackles all sorts of Big Issues; now, though, I see the vigor and passion with
a more experienced eye and can see where the story could be better expressed,
tightened, trimmed to its task. As a writer and, more particularly, as a
writing teacher it was impossible to resist the urge to meddle, and I gave in
to the temptation. It felt as though Marta the teacher was reaching back to
Marta the young writer, lending the experience of thirty years to help shape
the story the way that both of us envisioned it, then and now. It has been a
peculiar form of time-travel.
The book is shorter than it was, and simpler, and, I think, one hell of
a lot better. But it's still (as an early reviewer said) all about sex and
drugs and death and transcendence -- the natural subject matter of the young.
The changes are not drastic ones: I think the book is well served by this