Marlo Morgan Mutant Message Down Under 208 p.

From Publishers Weekly
Morgan's much-hyped first novel, a fictionalized account of a "walkabout" she took in the Outback with a group of Aborigines, gains from the use of authentic detail, although the storytelling is hindered by the author's heavy New Age agenda and incessant cultural proselytizing. A 50-ish alternative health practitioner from the American Midwest, Morgan was working with underprivileged Aborigine youths in the inner cities of Australia when a group of Aborigines offered her a chance to learn firsthand about their culture. Morgan's account of the tribe's customs, healing methods, food-finding tactics, etc. is absorbing, and her willingness to forgo Western luxuries and to relish the experience is courageous and touching. Less compellingly, the author claims that she was "chosen" by the Aborigines to tell the rest of humanity that the so-called "real people" are refusing to reproduce because of the ravages of Western civilization, and that Westerners have a limited time to clean up their act. Morgan's rudimentary writing skills are stretched to the limit, and she lessens the power of her story and its egalitarian lessons by adopting the perspective that Western culture is innately inferior to the naturalistic beliefs of the Aborigines.

Charles Dickens Oliver Twist 490 p

Oliver Twist (1838) is Charles Dickens' second novel. The book was originally published in Bentley's Miscellany as a serial, in monthly installments that began appearing in February 1837 and continued through April 1839. George Cruikshank provided one steel etching per month to illustrate each installment.^[1]

Oliver Twist is the first English novel with a child protagonist,^[2] and is also notable for Dickens' unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives.^[3] The book's subtitle, The Parish Boy's Progress alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and also to a pair of popular 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, "A Rake's Progress" and "A Harlot's Progress."^[4]

An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public's attention to various contemporary social evils, including the workhouse, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of the time by surrounding the novel's serious themes with sarcasm and dark humour. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of his hardships as a child laborer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s.

Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and is the basis for a highly successful British musical, Oliver!. from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Polanski's latest version was excellent)