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Let's play NAME THAT NOVEL game.

 
 
Debacle
 
  1  
Reply Tue 21 Nov, 2006 09:22 pm
By jingo!! Now there's fuzzy logic for you.

Yeah, my turn again -- there's the rub in being right, even on a hunch; you've got to come up with a return quote.

That being the case, here's one not too hard, I think. I greatly anticipate a correct answer will come quickly, especially with the hint I'll append.

"As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, Also Georgiana Wife of the Above, I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five brothers of mine -- who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle -- I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertain that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence."

Hint: Had these five little lozenges been stones of another sort, then taken all together, they would make up the title of a well-known Sherlock Holmes case and, singly, would signify the speaker in the foregoing quote. Rolling Eyes
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plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Wed 22 Nov, 2006 12:37 pm
That's Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Ouch! Now I have to think of a novel!
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Debacle
 
  1  
Reply Wed 22 Nov, 2006 01:39 pm
Right on, plainoldme. It is indeed from Great Expectations by Dickens, with a hint of The Five Orange Pips by A. Conan Doyle.
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plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Mon 27 Nov, 2006 06:58 pm
Sorry it is taking me so long, but I have been working long hours. Will respond with a novel quote shortly.
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plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Mon 27 Nov, 2006 07:10 pm
A recent favorite:

"Archie Jones attempted suicide because his wife, Ophelia, a violet-eyed Italian with a faint mustache, had recently divorced him. But he had not spent New Year's morning gagging on the tube of a vacuum cleaner because he loved her. It was rather because he had lived with her for so long and had not loved her. Archie's marriage felt like buying a pair of shoes, taking them home, and finding they don't fit. For the sake of appearances, he put up with them. And then, all of a sudden and after thirty years, the shoes picked themselves up and walked out of the house. She left. Thirty years."

Anyone want a hint?
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dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Mon 27 Nov, 2006 07:41 pm
Yes.
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plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Mon 27 Nov, 2006 07:51 pm
The author is a young woman of mixed race living in Old Blighty.
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Debacle
 
  1  
Reply Tue 28 Nov, 2006 08:04 pm
Had it not been for the hint, I'd have flipped for it: heads, Nicholson Baker -- tails, Steve Martin -- or, with the coin landing on edge, Noel Coward. But for that blasted hint, I might have eventually got around to Sue Townsend.

Reckon me stymied. Sad
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Tai Chi
 
  1  
Reply Tue 28 Nov, 2006 08:42 pm
Zadie Smith?
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plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Wed 29 Nov, 2006 05:39 pm
Tai Chi wrote:
Zadie Smith?


You win. Now, name the book.
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Tai Chi
 
  1  
Reply Wed 29 Nov, 2006 10:35 pm
White Teeth? Her first I think.
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plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Thu 30 Nov, 2006 06:51 pm
BINGO!!!

TAG!!!

You're it!!! Laughing
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Tai Chi
 
  1  
Reply Fri 1 Dec, 2006 01:33 pm
Okay, but I have to warn you that I won't be around for the next couple of days to give hints...sorry.

"... There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. ...
These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart."
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Debacle
 
  1  
Reply Sat 2 Dec, 2006 04:51 pm
Don't need a hint for this one, Tai Chi. It's from Life of Pi by Yann Martel - a book which is, in both senses of the word, fabulous.

I must say, however, that although a tiger, like anyone else, has to eat, I was much saddened over the fate of the zebra, in particular. Sad
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Tai Chi
 
  1  
Reply Sun 3 Dec, 2006 05:48 pm
Way to go, Debacle. (Was it too easy or are you a mega-fan?) I'm back earlier than planned but happy my hints weren't needed. Your turn!
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Debacle
 
  1  
Reply Mon 4 Dec, 2006 08:30 pm
Actually, Tai Chi, it wouldn't have been all that easy had I not re-read the book only a few weeks ago. So your quote rang a not too distant bell. Mere luck, in other words.

Well, since I must, here's the opening of a popular novel from a bit farther back than Pi, though not too many years ago.

"In 1902 Father built a house at the crest of the Broadview Avenue in New Rochelle, New York. It was a three-story brown shingle with dormers, bay windows and a screened porch. Striped awnings shaded the windows. The family took possession of this stout manse on a sunny day in June and it seemed for some years thereafter that all their days would be warm and fair."
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Tai Chi
 
  1  
Reply Sun 10 Dec, 2006 08:58 pm
Debacle, I haven't a clue -- is it a novel or semi-autobiographical? Just giving the thread a bump so maybe someone else will take a stab at it.
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Debacle
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Dec, 2006 06:07 am
Not surprised to hear that. Not much of a clue in the quote.

So a hint: Consider the time of Harry Houdini, Evelyn Nesbit, and because of her, Harry Thaw's murder of Stanford White; the music of Scott Joplin, especially Mapleleaf Rag.

The book title is in the hint.
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Debacle
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Dec, 2006 08:58 pm
PS: Forgot to say, Tai Chi, it is a novel and was a very, very popular one in the year of publication, which I believe was 1975 or 76.
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dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Dec, 2006 10:45 pm
Ragtime?
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