Percy Jackson is a twelve year old boy, diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, who has been expelled from numerous (six) schools, the latest being Yancy Academy. During a school field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, his pre-algebra teacher, Mrs. Dodds, attacks Percy, revealing that she is one of the three Furies. Percy''s stepfather, Gabe Ugliano, a man whose smell is so repulsive, mistreats both Percy and Percy''s mother, Sally. To get away from Gabe, Sally takes Percy on a trip to Long Island for a three-day vacation. In the middle of the first night, Percy''s closest friend and former classmate at Yancy Academy, Grover Underwood, who is revealed to be a satyr, comes and warns the two of them that Percy is in danger. Sally drives them both to Camp Half-Blood, a camp for demigods, where he can train and be protected. On the way there, they are attacked by the Minotaur, which grabs Percy''s mother by her throat. She then dissolves into a golden shower of light. Percy, angered by the Minotaur for killing his mom and then going after his best friend, goes after the Minotaur and defeats him using the Minotaur''s own horn. Percy then stumbles into the camp carrying a semi-conscious Grover. Upon waking up, Percy is moved into the Hermes cabin, under the care of Luke Castellan, the cabin''s counselor. During a game of capture the flag, the Ares cabin attacks and injures Percy. He steps into the adjoining river and is healed by the waters. After the game is won, Percy gets attacked by a hellhound, which gets shot by arrows and dies. To heal himself, he steps into the water, while Poseidon''s trident appears above his head, revealing him to be the son of Poseidon. Poseidon has broken an oath taken with Hades and Zeus to refrain from having any more children with mortal women, as their children can become too powerful and become a threat. It is revealed that Zeus''s master bolt has been stolen. Because Percy has been claimed, Zeus believes that Percy was the one to have stolen it. To clear his and his father''s name, Percy is granted a quest to find Zeus''s master bolt which Chiron believes Hades has stolen. Percy has to find the bolt before the summer solstice, ten days from then. Luke gives magic flying shoes to Percy before leaving on the quest with Annabeth and Grover. Percy has to travel west to reach the entrance to the Underworld in Hollywood. They encounter Greek monsters, including the Furies, Medusa, Echidna, the Chimera, and Ares, the god of war, who tells Percy that his mother is alive. As they approach Hades'' palace, Luke’s shoes try to drag Grover over the edge of Tartarus, but he manages to slip free. Percy confronts Hades, who believes Percy stole his Helm of Darkness, an object that allows him to become a shadow. Percy discovers that the bolt had appeared in the backpack Ares gave them and flees from the Underworld, forced to leave his mother behind. Percy fights and defeats Ares, obtaining the helm, which he asks the Furies, who witnessed everything, to return to Hades. Percy flies to New York, risking his life by entering the sky, the realm of Zeus. He arrives in New York City to give the master bolt to Zeus at level 600 of the Empire State Building, where Olympus is now located. Zeus accepts the master bolt, and Percy returns to camp. Luke reveals that he stole the bolt for Kronos and summons a poisonous pit scorpion which stings and nearly kills Percy. Chiron cures him, and Percy leaves to attend another school that his mother has found. Annabeth returns to live with her father, and Grover embarks on a journey as a "seeker" to try to find the great god Pan.

The Lightning Thief

The play has an unusual structure; it is a series of seven independent vignettes each focusing on a different character. After every scene, a moment in the tragedy of Pentheus is seen. Dionysos, a dancer, watches the action invisibly, and his kiss causes each episode''s central transformation. At the play''s end, the characters return to give epilogues narrating how their stories continued. The episodes include: * An unhappy wife slowly succumbs to post-natal psychosis. She experiences command hallucinations telling her to drown her baby in the bathtub and eventually does so. * A man''s marriage and career are disrupted when he falls passionately in love with a pig at a slaughterhouse his company owns. * A voodoo practitioner newly arrived in London is haunted by an upper-crust British spirit who tries to drive away her familiar Haitian spirit guide, Baron Sunday. * Herculine Barbin, a nineteenth-century hermaphrodite, narrates the story of his transformation from girl to man. This monologue lies at the center of the play and is performed first by an actress, then repeated in identical language by a male actor. * A woman struggles to overcome alcoholism. * Two jailers must restore order in their prison when a serial killer among the inmates inexplicably changes sex and begins killing other prisoners with magic. * A female office worker is subject to grotesque, bloody fantasies and fits of rage. The actors play ensemble roles in all scenes other than their own. Dance sequences are at the center of the episodes involving the pig and his lover, the schizophrenic and her hallucinated tormentor, and the serial killer. The play''s perspective on mental illness and sexuality is strongly influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, who also wrote a monograph on the life of Herculine Barbin, as well as David Lan''s own anthropological work on possession and non-Western religions.

A Mouthful of Birds

Two plotlines run through this crime novel. The main adult protagonist is John Creevey who stumbles upon a series of hidden coded messages which he thinks must be the work of criminals or spies. John is unhappy and depressed. His wife Jennifer has left him for Peter Moran, her old fiancé, and he cannot accept that she will not return to him. He is still affected by the murder of his sister 16 years ago and Mark, her fiancé, is equally unhappy. John becomes obsessed by unravelling the codes, spending hours trying to break them. The coded messages are, however, being left by rival groups of public schoolboys. These boys are emulating the world of the 1980s spy fiction with the home team led by 14-year-old Mungo battling against Moscow Centre, run by boys at a rival school. Mungo is over six feet tall and has inherited the leadership from his older brother. The groups have moles and traitors. One of Mungo’s team is Charles Mabledene, another 14-year-old, but Mungo is not sure if he is really on their side and sets out to test him. Jennifer and Peter come round to John’s house in one of their attempts to get him to agree to a quick divorce and Colin, a friend of John’s, recognises from when he was a juror. He tells John that Peter pleaded guilty to indecent assault on a male child under the age of thirteen. John wonders how he can use this information to turn Jennifer against Peter and is also worried because a 12-year-old boy has been abducted from where Peter and Jennifer live on an afternoon when Peter was on his own. John decides to intercept and alter one of the messages and gives instructions for Peter to be investigated. The message is sent to Charles and he interprets this as being the loyalty test he is expecting. John confronts Jennifer with his information on Peter saying, “You can’t love a man who molests little boys”, but Jennifer stays loyal to Peter, to help him and to protect other boys. John then tries to cancel his instructions to Charles, but Charles ignores the new message, knows it cannot be from Mungo who is on holiday, and reads it as a trap. Charles goes to Peter’s House and meets him on the pretext of offering to wash his car. He immediately senses that Peter is attracted to him. Charles looks very young for his age and tells Peter he is just twelve years old. He is just over five foot, has blond hair, an unbroken voice and is quite aware he is very attractive. His father is always telling him not to talk to strange men. Peter suggests a meeting in town. After they sit down, he leans forward to brush ice cream off Charles’ cheek yet Charles maintains a cool exterior. On a later trip to the cinema, Peter puts his arm around the boy’s shoulder. After the cinema, they go to eat supper in a derelict building, one of the boys’ ‘safe houses’. Peter makes advances to Charles, talking about a ‘physically loving’ friendship he had when he was Charles’ age, and puts his hand on his thigh. Charles jumps up and in the subsequent panic, Peter is accidentally killed and Charles escapes, leaving a burning candle which destroys the building.

Talking to Strange Men

Midge is sent to stay with her Uncle Brian at Mill Farm in Somerset while her mother is on tour with the orchestra. She comes across a small winged horse which is trapped and injured: her first introduction to the hidden world of the "Royal Forest", an impenetrable thicket on a hill within the farm boundaries. Meanwhile, all the tribes who live in the forest, the Ickri, Naiad, Wisp, Troggles and Tinklers, unite to send a group to search for the missing horse, Pegs. The adventures of the group demonstrate the dangers posed to the Various by the Gorgi world, as Lumst is killed by the ferocious tomcat Tojo. While Midge is accepted by the queen and her advisers as the saviour of Pegs, despite the news she brings of her uncle''s plan to sell the forest land, Scurl and his archers believe that she is herself a danger to the tribes and intend to kill her. At the climax of the novel the archers attack the farm when Midge and her cousins are there alone. Throughout the novel Midge senses another presence, the girl in the photograph on the kitchen wall: it is Celandine, who once lived at the farm and was thought mad for believing she had seen fairies. The story of Celandine is told in the second book of the trilogy, and the bond between her and Midge is explored in Winter Wood.

The Various

The novel begins where its predecessor, The Fall of Colossus leaves off, with the supercomputer immobilized and the Martians arriving on Earth. They appear before Charles Forbin and his friend Edward Blake in the form of two black spheres, and quickly demonstrate vast intellect and powers of transformation and telepathy. After immobilizing Blake, they explain to Forbin their purpose in immobilizing Colossus&nbsp;— their desire to take half of the Earth''s oxygen, a process that will kill nearly a quarter of the human population. In order to proceed with construction of the "Collector" designed to harvest the oxygen, the Martians reactivate the parts of Colossus necessary to manage human society. Though having no other option but to agree to the Martians'' plan, Forbin continues to search for an alternative. He discovers in conversation with the Martians that their need for the oxygen is driven by the threat of radiation emanating from the Crab Nebula, which will kill the Martians without the protection of an oxygenated atmosphere. As construction of the Collector proceeds, a humbled Blake proposes to Forbin that the old Colossus&nbsp;— the "parent" of the crippled system, be reactivated. With little other alternative, Forbin agrees. Construction equipment controlled by Colossus soon complete work on the Collector. An initial five-minute test of the device proves enormously destructive. With a second, final test imminent, Blake travels to Colorado with Angela, Forbin''s private secretary. Racing against time, Blake and a small team of workers succeeds in penetrating the mountain where the old Colossus is located and re-activating the computer, only to discover that, once imputed with the facts of the situation, Colossus argues that the collection program is in the best interests of humans'' long-term future and should move forward. Informed of the failure of their plan, Forbin watches the second test proceed. Upon its conclusion he embarks on a new plan. With his new secretary, a fervently devout woman named Joan, he flies to Portsmouth and takes command of the battleships stationed there for the Sea War Games. Yet doing so puts him out of contact with Blake and the old Colossus, who informs Blake that a solution might exist that is acceptable to both the Martians and humanity. Regaining control of the nuclear arsenal, Colossus contacts the Martians, who inform it of Forbin''s attempt to use the battleships to destroy the Collector. Though the Martians attempt to destroy the fleet using their device, they underestimate the power of the battleships'' guns, which succeed in destroying the Collector. Though the Martians are defeated Forbin dies in the process. He is buried by the reactivated Colossus, who reaches an agreement with the Martians. A smaller version of the Collector will extract the oxygen more gradually and sustainably; in return, humanity, with the guidance of Colossus, will retreat to Mars once the Sun has become a red giant and destroys the Earth.

Colossus and the Crab

Kelley examines the methods of resistance adopted by black working class as well as the spaces where black working class congregated to form an emerging consciousness. Utilizing the theory of historian George Rawick that the only way to detect working-class resistance from the past is to have knowledge of the amount of damage caused to the employer by the employees, Kelley documents the organized and unorganized ways black workers expressed resentment for racist treatment, including slowdowns, theft, leaving work early, quitting, and various acts of sabotage. He also looks in depth at black resistance that took place in public space, namely Birmingham’s streetcars and buses during World War II. In spite of strict controls by mostly white American bus operators, black working-class riders had no other transportation options and offered fierce resistance—not just in publicly celebrated incidents of heroism of individuals such as Rosa Parks and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, but in every-day conflicts such as arguments and fights with authorities and other riders. According to Kelley, such incidents not only inspired the individuals involved but also galvanized onlookers to the effect that the governance of public transit became quite difficult, which slowly effected change. Incorporating the theories of Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, Kelley examines the social spaces utilized by black working class to escape the racism and humiliations they suffered at the hands of the authority, such as church and home. These spaces, though sometimes also disrupted by outsiders, allowed the community "dark" and hidden venues to discuss experiences, grievances, and dreams that helped to shape black working-class consciousness. Kelley spends part of the book investigating the embracing of alternative goals and lifestyles as a means of resisting poor and limited choices. Young black men during the World War II era were largely burdened by poor education and training that it made it difficult for them to find, much less maintain, employment. Rather than adopting the stereotype assigned poor, southern migrants, many working-class blacks embraced a new identity symbolized by the zoot suit. According to Kelley, many of the working-class blacks of the era felt that most of the jobs available to them were "slave labor", and they instead elected to become hustlers, pimps and gangsters to protest job discrimination and the lack of viable employment options. New identities afforded new opportunities to individuals such as Malcolm Little to study the psychology of white racism, though the choice of criminal life also brought extreme consequences. In more recent times, this alternate choice is demonstrated through "gangsta rap", which evolved out of the authority-challenging blues of the 19th century. Born from black working class in Los Angeles, the musical genre responds in part to the hard realities of poverty and declining unemployment. Kelley illustrates these facets by referencing the lyrics of Ice Cube, who in "A Bird in the Hand"—a track on 1991''s Death Certificate—tells the story of a young man forced to sell crack to survive when the only job he can obtain after graduation is an underpaying one at McDonald''s.

Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class

The ambitious but immature Clyde Griffiths, raised by poor and devoutly religious parents who force him to participate in their street missionary work, is anxious to achieve better things. His troubles begin when he takes a job as a bellboy at a local hotel. The boys he meets are much more sophisticated than he, and they introduce Clyde to the world of alcohol and prostitution. Clyde enjoys his new lifestyle and does everything in his power to win the affections of the flirtatious Hortense Briggs. But Clyde''s life is forever changed when a stolen car in which he''s traveling kills a young child. Clyde flees Kansas City, and after a brief stay in Chicago, he reestablishes himself as a foreman at the shirt-collar factory of his wealthy long-lost uncle in Lycurgus, New York, who meets Clyde through a stroke of fortune. While remaining aloof from him as a kinsman and doing nothing to embrace him personally or advance him socially, the uncle does give Clyde a job and ultimately advances him to a position of relative importance within the factory. Although Clyde vows not to consort with women in the way that caused his Kansas City downfall, he is swiftly attracted to Roberta Alden, a poor and innocent farm girl working under his supervision at the factory. Roberta falls in love with him. Clyde initially enjoys the secretive relationship (forbidden by factory rules) and ultimately persuades Roberta to have sex with him rather than lose him, but Clyde''s ambition precludes marriage to the penniless Roberta. He dreams instead of the elegant Sondra Finchley, the daughter of a wealthy Lycurgus man and a family friend of his uncle''s. Having unsuccessfully attempted to procure an abortion for Roberta, who expects him to marry her, Clyde procrastinates while his relationship with Sondra continues to mature. When he realizes that he has a genuine chance to marry Sondra, and after Roberta threatens to reveal their relationship unless he marries her, Clyde hatches a plan to murder Roberta in a fashion that will seem accidental. Clyde takes Roberta on a row boat on Big Bittern Lake in upstate New York and rows to a remote area. As he speaks to her regarding the end of their relationship, Roberta moves towards him, and he strikes her in the face with his camera, stunning her and capsizing the boat. Unable to swim, Roberta drowns while Clyde, who is unwilling to save her, swims to shore. The narrative is deliberately unclear as to whether he acted with malice and intent to murder, or if he struck her merely instinctively. However, the trail of circumstantial evidence points to murder, and the local authorities are only too eager to convict Clyde, to the point of manufacturing additional evidence against him. Following a sensational trial before an unsympathetic audience, and despite a vigorous defense mounted by two lawyers hired by his uncle, Clyde is convicted, sentenced to death, and executed. The jailhouse scenes and the correspondence between Clyde and his mother stand out as exemplars of pathos in modern literature.

An American Tragedy

Tanaqui, the narrator, is a young woman living in a small town called Shelling, which lies beside the Great River. She and her four siblings look different from the rest of the townsfolk, and instead of worshiping the River, their family has three idols—the so-called Undying. When the country is invaded by the Heathens (who are modeled after Europeans and are the ancestors of the people of Dalemark in the other three novels) who look like them, Tanaqui and her siblings flee to avoid being killed by the people of their own village. Tanaqui''s narration in The Spellcoats is not her diary, nor is it being "told" as many stories are. Rather, Tanaqui is weaving the story into a pair of "spellcoats" that she is making. The first spellcoat tells of how the five siblings (Gull, Robin, Hern, Tanaqui and Duck) traveled downriver on their boat. First, they encounter the mysterious magician Tanamil, then the Heathen king Kars Adon, and finally, at the sea, the evil mage Kankredin, whose aim is to take over the power of the river by taking over the five children''s souls. In the middle of this Gull was bound like the One, Tanamil (Younger Amil or the young one) and the Lady. The second spellcoat tells how, after their escape from Kankredin, the five siblings are captured by their own King, "the king of the natives" (who are modeled after Native Americans and Hawaiians and are the ancestors of the Holy Islanders in Drowned Ammet) who has lost his kingdom and is drifting with the remains of his army trying to avoid the Heathens. The King keeps the children in his company because he needs one of the children''s idols—the powerful One—to assist him in his pursuits. As Tanaqui continues to weave during her travel upriver with the King, she realizes that the spellcoats that Kankredin and his mages wore gave them the powers that were woven into their spellcoats. She becomes convinced that the words woven into her spellcoats will have the power to defeat Kankredin. Realizing that Tanaqui is the only one able to stop Kankredin and his mages with her weaving, her elder brother Hern convinces the combined forces of their own people and the Heathens to make a stand at the headwaters of the Great River, and hold off Kankredin while Tanaqui completes her second spellcoat. Tanaqui weaves frantically to catch up to her "present," and finally she completes her spellcoat with a waking vision she experiences. In this vision, their eldest family idol called The One rises up, crushes Kankredin, and shakes the land into a new shape. We do not find out from Tanaqui''s narration if she succeeds or fails, because she must finish the spellcoat and put it on the idol before the spellcoat''s woven spell can take effect. In an epilogue written by Elthorar Ansdaughter, Keeper of Antiquities, we learn that the spellcoats were discovered hundreds of years later, during the approximate time period of Drowned Ammet and Cart and Cwidder, in the mountains of North Dalemark near Hannart. Elthorar notes the close correspondence between various figures in the stories and their apparent counterparts in the legends and folktales of the people of Dalemark. She also tries and fails to determine the places described, leading the reader to conclude that Tanaqui''s vision came to pass, Kankredin was defeated, and The One reshaped the land. Like the other three novels of the Dalemark Quartet, The Spellcoats is a story about a physical journey, during which revelations occur. As in the other three books, the presence of magic is not readily apparent at its beginning, but slowly creeps into the story.

The Spellcoats

Tolle begins with an allegorical evocation: "Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun ... this momentous event heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants". This is used by Tolle as an analogy for a transformation in human consciousness that he sees is about to occur and has already begun. Tolle believes that the earliest such "flowers" or spiritual messengers were in the forms of Buddha, Jesus, Laozi and other such great teachers, and that at those particular time periods in history, these great teachers’ messages were not fully understood. Tolle explains In his book A New Earth, Tolle defines the term ego as an "illusory sense of self" based on one''s memories and thoughts. Tolle says that when studying history "it becomes obvious that the human ego in its collective aspect as “us” against “them” is even more insane than the “me,” the individual ego, although the mechanism is the same. By far the greater part of violence that humans have inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or the mentally deranged, but of normal, respectable citizens in the service of the collective ego. One can go so far as to say that on this planet “normal” equals insane. What is it that lies at the root of this insanity? Complete identification with thought and emotion, that is to say, ego." Tolle describes our identification with things: things that we use every day for self enhancement or things we have become attached to and become obsessed with. He describes how inferiority changes the way we act with other people and creates an ego that we didn’t normally have. Tolle uses his term pain body to describe the human tendency to carry around "an accumulation of old emotional pain". The identification is what causes all the reoccurring pain in the individual. Being able to know where the pain is coming from will prevent the pain body to renew itself through you. Our inner consciousness can change the world by not just being satisfied with what you do. Our destinies can be determined by how we carry out our actions and how we can fulfill them with the best possible consciousness. In these chapters, Tolle makes many distinctions: between "knowing yourself and knowing about yourself"; between the "Dreamer" and the "dream"; between the objects of consciousness and the space of consciousness; between outer space and inner space; and between outer purpose and inner purpose In the final chapter, Tolle discusses what he calls "the three modalities of awakened doing": acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Acceptance is when you may not enjoy what you are doing but you have to be able to accept it. This is essentially being able to take responsibility in your life and to take action with certain things that are not enjoyable at all and to find peace within these activities. Enjoyment is the next modality and it is being able to make the present moment a pivotal part of your life. This doesn’t mean that if you want to do something that you will find enjoyment in it. It means that with everything you do that you need to enjoy it in the present; you can’t let the moments pass you by or tell yourself you will enjoy something in the near future. The final modality of the inner consciousness is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm entails that there is a deeper enjoyment in the actions you do and being able to work towards a final goal, with a sense of urgency, but without stress.

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life''s Purpose

An Israeli-run Holocaust research office in Vienna is bombed, resulting in the death of the two female staff and serious injury to the Director. Gabriel Allon, a former assassin for ''The Office'' and working under a new identity as an art restorer in Venice, is requested by former director Ari Shamron to go to Vienna to investigate. He is approached by Max Klein, a Holocaust survivor who claims to have information about a man named Ludwig Vogel. After following up this information, Allon finds Klein has been murdered. Allon is apprehended by Austrian security police and expelled from the country. At the Yad Vashem, research reveals that Vogel is probably a Nazi war criminal and former SD officer named Erich Radek. Radek was the engineer behind Aktion 1005, a Nazi operation to conceal the atrocities of the Holocaust by exhuming mass graves and burning the bodies so that no trace of them ever existed. Radek visited half a dozen concentration camps as a part of Aktion 1005, and it is suggested that even he is unaware how many bodies were burned. Allon is disturbed by Radek''s resemblance to a painting his mother made of one of her tormentors during the Death Marches. The trail to establish Vogel''s true identity takes Allon to the Vatican, where he obtains information that the Vatican would rather not be known: that Radek was one of many escaping Nazis helped and sheltered by the Vatican. The trail further takes him to Argentina where Radek is supposedly buried. Finding the grave and headstone of ''Radek'', Allon is nearly killed by an assassin who has been following him, a man known only as "the Clockmaker". He is rescued by CIA agents who have also been trailing him and the assassin escapes. In Langley the CIA admit that Radek was one of many Nazis recruited to set up an intelligence network in Germany in order to spy on the Soviet Union, laying a false trail through Italy, Syria and Argentina as misdirection. He is also the trustee of several billion dollars worth of investments, based on looted money and assets, which are now controlled by a Swiss banker. These assets were seeded throughout the Swiss and Austrian Alps by Nazi Party members fleeing the Allied invasion, where they were placed in escrow for a generation before National Socialism could be a viable political stance once more. Radek has since retired and is regarded by the CIA as ''disposable''. The CIA agree to cooperate in his kidnap by the Israelis. The Prime Minister of Israel reluctantly approves the operation. With the enforced assistance of the Swiss banker, who controls the secret bank accounts and investments, Radek is enticed into the hands of a kidnap team in Vienna. Drugged and hidden in a van, he is spirited across the border into the Czech Republic and thence into Poland. He is taken to the memorial on the site of the extermination camp at Treblinka, one of the sites he visited as part of Aktion 1005. Allon reveals that he knows Radek has a son, Peter Metzler, who is on the verge of being elected as Chacellor of Austria. Armed with the money from the Swiss bank, Metzler would be able to reintroduce Nazism to Austria unopposed. Allon uses this knowledge to convince Radek to surrender, or else his connection to Metzler will be revealed and Metzler''s political career will be ruined. Radek is taken to Israel and placed in solitary confinment. In return for not being tried and executed, he is to prepare a detailed history of Aktion 1005, which he was heavily involved in. In Vienna, Metzler is duly elected. The knowledge that he is actually Radek''s son is kept secret, knownn only to the CIA and The Office while Allon returns to his restoration work in Venice. In Vienna, the Clockmaker receives a parcel bomb and is killed.

A Death in Vienna

The plot of Murphy follows an eponymous "seedy solipsist" who, urged to find a job by his lover Celia Kelly, begins work as a male nurse at the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat in north London, and finds the insanity of the patients an appealing alternative to conscious existence. Murphy, gone to ground in London lodgings and then in the hospital, is pursued by a ragtag troupe of eccentrics from his own country, each with their own often-conflicting motivations. Neary, a practitioner of eastern mysticism, seeks Murphy as a love rival and then as compatible friend in the absence of all others. Miss Counihan''s attachment to Murphy is romantic. Among Wylie''s motivations, Miss Counihan is perhaps the strongest. And Cooper, Neary''s simpleton servant and fixer, joins the trail for money, alcohol, and to serve his master. Among other things, Murphy is an example of Beckett''s fascination with the artistic and metaphorical possibilities of chess. Near the novel''s end, Murphy plays a game of chess with Mr. Endon, a patient who is "the most biddable little gaga in the entire institution". But Murphy cannot replicate his opponent''s symmetrical and cyclical play, just as he is unable to will himself into a state of catatonic bliss. He resigns "with fool''s mate in his soul", and dies shortly afterwards. Beckett relates the game in full English notation, complete with a comically arch commentary. Moving between Ireland and England, the novel is caustically satirical at the expense of the Irish Free State, which had recently banned Beckett''s More Pricks Than Kicks: the astrologer consulted by Murphy is famous ''throughout civilised world and Irish Free State''; ''for an Irish girl'' Murphy''s admirer Miss Counihan was ''quite exceptionally anthropoid''; and in the General Post Office, site of the 1916 Rising, Neary assaults the buttocks of Oliver Sheppard''s statue of mythic Irish hero Cúchulainn (the statue in fact possesses no buttocks). Indeed, the censor is roundly mocked: Celia, a prostitute whose profession is described tactfully in a passage by the author, who writes that "this phrase is chosen with care, lest the filthy censors should lack an occasion to commit their filthy synecdoche." Later, when Miss Counihan is sitting on Wylie''s knee, Beckett sardonically explains that this did not occur in Wynn''s Hotel, the Dublin establishment where earlier dialogue took place. The novel also contains a scabrous portrait of poet Austin Clarke as the dipsomaniac Austin Ticklepenny, given to unreciprocated ''genustuprations'' of Murphy under the table; against Oliver St. John Gogarty''s advice, Clarke declined to sue. Murphy indeed cannot go insane to achieve freedom. What he turns to instead is nothingness, and his ashes are properly spread amidst the grime of a bar after immolating himself with the assistance of gas in his bedroom at the hospital. Celia also discovers the beauty of nothingness, as she loses her love, Murphy, and her grandfather''s health declines. Beckett seamlessly converts comedy to terror of non-existence, as he does in his later work, Waiting for Godot. Among the many thinkers to influence Murphy''s mind-body debate are Spinoza, Descartes, and the little-known Belgian occasionalist Arnold Geulincx.

Murphy

David Boring is a story told in the first person by its eponymous protagonist, concerning his sometimes fantastic and sometimes mundane exploits and misadventures in and out of big city life. Much of the plot of the book concerns David''s attempt to obtain a woman whom he considers his feminine ideal, based largely on the characteristics of his first cousin, Pamela, with whom he shared some innocent adolescent kisses at a family summer retreat. Shortly after attending the funeral of a friend, David meets, dates, and is abandoned by Wanda, a woman whom he considers the perfect fulfillment of this ideal. After sinking into an all-consuming depression for weeks, David is shot in the head by an unknown attacker in front of his own home, but survives with only a small dent in his forehead. David, his mother, their extended family, and David''s roommate and friend Dot all end up stranded on a small island, Hulligan''s Wharf, which the family owns and uses for vacations. David''s great-uncle August shows up, proclaims that terrorist gas attacks have contaminated the mainland, and later dies. While on the island, David has a sexual tryst with his mother''s cousin, Mrs. Capon, who later disappears that very night. At the same time, Dot has begun a relationship with Iris, Mrs. Capon''s daughter, who is married to Manfred. Manfred tries to kill Dot by drugging her and throwing her into the water while she sleeps, but she wakes up in time to grab Iris, beat up Manfred, and escape by boat. When word gets around that David suspects Manfred of killing Mrs. Capon as well, Manfred tries to pummel him, but is stopped by Mr. Hulligan, the island''s caretaker. When the food runs out, David and Mr. Hulligan are abandoned by Manfred and David''s mother, and barely make it ashore on a makeshift raft. They discover (as Mr. Hulligan believed all along) that the terrorist attack was not the world-ending catastrophe August had believed. David returns home and begins a relationship with a woman named Naomi. He soon discovers that the man who shot him was a professor named Karkes, who was similarly abandoned by Wanda, and assumed that she had left him for David. He and Karkes enter into a strange friendship, discussing their mutual obsession with Wanda and attempting to track her down. In his search, David meets Judy, Wanda''s sister, who resembles her strongly. David decides that, contrary to his earlier belief that Wanda was the fulfillment of his ideal, Wanda was in fact merely a flawed version of Judy. His relationship with Naomi falls apart, and she flees to Norway, fearing further terrorist attacks on America. Judy is attracted to David, but is worried about her husband. After they meet and kiss, her husband shows up at David''s apartment and knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat. Meanwhile, Dot''s relationship with Iris has failed, and Iris leaves her for Agent Roy Smith, who is investigating the murders of Mrs. Capon and Whitey. Smith resolves to frame David and Dot for Whitey''s murder, in order to eliminate any competition for Iris, whom he marries. David and Karkes track Wanda down to a weird cult commune, finding that Wanda is the only one there, the others having "gone on." Neither David nor Karkes asks what that means. Although David and Karkes agree to "let the best man win," David intends to deceive and defeat Karkes by letting him have Wanda, whom he considers a lesser version of Judy. David loudly and publicly declares his love for Judy, but this only earns him another beating at the hands of her husband. David aimlessly wanders his way around the docks, where he is tracked down by Smith and his superior, Lieutenant Anemone. Smith tries to shoot David, but only grazes his head before Smith and Anemone are both shot by Dot. The two escape to Hulligan''s Wharf, where David finds his long-lost cousin Pamela and her baby. She fled to the island for her child''s safety, and has several months of food supply, planning to start a vegetable garden so that they can survive indefinitely. David and Pamela begin an adult relationship. The group spends more than four months on the island with no sign of the police or poison gas. The occurrence of further terrorist attacks is suggested, but not directly stated. At the book''s end, David expresses the conviction that he is happy and thankful, and does not care how long he has to live. The question of whether the pair have days, weeks, months, or years of bliss is never answered.

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