 First edition | |
| Author | Barbara Trapido |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Hamish Hamilton |
Publication date | 1994 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 316 |
| ISBN | 0-241-00218-4 |
| Preceded by | Temples of Delight |
Juggling is a 1994 novel by Barbara Trapido, nominated for the Whitbread Award that year. [1] It is a sequel to her 1990 novel Temples of Delight, characters appearing as teenagers and young adults in the earlier book are now parents. [2]
In an interview Trapido said that the book had the form of a Shakespearean comedy. she goes on to say "the book’s motivation had to do with the fact that Temples of Delight, the previous book was such a troubling one for me that I was still brooding on it...I was still worrying about Alice...So I used Alice and her husband as a kind of backdrop to the story about Christina and her sister Pam, which meant I could unravel the mysteries of Alice’s head along the way." [3]
The novel is a coming of age story, the main protagonists are 'sparky Christina', the daughter of Alice, and her 'saintly adopted sister Pam' who could not be more different. [4] They meet similarly mismatched friends Jago and Peter, and the intersecting lives of the four as they grow up form the heart of the novel.
Michael Dibdin writing in The Independent explains that "The title puns on the Elizabethan sense of 'juggle': to play tricks so as to cheat or deceive somebody. Everyone in the novel does this to some extent, wittingly or not, as they try to juggle the details of their lives, keeping all the balls in the air, holding the pattern together. The most daring and skilful juggler of all is Barbara Trapido herself, who puts her characters through dizzying permutations of gender, identity, background and relationships, both personal and genetic. The pace increases imperceptibly, creeping up on the reader, until what started as a fairly sober and straightforward study of generational conflicts ends in a pyrotechnic climax which exploits every Shakespearian device - identical twins, lost siblings, transposed parents, unlikely couples, outrageous coincidences and brazenly expedient plotting - to an extent which might have made even the Bard blush." and he concludes "The result is a work of enormous charm, highly entertaining and told with a deft touch, which handles serious matters lightly and treats light ones with proper respect". [5]
Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888).
Alice Pleasance Hargreaves, was, in her childhood, an acquaintance and photography subject of Lewis Carroll. One of the stories he told her during a boating trip became the children's classic 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She shared her name with "Alice", the heroine of the story, but scholars disagree about the extent to which the character was based upon her.
Barbara Gowdy, CM is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. Born in Windsor, Ontario, she is the long-time partner of poet Christopher Dewdney and resides in Toronto.
The Secret Seven or Secret Seven Society is a fictional group of child detectives created by Enid Blyton and based on the publisher’s children. They appear in one of several adolescent detective series which Blyton wrote.
Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-three novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail", her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language."
Joanna Trollope is an English writer. She has also written under the pseudonym of Caroline Harvey. Her novel Parson Harding's Daughter won in 1980 the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.
Fathers and Sons, also translated more literally as Fathers and Children, is an 1862 novel by Ivan Turgenev, published in Moscow by Grachev & Co. It is one of the most acclaimed Russian novels of the 19th century.
The Duchess is a character in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1865. Carroll does not describe her physically in much detail, although as stated in Chapter 9, "Alice did not much like keeping so close to her: first, because the Duchess was very ugly; and secondly, because she was exactly the right height to rest her chin upon Alice’s shoulder, and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin." Her hideous appearance and short stature is strongly established in the popular imagination thanks to John Tenniel's illustrations and from context it is clear that Alice finds her quite unattractive.
The Looking Glass Wars is a series of three novels by Frank Beddor, heavily inspired by Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass. The basic premise is that the two books written by Lewis Carroll are a distortion of the 'true story'. It features twists and turns on the original story, such as the white rabbit really being Alyss's (Alice's) tutor, Bibwit Harte, and the Mad Hatter is really a very agile, somber bodyguard called Hatter Madigan.
Lou Beale is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Anna Wing. Her first appearance is in the first episode, which was broadcast on 19 February 1985, and her last is in episode 362, first shown on 26 July 1988, after which the character was killed off. The character is played by Karen Meagher in the 1988 EastEnders special, CivvyStreet, set during the Second World War. She appears in 232 episodes.
Barbara (Louise) Trapido, born 1941 as Barbara Schuddeboom, is a British novelist born in South Africa with German, Danish and Dutch ancestry. Born in Cape Town and growing up in Durban she studied at the University of Natal gaining a BA in 1963 before emigrating to London. After many years teaching, she became a full-time writer in 1970.
The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate is a historical novel by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1961, and in paperback by Lancer Books in 1968. The first trade paperback edition was issued by The Donning Company in 1982. The book was reissued with a new introduction by Harry Turtledove as a trade paperback and ebook by Phoenix Pick in September 2013. It is the third of de Camp's historical novels in order of writing, and earliest chronologically. It is set in 466-465 BCE, the last years of the reign of King Xerxes I of Persia.
Jessica Margaret Anderson was an Australian novelist and short story writer. Born in Gayndah, Anderson lived the bulk of her life in Sydney apart from a few years in London. She began her career writing short stories for newspapers and drama scripts for radio, especially adaptations of well-known novels. Embarking on her career as a novelist relatively late in life - her first novel was published when she was 47 - her early novels attracted little attention. She rose to prominence upon the publication of her fourth novel, Tirra Lirra by the River, published in 1978. Although she remains best known for this work, several of her novels have garnered high acclaim, most notably The Impersonators (1980) and Stories from the Warm Zone and Sydney Stories (1987), both of which have won awards. She won the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice, and has been published in Britain and the United States. Jessica Anderson died at Elizabeth Bay, New South Wales in 2010, following a stroke. She was the mother of Australian screenwriter Laura Jones, her only child.
Step Brothers is a 2008 American comedy film directed by Adam McKay, produced by Jimmy Miller and Judd Apatow, and written by Will Ferrell and McKay from a story by Ferrell, McKay, and John C. Reilly. It follows Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly), two grown men who are forced to live together as brothers after their single parents, with whom they still live, marry each other. Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen, Adam Scott, and Kathryn Hahn also star.
Catherine Earnshaw is a fictional character and the female protagonist of the 1847 novel Wuthering Heights written by Emily Brontë. Catherine is one of two children to Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw, the original tenants of the Wuthering Heights estate. The star-crossed love between her and Heathcliff is one of the primary focuses of the novel. Catherine is often referred to as "Cathy," particularly by Heathcliff.
The Good Terrorist is a 1985 political novel written by the British novelist Doris Lessing. The book's protagonist is the naïve drifter Alice, who squats with a group of radicals in London and is drawn into their terrorist activities.
Eric Northman is a fictional character in The Southern Vampire Mysteries, a series of thirteen books written by New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris. He is a vampire, slightly over one thousand years old, and is first introduced in the first novel, Dead Until Dark and appears in all subsequent novels. Since the book series is told from the first person perspective of Sookie Stackhouse, what readers perceive of his character is influenced by what Sookie comprehends. HBO's television series True Blood is based on this book series and the character of Eric Northman is portrayed somewhat differently. A list of True Blood characters has a detailed description of Eric's character from the TV show.
Bernardine Anna Livia Mary Bishop was an English novelist, teacher and psychotherapist. Her first novel, Perspectives, was published by Hutchinson in 1961. During a half-century break between publishing her first two novels and her third, the 2013 Costa prize-nominated Unexpected Lessons In Love, she brought up a family, taught, and practised as a psychotherapist.
Seven Poor Men of Sydney (1934) is the first novel by Australian writer Christina Stead.
After You'd Gone is Northern Irish author Maggie O'Farrell's debut novel. Published in 2000 by Headline Review it garnered 'international acclaim' and won a Betty Trask Award.