Petticoat und Kriegsheimkehrer - Frauenleben in den fünfziger Jahren


Helga Hirsch fängt mit diesem Buch die Doppelgesichtigkeit der fünfziger Jahre aus Sicht der Frauen ein: die Aufbruchsstimmung, den explodierenden Konsum, die wieder erwachte Lebensfreude - aber auch die Massenflucht aus der DDR, die Verdrängung der Vergangenheit und die Spannungen hinter der vordergründigen Ordnung.


Wir erinnern die fünfziger Jahre im Westen als die Zeit des wirtschaftlichen Aufschwungs und Fortschritts, in der sich die Menschen in der oberflächlichen Konsumwelt einrichteten. Sie gelten aber auch als eine Phase der Enge, der Prüderie und der politischen Verdrängung. Man produzierte, kaufte und vergnügte sich, um sich den Verwundungen durch Krieg und Vertreibung nicht zuwenden zu müssen.


Und so wurde das Jahrzehnt von aufgeladenen Gegensätzen geprägt. Petticoat und Kriegsheimkehrer, beides bestimmte das Leben der Frauen. Katholische Tugendwächter neben der sündigen Knef, des Teufels General neben Heimatschnulzen, die Welt der Halbstarken neben kleinbürgerlicher Idylle. Helga Hirsch lässt das Gemälde eines Jahrzehnts entstehen, das wie kein anderes die Träume und das Trauma der Deutschen miteinander verband.


Ein Buch, das die Erfahrungen einer ganzen Generation von Frauen beschreibt.



(source: Bol.de)

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. At the start of Seranella's outstanding eighth Miranda "Munch" Mancini mystery (after 2004's Unwilling Accomplice), the Los Angeles auto mechanic is enjoying a domestic stability that she never thought possible after her sordid existence as a drug addict and prostitute. Indeed, the challenge Seranella faces as her heroine moves further away from her lurid past is to keep the sense of conflict alive. She certainly accomplishes this when Munch's fiancé, detective Enrique "Rico" Chacón, is shot dead by his fellow cops in a drug bust gone wrong. We learn that there had been a bounty put on Munch's head by the newly reformed Satan's Pride Motorcycle gang (whom Munch had helped take down years back) and that Rico's death may have resulted from his attempts to protect her. To compound matters, the police department is withholding Chacón's pension from his family, claiming that he was corrupt. Determined to clear his name and to get revenge, Munch sets out on a dangerous investigation of her own. This is character-driven crime fiction at its finest by one of the genre's most accomplished stylists. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Starred Review Prison inmates often have the image of the Virgin Mary tattooed on their backs to help ward off would-be assaulters. Narcs put ballpoint pen refills, rather than actual pens, in their pockets to look more street, less cop. Details like these fill Seranella's Munch Mancini thrillers, spiking their authenticity. Mancini herself has crawled up from the streets. As an ex-abuse victim, ex-prostitute, ex-biker old lady, ex-drug addict, she is both forever conscious of how lucky she is to be one of the few to escape and how unlucky the many others are who never do; this perspective, plus street smarts, enables her to go undercover convincingly. At this novel's start, Mancini works as an auto mechanic in Santa Monica, has a nine-year-old daughter, and is involved in a relationship with an undercover narcotics detective. Her newfound, straight-world happiness is blasted to pieces, however, when her boyfriend is shot to death in a drug raid. A detective friend on the LAPD enlists Mancini's aid--investigators into the shooting suspect that her boyfriend was killed by dirty cops. Mancini's contact wants her to work as a CI, confidential informant, to ferret out the truth and expose the remaining corrupt cops. Mancini excels at undercover work in a way that cops not born to the street and its incessant game playing can't begin to match. Her descent into the L.A. coke trade is both fascinating and terrifying to witness. An absolutely first-rate heroine in a compelling story. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Against his will and his nature, the hulking Gordon Rankin ("Rank") is cast as an enforcer, a goon — by his classmates, his hockey coaches, and especially his own "tiny,angry" father, Gordon Senior. Rank gamely lives up to his role — until tragedy strikes, using Rank as its blunt instrument. Escaping the only way he can, Rank disappears. But almost twenty years later he discovers that an old, trusted friend — the only person to whom he has ever confessed his sins — has published a novel mirroring Rank's life. The betrayal cuts to the deepest heart of him, and Rank will finally have to confront the tragic true story from which he's spent his whole life running away. With the deep compassion, deft touch, and irreverent humour that have made her one of Canada's best-loved novelists, Lynn Coady delves deeply into the ways we sanction and stoke male violence, giving us a large-hearted, often hilarious portrait of a man tearing himself apart in order to put...

Een hedendaagse man bevindt zich opeens in de wereld van de toekomst (?), bevolkt door eigenaardige wezens. Een wereld met een vreemde, onveranderlijk grijze lucht en eigenaardige bouwwerken Tussen de gebouwen zijn verbindingen die je niet kan zien zodat het lijkt of je in de lucht wandelt. Maar zoveel is zeker, de wereld is de Aarde en de wezens zijn mensen. Maar hoever in de toekomst is hij? En het ergste is: het zijn wel mensen die hem omringen, maar het zijn geen mannen of vrouwen.
Zijn gastheren/vrouwen zijn beide. Hermafroditische mensen met de kenmerken van beide geslachten. De man uit onze tijd heeft vooral moeite om dit te verwerken. Hij probeert te achterhalen wat er van zijn wereld is geworden en hoe deze wereld is ontstaan. De ontknoping is een overweldigende verrassing. Sturgeon is een van de weinige sf-auteurs die (zoals Philip José Farmer, sf 8 en sf 30) de seksuele moraal ter discussie stellen.

SUMMARY:
With Earth embroiled in a vast interplanetary war with the "Bugs," a young recruit in the Federal Reserves relates his experiences training in boot camp and as a junior officer in the Terran Mobile Infantry.

Lacey Farrell ist eine erfolgreiche junge Immobilienmaklerin, deren Leben sich schlagartig ändert, als sie zur unfreiwilligen Zeugin eines Mordes wird. Warum musste Isabelle Waring sterben? Und was hat es mit dem rätselhaften Tagebuch ihrer Tochter Heather auf sich? Lacey ahnt nicht, in welche Gefahr sie sich begibt, denn der Mörder setzt sich jetzt auf ihre Spuren. Ein Wettlauf gegen die Zeit beginnt.

From Publishers Weekly

It has been 20 years since the war between faeries and humans destroyed everything. Liza, a teenager living in what was once the Midwest, has always been taught that magic kills. When Lizas mother gives birth to a faerie baby with hair clear as glass, her father abandons the infant on a hillside to die; Lizas mother then runs away, and Liza begins to have magical visions of her own. Petrified that her powers might cause death, Liza flees into the woods with her friend Matthew, only to be attacked by deadly trees and rescued by a woman with magic. The plot quickens as Liza realizes that the woman is connected to her mothers past, knowledge that propels Liza into a dangerous journey into the land of Faerie, in search of her mother. Debut novelist Simners style is poetic (A land of steel and glass, of towers and sharp angles. A sky the color of dried blood), but she only vaguely describes Lizas world. Its hard to understand how, for example, a faerie differs from humans with magical powers, or what triggered the cataclysmic faerie war. Despite the murkiness, the plotting is strong, and readers will want to stay with Liza until her questions are resolved. Ages 12–16. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Simner’s first novel for YAs is an attention-catching twist of two piping-hot speculative scenarios—a postapocalyptic-wasteland journey layered upon a faerie-world-intruding-upon-our-own setup. A war between our world and a faerie world has left the planet a ruined and perilous wilderness. People huddle in the remains of towns, afraid to venture out at night, and swiftly put to death any child suspected of having been infected by the faerie fallout. When Liza discovers that she may have magical abilities, she flees town, and eventually seeks out answers in the equally ruined faerie realm. Simner’s world-building leans heavily on atmospherics in lieu of specifics, and the foggy descriptions of magic are even tougher to get a handle on. But the mood is strikingly dark, and questions regarding humankind’s tendency toward suspicion and xenophobia will loom large in readers’ minds. Much information is frustratingly withheld from both Liza and the reader, and many questions are left unanswered, but this will still garner a share of fans for its unusual and unsettling vision of a magically dystopian future. Grades 7-10. --Ian Chipman

A compulsively readable debut crime novel inspired by the legendary real-life murder of Kitty Genovese.

At 4:00 A.M. on March 13, 1964, a young woman returning home from her shift at a local bar is attacked in the courtyard of her Queens apartment building. Her neighbors hear her cries; no one calls for help.

Unfolding over the course of two hours, Good Neighbors is the story of the woman's last night. It is also the story of her neighbors, the bystanders who kept to themselves: the anxious Vietnam draftee; the former soldier planning suicide; the woman who thinks she's killed a child and her husband, who will risk everything for her. Revealing a fascinating cross-section of American society in expertly interlocking plotlines, Good Neighbors calls to mind the Oscar-winning movie Crash, and its suspense and profound sense of urban menace rank it with Hitchcock's Rear Window and the gritty crime novels of Dennis Lehane, Richard Price, and James Ellroy.