Stone Virgin, Barry Unsworth, Norton, 1995, 0393313093, 9780393313093, 309 pages. A mysterious sculpture of a beautiful and erotic Madonna holds the key to the Fornarini family's secrets. When Raikes, a conservation expert, tries to restore her, he is swept under the statue's spell and swept under the spell of the seductive Chiara Litsov, a member of the Fornarini family now married to a famous sculptor. Raikes finds himself losing all moral grounding as his love for statue and woman intertwine in lust and murder..

The Big Day , Barry Unsworth, 2002, Fiction, 163 pages. Considering himself a model of proper behavior and thinking, Donald Cuthbertson begins to lose his focus with the approach of Degree Day for Cuthbertson's Regional School and ....

Murder on the Orient Express , Agatha Christie, 1934, Detective and mystery stories, English, 254 pages. Hercule Poirot solves a mysterious murder on the famous train, now stopped on the tracks by a giant snowdrift..

The Widow's Children , Paula Fox, 1999, Fiction, 224 pages. An evening dining out with the family in New York City escalates into a feast of vicious innuendo and subtle cruelty for Laura Maldonado Clapper, her husband, her browbeaten ....

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Scandal, Or, Priscilla's Kindness , A. N. Wilson, 1983, Fiction, 233 pages. .

Morality Play , Barry Unsworth, 1996, Fiction, 206 pages. In fourteenth-century England a troupe of traveling players gathers information about a local murder and incorporates it into their play in hopes of drawing a larger audience.

After Hannibal , Barry Unsworth, 1998, Fiction, 250 pages. A group of very different people--including a retired American couple, a feuding British family, two gay lovers, and a manipulative lawyer--is brought together and overwhelmed ....

The idol hunter , Barry Unsworth, 1980, Fiction, 192 pages. .

Watermark , Joseph Brodsky, Jun 1, 1993, Biography & Autobiography, 144 pages. The author shares his impressions of Venice, Italy over the course of his many visits. The Hide , Barry Unsworth, 1970, Fiction, 192 pages. Obsessively pursuing a bizarre underground life of darkness and spying, Simon sees innocent Josh as a threat to the labyrinth of tunnels he has built under his sister Audrey's ....

Losing Nelson , Barry Unsworth, 2000, Fiction, 338 pages. An obsessed biographer of Lord Horatio Nelson lives a strange existence, reenacting the military exploits of the hero in his basement, but an incident of brutality in Nelson's ....

Sour sweet , Timothy Mo, 1982, Fiction, 252 pages. .

Still Life , A.S. Byatt, Apr 1, 1997, Fiction, 400 pages. In this sequel to 'The Virgin in the Garden, ' in the 1950s, Stephanie Potter, now married to a clergyman, is conflicted about her domestic life and her strivings for ....

A mysterious sculpture of a beautiful and erotic Madonna holds the key to the Fornarini family's secrets. When Raikes, a conservation expert, tries to restore her, he is swept under the statue's spell and swept under the spell of the seductive Chiara Litsov, a member of the Fornarini family now married to a famous sculptor. Raikes finds himself losing all moral grounding a...more A mysterious sculpture of a beautiful and erotic Madonna holds the key to the Fornarini family's secrets. When Raikes, a conservation expert, tries to restore her, he is swept under the statue's spell and swept under the spell of the seductive Chiara Litsov, a member of the Fornarini family now married to a famous sculptor. Raikes finds himself losing all moral grounding as his love for statue and woman intertwine in lust and murder.(less)

The Stone Virgin is set in Venice in 3 different periods in time, the 1400s, the 1700s and in present day. The story opens in the 15th century with the artist facing his accusers on a murder charge but most of the novel is set present day where Simon Raikes is restoring a statue of a Madonna, a Virgin Mary, and while he works on it he is intrigued by who made the statue and what happened to the statue over the years.

I thought it interesting that there 3 stories in 3 different periods all directly related with the statue, or the men interest in the statue. All of them seem to focus on the sexual relationships the men had with the women in their life and the feelings, good and bad, that those evoked. I was expecting to find more interesting desciptions of Venice in those different periods and I didn't for which I'm sorry. I do understand that art appeals to the senses but lately it seems that most of the art related books I read are more than sensual, they are downright erotic, I think that's okay in a story well told but I'm starting to wonder if this is a pattern in today's art related literature...

I have just finished this lovely book. It is not very accessible -Unsworth is a writer who demands a lot of his readers, the tale is dense and complicated and the language is quite difficult in places, but it is immensely rewarding, moving from renaissance Italy in the fifteenth century till the late nineteen seventies. It is a story of artistic endeavour, love, obsession and murder. It is well worth persevering and I hope you will find, as I did, that it seizes your attention and makes you invo...more I have just finished this lovely book. It is not very accessible -Unsworth is a writer who demands a lot of his readers, the tale is dense and complicated and the language is quite difficult in places, but it is immensely rewarding, moving from renaissance Italy in the fifteenth century till the late nineteen seventies. It is a story of artistic endeavour, love, obsession and murder. It is well worth persevering and I hope you will find, as I did, that it seizes your attention and makes you involved with the characters and that you will come away thinking new thoughts(less)

"In its romantic and dangerous tour of history, Barry Unsworth's Stone Virgin rivals A. S. Byatt's Possession. A mysterious sculpture of a beautiful and erotic Madonna holds the key to the Fornarini family's secrets. When Simon Raikes, a conservation expert, tries to restore her, he is swept under the statue's spell and also swept under the spell of the seductive Chiar...more This is my second Unsworth novel and I'm quite impressed. This man has "the" talent for writing. Excellent novel! The plot is set in the 15th, 18th and 20th centuries in Venice and will make me look more closely at statues and wonder who the model was and what happened to her. The pace picks up toward the end as a restorer falls in love with a live model while working on a 15th c Madonna. There is mystery and romance but I've preferred later novels by this fine writer.

Simon Raikes is restoring an enigmatic stone Madonna that graces the front of a medieval church in Venice. As he prepares his work, he is overtaken by visions, and he soon becomes obsessed with discovering the history of the unusual, subtly erotic statue. Simon’s own fate becomes inextricably enmeshed with that of the original sculptor, and he finds himself making choices that would previously been abhorrent to him.

Stone Virgin is a complex, proficient morality tale that examines the dark underside of desire, whether it be carnality, pride, ambition, or cupidity. Within these pages, the age old adage that history repeats itself plays out in the lives of individuals, rather than on the world stage. How easy it is to succumb to temptation when one’s secret heart’s desire is within reach.(less)

Great classic read. Initially based in 1432, the language is accordingly stilted to fit the era. But then the reader is taken forward to the 1970's where parallels between the past and the present seem to occur as the sculptor Raikes works on restoring a Venetian Madonna. The story is on the one hand an erotic love story and on the other hand a mystery. About 50 pages into the book and you want to find out exactly what happens-in the past and in the present.

This story deals with the mystery surrounding the origins and subsequent movement of a Virgin Mary carved in the 1400s. It went back and forth between the contemporary (1970s) restoration of the statue and the 1700, with the beginning and ending set in the 1400s. I really like the contemporary story, but couldn't determine why the 1700s sections were even necessary; the story was a giant non-sequitur. Still, it was a good yarn- set in moody and gorgeous Venice.

A teacher and a novelist, Unsworth worked as a lecturer in English at Norwood Technical College, London, at University of Athens for the British Council...more Barry Unsworth was born in 1930 in a mining village in Durham, and he attended Stockton-on-Tees Grammar School and Manchester University, B.A., 1951.

A teacher and a novelist, Unsworth worked as a lecturer in English at Norwood Technical College, London, at University of Athens for the British Council, at University of Istanbul,Turkey for British Council, lived as a Writer in residence, Liverpool University, England, and also at Lund University, Sweden. He was a teacher at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, 1999.

Unsworth's first novel, The Partnership, was published in 1966 when he was 36. "...in my earlier novels, especially the two written in the early ’70s, The Hide and Mooncranker’s Gift, there was a baroque quality in the style, a density. The mood was grim, but the language was more figurative and more high-spirited. There was more delight in it, more self-indulgence, too. Among my earliest influences as a writer were the American novelists of the deep south, especially Eudora Welty, and some of that elated, grotesque comedy stayed with me."

Unsworth did not start to write historical fiction until his sixth novel, Pascali's Island. Pascali's Island (1980), the first of his novels to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is set on an unnamed Aegean island during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. Reflecting on this shift, Unsworth explained: "Nowadays I go to Britain relatively rarely and for short periods; in effect, I have become an expatriate. The result has been a certain loss of interest in British life and society and a very definite loss of confidence in my ability to register the contemporary scene there – the kind of things people say, the styles of dress, the politics etc.– with sufficient subtlety and accuracy. So I have turned to the past. The great advantage of this, for a writer of my temperament at least, is that one is freed from a great deal of surface clutter. One is enabled to take a remote period and use it as a distant mirror (to borrow Barbara Tuchman’s phrase), and so try to say things about our human condition – then and now – which transcend the particular period and become timeless." Pascali's Island was adapted as a film by James Dearden, starring Charles Dance, Helen Mirren, and Ben Kingsley as the title character.

Heinemann Award for Literature, Royal Society of Literature, 1974, for Mooncranker's Gift; Arts Council Creative Writing fellowship, Charlotte Mason College, 1978-79; literary fellow, Universities of Durham and Newcastle, 1983-84; Booker Prize (joint winner), 1992, for Sacred Hunger; honorary Litt.D., Manchester University, 1998.(less)

Simon Raikes is given the task of restor ing a 15th-century sculpture of the Ma donna on a church in Venice. A frustrat ed artist himself, Simon is compelled to solve certain mysteries: Who was the sculptor? Why was the work sup pressed for two centuries? How did it earn consecration? As he begins to painstakingly shear away corrosion, the statue apparently confronts him with vi sions and stirs his passions. His search for answers leads to a local sculptor's wife, with whom Simon falls in love, and eventually to a new mystery. The author handles a variety of narrative voices and the aura of suspense well. By disclosing the lives of those involved with this Madonna at three significant historical times, Unsworth allows sub tle examination into the underlying theme, the attitudes men have toward women. Andrew Peters, Pioneer Multi-Cty. Lib., Norman, Okla.

The opening of the book with the unknown accused is fantastic, one cannot help to continue reading. As the book unravels fragmenst and anecdotes of the history of the Virgin, it is woven in with the current work of the resoterer in an intricate way, that leaves you no room to put the book down. Read it and give youself a good dosage of history, mystery and sensualism.

Have you ever been drawn to an icon? An image so beautiful that it haunts you and never really leaves your senses? So goes the story in "Stone Virgin." Personally, I am a willing victim of just such a vision, and I have found in this vivid rendering another's soul also captivated by an inexplicable love of image, and vexed by limitless longing. There is no love greater than that in our imagination, that which we can only dream about. Reality has a hard time measuring up to our ideals. As a result, there is room for fantasy and secret desires of a near-sacred quality in all of our lives, those wisps of knowing-yet-not-knowing that drive our abilities to seek what is seldom found. Touching it, if even briefly, renews the quest to have it completely. "Stone Virgin" facilitates the journey by offering a sometimes-tortured, but always mystical entry into a journey that seeks beauty and completeness. If you are not deeply moved by this tale, you have not yet begun your own journey.

Barry Unsworth, who has died of lung cancer aged 81, was a writer in the tradition of William Golding and Joseph Conrad. Pre-eminent among novelists of empires in decay, his range spanned the Ottoman, the Venetian and the British hegemony, and the middle ages to the present day. His novel Sacred Hunger, about the 18th-century slave trade, was the joint winner of the Booker prize in 1992 and, in the opinion of many, should have won it outright.

Unsworth was born in the mining village of Wingate, Co Durham. His father had started his working life at the age of 13 as a miner, but later found a job with an insurance company in Stockton-on-Tees. At primary school, Barry revealed a gift for composition and became accustomed to seeing his stories pinned to the wall with gold stars on them. "I saw," he said, "that the way forward was to get as many gold stars as possible." When he left Stockton grammar school, he announced that he wanted to be a journalist. "I couldn't possibly say I wanted to be a writer, not in Stockton-on-Tees at that time."

Although offered a place at Oxford, Unsworth opted for Manchester University, where he graduated in 1951. At this stage, he could easily have joined the school of northern, working-class writers such as John Braine, John Wain, Alan Sillitoe and Stan Barstow, but from the beginning, his instincts took him in a different direction. His earliest influences were American writers including Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers, and his first, unsuccessful literary efforts were short stories, a form in which he was never entirely at home.

Determined to make his name as a writer, despite the initial discouragement of numerous rejection slips, Unsworth embarked on a series of teaching jobs, many of them overseas. His connection with England was to become more and more tenuous. His first novel, The Partnership (1966), described a bohemian colony of artists in Cornwall, similar to one in which he had recently been living. It had a modest success, but by the time it appeared, following a pattern that was to recur through much of his life, he had left Cornwall and was teaching English in Athens, after spending his honeymoon in Greece (he had married Valerie Moor in 1959).

The novel which emerged from these experiences, The Greeks Have a Word for It (1967), appeared after he had left Athens for Turkey, where he hit what was to be his most enduring form with Mooncranker's Gift (1973). Pamukkale, the setting of the book, "was the beginning of something that has been of fascination to me ever since – which is landscape and atmosphere redolent of the past, living a contemporary life within the setting of the past".

Mooncranker's Gift was to mark a turning point in his career, and was followed by his two great novels of the decline and fall of the Ottoman empire, Pascali's Island (1980), his first historical work and the first of his books to be shortlisted for the Booker prize (it was made into a film in 1988), and The Rage of the Vulture (1982). By the time they appeared, he had returned to England and was teaching in Cambridge. http://archbd.net/a51.pdf http://archbd.net/12c3.pdf http://archbd.net/ja.pdf http://archbd.net/142.pdf http://archbd.net/c49.pdf http://archbd.net/k37.pdf http://archbd.net/11gm.pdf http://archbd.net/9h4.pdf http://archbd.net/icj.pdf http://archbd.net/lf5.pdf http://archbd.net/kmk.pdf http://archbd.net/ddk.pdf http://archbd.net/dnm.pdf http://archbd.net/8kk.pdf http://archbd.net/h4e.pdf http://archbd.net/nf2.pdf http://archbd.net/mmh.pdf http://archbd.net/n5g.pdf http://archbd.net/h44.pdf http://archbd.net/6fa.pdf