Synopsis
Berger's modern classic updated with glorious photos.
John Berger has spent a lifetime experimenting with new ways of storytelling, often using both words and images as in books such as Another Way of Telling and A Fortunate Man, where he worked with photographer Jean Mohr, and in his world-renowned Ways of Seeing. Now, together with artist-photographer Patricia MacDonald, the beautiful love story found in his earlier collection, Once in Europa, is retold, in an emotionally and visually stunning combination. Macdonald's powerful images, made from the air and close to the ground, and containing many layers of meaning, create a landscape and a weather for this contemporary classic.
Library Journal
The second volume of the trilogy ``Into Their Labours'' is, like the first ( Pig Earth , LJ 9/15/80), a collection of stories set in the French Alps. Although ostensibly about love, they give us a vivid picture of a changing world in which the traditional way of life is rapidly disappearing as the peasants move to the cities to find work or are employed in the tourist industry and new factories. The title story is a particularly poignant indictment of such changes. In it a woman named Odile tells us how a factory scars her valley, destroying her family's farm, and then scars her life as her lover is killed and later her husband disabled in industrial accidents. Yet these stories are not morbid, instead containing a cautionary note about how difficult it is to regain an idyllic state once it is lost. This sensitively written collection is recommended for most libraries. Christine King, SUNY at Stony Brook Lib.