Sweet Sadness My Walks With The Muse Of Victorian Cemeteries

When did cities in ruins become a thing of beauty? When the eighteenth-century tourist thought them beautiful. The ruin "craze" that followed transformed the art world and turned art into a subjective experience that involved a new sensation: the melancholy mood. In his book "Sweet Sadness," Tyson Gardner personifies this mood and envisions the garden cemetery as Sweet Sadness's realm, where she reigns as supreme muse. A child of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the garden cemetery matured under the Victorians. In this memoir with pictures, Tyson shares his encounters with Sweet Sadness in Philadelphia's renowned Laurel Hill, the second garden cemetery in the United States, and offers hints on where to find her in any Victorian cemetery, much as the Victorians did.

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.